Trump’s border wall caused ‘significant’ cultural, environmental damage, watchdog finds

The border wall championed by President Donald Trump harmed the environment and trampled on Native American cultural sites, according to a report released on Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.

The 450 miles of barrier constructed during Trump’s time in office — one of his highest-profile actions — proceeded by waiving or disregarding environmental and historic preservation laws. But it’s now clear the wall interfered with endangered species, diverted water sources and caused other environmental damage, the federal watchdog said.

DeSantis Pledges to Send Military Into Mexico to Fight Cartels on ‘Day One’

Florida Governor Ron Desantis said on Wednesday night that he would send the military into Mexico to fight drug cartels on “day one” of his presidency if he wins the 2024 presidential election.

At the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, DeSantis was asked if he would support sending in US special forces to take out fentanyl labs and other drug cartel operations. “Yes, and I will do it on day one,” he replied.

“We have to reestablish the rule of law and we have to defend our people. The president of the United States has got to use all available powers as commander in chief to protect our country,” DeSantis said.

The agenda for Mexico’s new leftist president is ambitious. But is it doable?

Mexico today will inaugurate its first leftist president since the country transitioned to a full democracy in 2000. The outgoing Enrique Peña Nieto, whose 26 percent approval rating took another dive after he awarded Jared Kushner Mexico’s highest honor, will be replaced by the 65-year-old Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO.

AMLO swept to victory during July elections, winning 53 percent of the vote and a majority in Congress with a leftist populist platform. He’s made a series of high-profile promises which have further endeared his populist credentials, including slashing his own salary, selling the presidential plane and pledging to get rid of his presidential bodyguards.

Explaining Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s Next President

Tens of millions of Mexican voters will go to the polls Sunday to vote in more than 3,000 races—none more important than the one to choose the country’s next president. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO, as he’s commonly called) has held a healthy lead in polling for months and is widely expected to succeed Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s unpopular current president.

Obrador is the former mayor of Mexico City. He has twice before sought the presidency, without success, on a leftist nationalist or center-left platform—depending on who you ask. While he’s taken a tough line against President Donald Trump, most recently for his treatment of migrants at the border, AMLO’s popularity has more to do with his vows to purge crime and governmental corruption and use the savings to fund services for the poor. Violence is spiking in the country, as the Guardian notes. More than 120 candidates have been killed while running for office over the last 10 months. Obrador has presented himself as the only alternative to business as usual in a country where a brutal drug war has led to more than 160,000 deaths over the last decade or so.

Fox News already freaking out about ‘thin-skinned autocrat’ socialist who is poised to win Mexican presidency

Fox News is already freaking out about the man who is expected to become the new president of Mexico, a socialist and nationalist who had pledged to aggressively clean up the country’s corruption.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador is polling at least 20 points ahead of two rivals for the country’s presidency, with the vote scheduled for Sunday.

A New Revolution in Mexico

The first time that Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for President of Mexico, in 2006, he inspired such devotion among his partisans that they sometimes stuck notes in his pockets, inscribed with their hopes for their families. In an age defined by globalism, he was an advocate of the working class—and also a critic of the PRI, the party that has ruthlessly dominated national politics for much of the past century. In the election, his voters’ fervor was evidently not enough; he lost, by a tiny margin. The second time he ran, in 2012, the enthusiasm was the same, and so was the outcome. Now, though, Mexico is in crisis—beset from inside by corruption and drug violence, and from outside by the antagonism of the Trump Administration. There are new Presidential elections on July 1st, and López Obrador is running on a promise to remake Mexico in the spirit of its founding revolutionaries. If the polls can be believed, he is almost certain to win.

Mexico Elects Leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador In Landslide

Mexico elected leftist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a landslide victory on Sunday, according to exit polls showing the former mayor with double-digit leads over his competitors.

López Obrador, 64, mounted his third bid for the presidency with promises to rein in widespread corruption and fight poverty within the country. A former mayor of Mexico City, he will replace current President Enrique Peña Nieto and has promised to upend traditional party politics.

He would be the first leftist president in decades, according to Reuters.

López Obrador’s two main opponents, Jose Antonio Meade, the ruling party candidate, and center-right candidate Ricardo Anaya conceded the election late Sunday.

Mexican woman who uncovered cartel murder of daughter shot dead

A Mexican woman who doggedly pursued her daughter’s killers in a region plagued by with drug cartel violence has been shot dead in her home, reflecting both the lawlessness plaguing large swaths of the country and the risk faced by victims’ families who pursue justice.

Miriam Rodríguez Martínez was murdered on 10 May, when Mexicans mark Mother’s Day and families of those who have disappeared during the decade-long drug war march to demand action by the authorities.

Mexicans Scorn Trump’s Visit—And Peña Nieto for Having Invited Him

In March, Mexico’s embattled president, Enrique Peña Nieto, compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “Unfortunately, there have been moments in the history of humanity,” Peña Nieto said in a newspaper interview of Trump’s anti-Mexican slurs, “when these expressions, this strident rhetoric, has led to ominous outcomes…. That’s how Mussolini and Hitler” took power.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Lets Loose On ‘Hated Gringo’ And ‘Ugly American’ Donald Trump

Donald Trump likes giving nicknames to his enemies, but now he’s got a couple of his own.

