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Matthew Kendrick
Honduras' President Xiomara Castro delivers a speech during a ceremony to commemorate the National Flag Day, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras September 1, 2024.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro faced calls to resign on Wednesday after journalists released a video of her brother-in-law negotiating payoffs with convicted drug traffickers. The man in the video, Carlos Zelaya, denied he knew he was taking drug money, but he and his son both resigned from their government positions after the revelation. Carlos’ brother, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, is Castro’s husband and was president himself before being overthrown in a coup in 2009.
Just before the video broke, Honduras withdrew from its extradition treaty with the United States — not a coincidence. Dozens of accused Honduran drug traffickers have been extradited to face trial and imprisonment in the US, including Castro’s immediate predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández,whom she accused of running a “narco-dictatorship.” How the tables have turned!
Eurasia Group regional expert Risa Grais-Targow says there’s more to it than simple self-preservation. Castro’s Honduras has been moving further away from the US, for example, by dropping its recognition of Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China, and immediately siding with Venezuelan strongman president Nicolás Maduro in the aftermath of that country’s deeply controversial election.
“All of this pushes Honduras further into that club of countries — Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia — that has a much more contentious relationship with the US than other Latin American countries,” Grais-Targow explained.
FILE PHOTO: A Kenyan police officer stands guard during a joint operation with Haitian police, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti July 29, 2024.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinkenvisited Haiti for the first time on Thursday, underscoring American support for the struggling Caribbean government and the Kenyan-led security mission meant to stabilize the country. Nairobi sent special police officers to Haiti in late June as part of a UN-approved mission to bolster Haiti’s law enforcement and military against well-armed and organized gangs. The Kenyans have made significant strides alongside the Haitian National Police in securing key landmarks in the capital, Port-au-Prince, but they’re running short of money and time — the mission’s mandate is set to expire on Oct. 2 and would need to be renewed — and ordinary Haitians still face daily violence from gangs.
The US is considering requesting that the UN turn the Kenyan-led operation into a formal peacekeeping operation, which could avoid the need for renewals. The Kenyan commander Godfrey Otunge says the gangs’ days are numbered, but the other countries that pledged to send troops to back up his officers have not followed through. Otunge has only 400 of the 2,500 men who are supposed to be under his command.
The ad hoc nature of the mission contributes to the sluggishness: The UN took nearly a year to approve the mandate, and then Kenya took another nine months to get boots on the ground. During that time, gangs ousted PM Ariel Henry and solidified control over more than 80% of Port-au-Prince. By the time the Kenyans arrived, they only had three months left in their mandate. Redesignating it as a formal PKO could ease some time constraints and provide a formal mechanism for other countries to fulfill their troop pledges. We’re watching how the debate unfolds.Law students from different public and private universities in CDMX demonstrate against the Reform of the Judicial Branch launched by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
On Wednesday, Mexico’s lower house approved a controversial judicial overhaul bill that would force federal judges to seek election. They voted while seated in a sports hall in Mexico City because protesters blocked access to Congress.
A day earlier, the country’s 11 Supreme Court justices voted 8-3 to join an ongoing strike of judges and judicial workers against the overhaul. Demonstrations have been underway for weeks in cities across Mexico.
The bill, which now heads to the Senate, is expected to pass despite all the opposition in the streets, and it will likely become law before President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, aka AMLO, leaves office on Sept. 30.
Markets aren’t happy. Mexico’s peso is trading near two-year lows and has lost nearly 12% of its value since the presidential election in June. Putting judges up for election threatens to politicize decisions around potential investments in Mexico and diminish the country’s economic horizon. However, AMLO and his Morena party frame it as necessary to break the entrenched oligarchy and reduce corruption.
Neighbors aren’t thrilled, either. US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar issued a rare direct criticism of the judicial overhaul, as did his Canadian counterpart Graeme Clark, leading AMLO to “pause” relations. (Important to note: Mexico paused relations with the embassies specifically, not the US and Canadian governments as a whole). The judicial overhaul is certain to become a flashpoint when the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement comes up for renegotiation in 2026.
What does it mean for the new president? AMLO’s incoming successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, will find herself without much of a honeymoon, says Eurasia Group’s Latin America Managing Director Daniel Kerner.
“The judicial overhaul creates problems with the private sector, with the judiciary, and with the US, which constrains how much of the rest of her agenda she can carry out,” he explains. “If this starts negatively impacting her popularity — which I think it will — then she’s gonna have to rely a lot more on Lopez Obrador and Morena.”
US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Sept. 2, 2024.
Nippon Steel is playing its hand close to its vest and hasn’t commented on the reports of the deal being blocked. Its nearly $15 billion offer was approved by US Steel shareholders in the spring, and it would be highly unusual for a company from a close ally like Japan to be prohibited from investing in the US.
Shares in US Steel fell by roughly 18% on Wednesday’s news, trading around $29, well under the $55 per share value that Nippon Steel offered in December 2023. The company warned thousands of jobs were at risk in the key — if not downright determinative — swing state of Pennsylvania should the deal fall through. Nonetheless, Democrats are betting that this decision will help them win the state by playing up protectionist bonafides. We’ll see if the theory holds.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 29: Mayor London Breed (2nd L) and Zhang Jianmin (3rd L), China's Consul-General in San Francisco, raise a Chinese national flag to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China at the City Hall on September 29, 2023 in San Francisco, California.
Linda Sun, a former aide to New York Govs. Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo, has been charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese government, Justice Department officials announced Tuesday. She allegedly used her position to forward improper invitations to Chinese officials allowing them to travel within the US and meet government counterparts. In exchange, she and her husband allegedly received millions of dollars and other fringe benefits, including some Nanjing salted ducks (delicious).
