The Robe Races: Mexico Goes To the Polls To Remake Its Judiciary
NEED TO KNOW
The Robe Races: Mexico Goes To the Polls To Remake Its Judiciary
MEXICO
Silvia Delgado García was handing out flyers recently at a flea market in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The 51-year-old was campaigning to become a judge in elections on June 1, when voters will choose thousands of judges and a new Supreme Court.
Her legal experience exemplifies the concerns that many Mexicans and international observers harbor about the election. An attorney, she formerly represented Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the drug lord now serving a life sentence in the US, wrote the Associated Press.
“Everyone has a right to an effective defense,” she said, referring to her decision to represent Guzmán.
In the past, Mexico chose judges through civil service exams and based on their experience, the Washington Post reported. But former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, opted to enact reforms last year, he said, to breathe fresh air into the judiciary, to “democratize” it. He accused Mexico’s courts of being controlled by an elite minority bent on hindering his efforts to transform the country.
Current President Claudia Sheinbaum, an Obrador ally, has supported the changes, but she has signaled that she might attempt to disqualify Delgado and other candidates with questionable backgrounds from running, Mexico News Daily noted.
Other concerns about the election’s mechanics have also emerged. In Durango, election officials have allowed 49 candidates to run for 49 open judicial seats – meaning voters don’t really have a choice on who presides over cases, wrote the Washington Office on Latin America. Election rules also prohibit candidates from accepting public or private campaign funds, so only those with sufficient personal funds can run.
At the same time, once in office, the reform’s newly created Judicial Discipline Tribunal will have the power to supervise, review, and sanction their work and decisions, which the think tank says will place further pressure on judges to adhere to whatever political influences are dominant at the national level.
These problems are why critics are warning about the future of judicial independence in the Latin American nation. “(Mexico) has designed an ingenious new system that seems democratic because it is based on elections but in fact may allow corrupt elites to dictate who wears judicial robes,” wrote Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe.
One immediate consequence of the reform is that it will likely result in a great deal of disruption in the judiciary as new judges are introduced to the system during the coming two years, wrote the Wilson Center. “Indeed, the fact that many judges have either already resigned in frustration or are now frantically campaigning to retain their seats under great uncertainty means that there will be a large amount of turnover in the Mexican judiciary over the next two years,” it said. “This could lead to some very unfortunate outcomes, including the possible disruption of thousands of ongoing criminal cases, since proceedings will need to be restarted if the presiding judge loses his or her election.”
Still, around 66 percent of Mexicans agree with the concept of electing judges, the Pew Research Center found. They reject the previous system that rewarded insiders and others whose political ties were often more decisive in their appointments than their competence or moral compass.
Some of the candidates will likely inspire voters. Delia Quiroa, who is running for a judgeship in the state of Sinaloa, for instance, is an advocate for Mexicans whose relatives have disappeared due to the country’s epidemic of drug violence. Her brother has been missing since 2014.
“If I become a judge, I’m not going to send legal documents and wait for authorities to answer when they feel like it,” Quiroa told the Associated Press. “I’m going to go out and look for the missing people.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Russia And Ukraine Plan New Talks In Turkey
UKRAINE
Russia and Ukraine are planning to meet in Turkey next week for a second round of peace talks, contingent on Moscow presenting a list of terms, even as Moscow continues air strikes across Ukraine, reducing the likelihood of a peace deal, the Washington Post reported.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed that Ukraine had sent its terms to Moscow and was waiting on Russia’s submission to avoid “an empty meeting” on Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow would bring its memorandum to Istanbul.
The upcoming talks follow an initial round of direct negotiations that took place on May 16 in Istanbul and resulted in an agreement to exchange written conditions for a ceasefire.
Over the weekend, the two countries held a prisoner swap, in which each side released 1,000 captives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that during his April meeting with US President Donald Trump at the Vatican, Trump pledged to impose new sanctions if Russia refused a ceasefire.
While Trump has publicly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin – calling him “crazy” and “playing with fire” – he has so far withheld new sanctions, citing ongoing talks, Politico noted.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy reaffirmed Ukraine’s offer of an unconditional 30-day ceasefire and said Kyiv was prepared for further negotiations, including a possible three-way summit with Trump and Putin.
Ukraine has consistently offered an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, while Russia insists on broader discussions to address what it calls the “root causes” of the war.
Despite diplomatic overtures, Russia has intensified its military campaign. Over the past week, Moscow launched its largest aerial attacks since the war began in 2022 and the Ukrainian leader says Russia has assembled more than 50,000 troops near Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian officials also said Moscow has captured four villages and is preparing for a summer offensive aimed at expanding its foothold in Donetsk and possibly crossing into Dnipro.
Ukraine has responded with drone strikes that shut down several Russian airports. On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had destroyed nearly 300 Ukrainian drones, including 40 near Moscow.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said Wednesday that Russia has committed systematic war crimes against civilians in the Kherson region.