“He is the ugly American,” former Mexican president Vicente Fox said in an interview on the Kickass Politics podcast. “He is the hated gringo because he’s attacking all of us. He’s offending all of us.”

Fox also repeated his opinion of Trump’s proposed border wall.

New Report Offers Most Plausible Explanation Yet For Attack On 43 Mexican Students

The recent report on the 43 students who were abducted last year in Iguala, Mexico, released by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Sunday, confirmed what most people following the case already knew: No one should take the Mexican authorities’ investigation into the case seriously. The panel of experts concluded that the government’s explanation is hopelessly marred and has no basis in forensic science -- further discrediting an investigation already plagued by false public statements and the torture of key witnesses.

Mexico’s Military May Have Fired At Missing Students: Report

The Mexican army monitored the movements of 43 students who later went missing for hours before the students were first attacked, and was present when many of them were abducted, according to an investigative report published Sunday in the Mexican magazine Proceso.

The report contradicts claims by the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, which has repeatedly said the military was not in the streets of Iguala the night the students were abducted there and that federal officials knew nothing about the attacks as they occurred. The report, by journalists Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher, also unearthed evidence that soldiers from the 27th battalion of the Mexican army may have fired at the students during the attacks.

Miguel Angel Jimenez, Activist Who Helped Search For Mexico's Missing Students, Shot And Killed

ACAPULCO, Mexico Aug 9 (Reuters) - At least fifteen people were killed during the weekend in the southwestern state of Guerrero, including an activist who helped lead efforts to find 43 students who disappeared and were presumed murdered last year, according to Mexican officials.

Ten of the murders took place in the resort city of Acapulco, which is packed with tourists due to summer vacations, local police said.

Oaxaca, Mexico, Faces Police Militarization as Governor Acts to Preempt Education Protests

Thousands of federal and state police troops were dispatched in mid-July to the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico to guard strategic buildings, patrol the skies and ensure that protesters cannot take over local radio stations.

The aim of this heightened police militarization? To prevent protesting teachers from exerting pressure on the administration of Gabino Cué Monteagudo, the current governor of Oaxaca, in their efforts to resist nationally imposed education reforms.

McEwen Mining Chief Sorry For Saying Mine Has 'Good Relationship' With Criminal Cartels

TORONTO - The head of a mining company robbed of $8.5 million in gold in Mexico is apologizing for a statement he made in a television interview following the theft.

Rob McEwen, president and chairman of Toronto-based McEwen Mining Inc.(TSX:MUX) told Business News Network last week that the company has had "a good relationship" with the cartels in the region.

Canada passed on U.S.-Mexico climate announcement: sources

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada declined a U.S. invitation last week to jointly announce climate policy cooperation with Mexico, with Ottawa saying it has not yet finalized its own domestic strategy, sources from both countries familiar with the discussions said on Thursday.

On March 24, three days before the United States and Mexico announced they would partner on a high-level bilateral clean energy and climate policy task force, U.S. officials approached Canadian counterparts asking them to join the effort, three sources said.

One source said that while Canadian officials said they were supportive of North American harmonization of climate policy they were not yet prepared to join the continental partners.

Desperate workers on a Mexican mega-farm: 'They treated us like slaves'

Ricardo Martinez and Eugenia Santiago were desperate.

At the labor camp for Bioparques de Occidente, they and other farmworkers slept sprawled head to toe on concrete floors. Their rooms crawled with scorpions and bedbugs. Meals were skimpy, hunger a constant. Camp bosses kept people in line with threats and, when that failed, with their fists.

Escape was tempting but risky. The compound was fenced with barbed wire and patrolled by bosses on all-terrain vehicles. If the couple got beyond the gates, local police could arrest them and bring them back. Then they would be stripped of their shoes.

Elena Poniatowska: 'As a Mexican, I Am Ashamed'

The mood in Mexico is so depressing that even Elena Poniatowska, the novelist-journalist who chronicled the 1968 massacre of students in Tlatelolco, feels a chill when she talks about the murder of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, who were foundburned to death in a municipal trash dump.

The Most Heartbreaking Place In America Is Called ‘Friendship Park’

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — When former First Lady Pat Nixon traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border in 1971 to inaugurate what is now Friendship Park just south of San Diego, California, she observed the then-thin string of barbed wire separating the two countries and reportedly said, “I hate to see a fence anywhere.” The implication, people thought, was that neither nation would ever build one.

Mexico Protesters Set Presidential Palace On Fire

(Reuters) - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Sunday condemned violent protests over the apparent massacre of 43 students after demonstrators set fire to the door of his ceremonial palace in Mexico City on Saturday night.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets to protest the government's handling of the case of the missing students, and last night protesters in central Mexico City set fire to the door of the National Palace.