It’s a packed week on the Chinese covert influence beat: The Washington Post on Tuesday released an in-depth investigation powered by advanced facial recognition software on a network of Chinese diplomats and Beijing-friendly civil society groups that allegedly cooperate to repress and intimidate critics of China in the US. Not just improper letters and tasty ducks: They have reportedly carried out face-to-face confrontations with dissidents that have sometimes resulted in beatings.
Not all influence campaigns in the US are built equal. Also on Tuesday, intelligence firm Graphika released a report on a network of spam and disinformation accounts linked to a Chinese influence operation aiming to inject anti-Western themes into online discourse ahead of November’s US election. The so-called “Spamouflage” campaign consisted of 15 accounts on X, one on TikTok, and a fake news outlet that posted across multiple platforms.
The good news is they were bad at their job. Many of the accounts obviously used AI-generated pictures and messages in awkward English, despite claiming to be native-born US activists. Very few of their posts seem to have gained traction among real social media users.
Eurasia Group’s regional expert Jeremy Chan says running interference isn’t a high priority for Beijing in this election cycle. “It’s important to stress that most parts of the Chinese system likely are keeping their distance from these efforts;” he says. “In fact, Beijing’s stance toward the two candidates in the US remains somewhat of a mystery, and Chinese officials and academics say that Beijing only has bad options in this election.”
Hard Numbers: Putin visits Mongolia, France hears horror case, Deadly Kabul blast, Half a million for a rager, Japan tries to kick back, Guyana makes record blow bust
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh attend an official welcoming ceremony in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on Sept. 3, 2024.
1: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday visited Mongolia, marking his first trip to an International Criminal Court member state since the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Putin’s visit included a meeting with Mongolia’s president and was met with protests demanding his arrest for war crimes related to the deportation of Ukrainian children. Instead of being arrested, Putin was welcomed with a lavish ceremony.
51: On Monday, a French court in Avignon began hearing a horrific sex abuse case involving 51 defendants, all of whom are accused of raping a woman who was routinely drugged by her husband (he is one of the defendants). The case is bringing to light severe problems with France’s laws surrounding rape, which don’t refer to consent explicitly and sometimes make it hard to convict abusers who use drugs to subdue their victims.
6: A suicide bomber killed at least six people in Kabul on Monday and injured at least 13 others. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban government of Afghanistan is a major rival of the Islamic State, which has carried out past atrocities against civilians under Taliban control.
500,000: Fraternity brothers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill spent over $500,000 dollars raised on GoFundMe to throw a “rager” hosted by conservative country music star John Rich on Monday. The GoFundMe campaign went viral after photos emerged last April of UNC frat brothers holding up a US flag that pro-Palestinian protesters on campus had attempted to take down, instantly making the young men stars on right-wing media.
4: Japan is hardly the first country that comes to mind for work-life balance, with a notoriously grueling work culture that sees most employees working dozens of unpaid overtime hours each month. But Tokyo is looking to change that by encouraging four-day work weeks. The country’s labor department is offering grants and free consulting services targeted at small and medium-sized businesses to help them roll out shorter work weeks — but, so far, only three companies have asked for advice.
200 million: Authorities in Guyana said Sunday that they had seized a record 8,000 pounds of cocaine in a bust of a cache deep in the jungle, with a street value of at least $200,000,000. Guyana is not a producer of cocaine, but traffickers increasingly use its inhospitable jungle as covert staging areas to export the drug, sometimes via homemade submersibles.Chinese honor guard stand in formation as the plane carrying Kenya's President William Ruto arrives at the VIP terminal of the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, September 2, 2024, ahead of the China Africa Forum.
Leaders from 50 African nations are expected to gather in Beijing on Wednesday for the 9th triennial China-Africa Cooperation summit — aimed at deepening strategic coordination between China and Africa – but China’s ongoing economic woes have shifted the tone considerably.
The background: These fora used to be an opportunity for Beijing to splash the cash about, but spending peaked after the 2015 summit, which promised some $60 billion in loans and investments over 3 years. By comparison, Chinese loans in Africa totaled just $4.61 billion in 2023 — and Beijing’s guests will want to hear why pledges from the 2021 summit to buy $300 billion in goods from Africa have gone unfulfilled.
Beijing will also need to reassure its partners about several incomplete infrastructure projects, including a major rail project to link East African population and industrial centers.
What’s the pitch? Beijing wants to sell a vision of a green economy future powered by African minerals supplying Chinese manufacturers. But Beijing isn’t alone: Africa’s role in the global economy is only set to grow more important in the 21st century, and the US, UK, South Korea, Italy, and Russia have all set up African summits in recent years. We’re watching how China’s overtures are received.Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as she attends a Labor Day campaign event, at IBEW Local Union #5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 2, 2024.
With just one week before the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, polling averages show Harris slightly ahead but statistically tied due to the nature of the electoral college. That means Harris needs voters where they count most — in her case, the vaunted Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Harris hammered home her pro-worker message on campaign stops in Pittsburgh and Detroit for Labor Day on Monday, arguably the cities most identified with industrialization and the organized labor movement. She cast her rivals as anti-union scabs (those who cross picket lines) and promised not to return to the “failed policies” of tax breaks for the 1% or to repeal of social services like Obamacare.
Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, didn’t clap back — the campaign scheduled no events for either candidate on the Monday holiday. However, Trump had an … eventful rally in Johnstown, PA, on Friday, where he labeled the media “the enemy of the people” and praised a supporter who allegedly tried to attack the press. He also praised his supporters for “allowing” their wives to attend his rallies without their husbands — notably at a time when Harris is leading among women by 13 percentage points — and called Florida Rep. Bryon Donalds, arguably his most prominent Black supporter, one of the “smart ones” without clarifying what he meant.