Truckers’ Strikes in Iran Morphing Into Anti-Government Protests
IRAN
Truck drivers in Iran blocked roads and ports this week in ongoing strikes against poor working conditions, with the protests spreading across the country and attracting dissidents and other anti-government voices, the Associated Press reported.
The strikes initially broke out last week in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, one of the country’s main transportation and shipping hubs, over low salaries, high insurance premiums, poor road security, and high fuel prices. But now, they are growing and spreading across the country, attracting attention from those in other sectors and segments of society, the newswire wrote.
Rich in oil and gas, Iran benefits from some of the lowest fuel prices in the world. Last week, however, the government announced plans to increase the price of fuel for trucks from 15 cents per gallon to about $1.90 per gallon by the end of June, setting off the protests.
Iranian officials say the price hike is intended to avoid fuel smuggling into neighboring countries like Pakistan, where fuel is more expensive. But truckers say they can’t afford fuel, spare parts, or repairs.
The strike underscores the mounting economic pressures on Iran as it struggles to secure relief from crippling sanctions in the ongoing negotiations with the United States. Iran’s oil sector, the lifeblood of its economy, has been damaged by the impact of American sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program, and it is one of the central issues under discussion in the Iran-US negotiations.
Meanwhile, analysts say Iran’s anti-government protests often start out as economic protests over local issues, such as those that broke out in 2019 after the government eliminated the subsidy for gasoline. More than 1,000 people were arrested in those protests.
Mass protests that lasted months also erupted across the country in 2022 over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after morality police detained her for improperly wearing her headscarf.
According to Persian-language television channels based outside Iran, workers from other sectors have been striking as well, including bakers who are protesting early morning power cuts that are impeding their ability to bake bread, Le Monde reported.
China Furious Over US Revoking Chinese Students’ Visas
CHINA
Beijing criticized the US’ plan to “unreasonably” revoke visas for Chinese students and announced it had formally complained to Washington about the move, adding to already high tensions between the US and China over tariffs and other issues, Channel News Asia reported.
“The US has unreasonably cancelled Chinese students’ visas under the pretext of ideology and national rights,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said, urging the US to be more constructive in building stable bilateral relations.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US will begin “aggressively” revoking the visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields, Reuters noted. He did not specify what fields would be targeted.
Rubio also added that the State Department will revise the criteria for the approval of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong.
The State Department’s focus on Chinese students reflects how worsening geopolitical tensions between the US and China “have poisoned” the two nations’ long-standing educational ties, Politico wrote.
Because of the highly competitive university system in China, many students in recent decades have opted to study in the US, becoming the second largest group of foreign students in the country after India. About 277,000 Chinese students studied in the US last year.
The move to block Chinese students from enrolling in US colleges is the latest development in the Trump administration’s standoff with academia. Last week, the administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, citing the college’s alleged failure to address antisemitism and alleged ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
That move has been temporarily blocked by a judge.
DISCOVERIES
Waspish Multitaskers
It turns out some wasps may be better at scheduling than most humans.
New research showed that female digger wasps, Ammophila pubescens, can remember the locations of up to nine separate nests and feed their offspring in precise order by age, adjusting their routine depending on need and even tragedy.
“Our findings suggest that the miniature brain of an insect is capable of remarkably sophisticated scheduling decisions,” the lead author of a new study, Jeremy Field of the University of Exeter, explained in a statement. “In fact, they can remember where and when they have fed their young, and what they fed them, in a way that would be taxing even to human brains.”
To arrive at this conclusion, scientists observed wild wasps in the sandy heathlands of Surrey, in southeastern England.
They saw how each female dug multiple short burrows in bare ground, each home to a single egg laid atop a paralyzed caterpillar. Over the following days, the mother returned to each burrow to drop off more caterpillar snacks – sometimes up to eight – before sealing the nest for good.
The study found that wasp mothers almost always delivered food to their offspring in strict age order – feeding the eldest first 81 percent of the time, according to Cosmos Magazine.
If an egg died, the mother laid a replacement egg and pushed that nest to the end of the feeding line. But when researchers swapped out caterpillars to give some nests larger initial meals, mothers waited longer before returning – suggesting they adjust care based on prior investment.
That is even more impressive, Fields noted, because the mothers had an almost eidetic memory about finding their nest and rarely mixed it up with hundreds of identical ones.
“Only 1.5 percent of the 1,293 food deliveries in the study went to other females’ nests,” he explained.
While scientists still don’t know how the insects manage these cognitive feats with such tiny brains, the findings add to a body of evidence about the complexity of wasp brains.
In 2020, researchers at Cornell University discovered that one species of paper wasps can recognize individual faces among their peers.
“Lots of experiments have been done in labs… But this study shows what the wasps really do in the wild,” Field said. “It reveals why this ability is relevant to their lives, and why natural selection has favored this.”