Mexico Advances Controversial Election Reforms

Critics warn the changes will undermine Mexico’s democracy.

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Happy Wednesday! Planning to tag along with your daughter’s Girl Scout troop to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall?

We’re sure you’ll have a great time—unless, of course, you’re an attorney at a firm involved in litigation against a restaurant the Rockettes’ parent company also owns, in which case the lobby facial recognition software will flag you and security will escort you out before you ever reach the auditorium. Merry Christmas!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit Washington, D.C. today, to meet with lawmakers and—if security concerns allow—address a joint session of Congress, Punchbowl News first reported Tuesday afternoon. The visit will be Zelensky’s first trip outside Ukraine since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began February 24 and coincides with Congress’ push to pass about $45 billion in new military and economic aid for Ukraine within the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill. Ukrainians are experiencing widespread power outages as Russia continues strikes on civilian infrastructure, but Ukrainian troops have been holding back a renewed Russian push to take the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk oblast.
  • The House Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday along party lines to release six years’ worth of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to the public once they are redacted to protect personal information such as Social Security numbers. The committee, led by Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, first sought the returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into an IRS program that mandates the auditing of presidents and vice presidents, but it only gained access to them a few weeks ago after a lengthy legal battle. Neal alleged Tuesday the IRS didn’t perform the mandatory audits during the first two years of the Trump administration. 
  • The Taliban announced Tuesday that, effective immediately, universities in Afghanistan are now closed to women entirely; they had already restricted the subjects female students could study and segregated classrooms by gender. Also Tuesday, the Taliban released two Americans who had been detained in Afghanistan. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the release was not part of an exchange and that no money had been paid for the prisoners’ release.
  • The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill being considered by Congress this week now includes language banning the social media app TikTok from federal government devices. The Washington Post also reported that TikTok has “agreed to sever decision-making over its U.S. operations” from its Chinese Communist Party-controlled parent company ByteDance amid negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
  • U.S. Central Command announced Tuesday that Special Operations forces—accompanied by troops from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces—captured six ISIS officials in Syria this week during multiple helicopter raids. It’s the second such operation in recent weeks: Special Forces on December 11 killed two ISIS operatives in a nearly three-hour gun battle.
  • More than 80 percent of the continental U.S.—including Austin and Orlando—is forecast to experience temperatures below freezing this week as cold air moving down from Canada is projected to bring temperatures 30 to 50 degrees below normal for this time of year. The National Weather Service has warned of “life-threatening” cold for hard-hit areas like the Plains and Midwest. Quickly dropping temperatures and accelerating wind speeds could produce a “bomb cyclone” blizzard and knock out power for millions.
  • Early Tuesday morning, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in rural northern California killed at least 2 people, injured 12, and left more than 72,000 customers without power, leading California Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency for Humboldt County. The violent earthquake near the intersection of three tectonic plates came days after a smaller earthquake in the Bay Area woke residents before 4 a.m.
  • Former film magnate Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and other sexual crimes by a Los Angeles jury on Monday and could face up to 24 years in prison when sentenced. He is currently serving 23 years in prison for a 2020 New York rape conviction. Weinstein was also acquitted of a 2010 sexual battery allegation, and a mistrial was declared for some other charges, including an allegation of rape brought by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Democratic Backsliding in Mexico?

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a parade in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images)

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) seems to have a simple legislative mantra these days: If at first you don’t succeed in overhauling your country’s elections administration, try, try again. At the urging of Mexico’s populist left-wing executive, the country’s legislature has in recent days rushed to approve sweeping electoral changes that critics warn could undermine future votes.

Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE, from its Spanish initials) oversees the country’s federal elections and performs a host of related tasks—registering political parties, overseeing political finance and advertising, maintaining the voter rolls and distributing voter IDs, helping with local elections, and running recalls. Established in 1990 to counter longstanding vote manipulation, its standing bureaucracy was developed to create an electoral administration system relatively free of party loyalties.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Chris Lynch

    QOTD: I think the lack of curiosity about Mexico is related to a general lack of knowledge about it. As for causation, I would say the factors are mutually reinforcing.
    There is another factor: the NYT and the WaPo would rather look across the Atlantic than across the Caribbean. They use the British royal family as entertainment, worship the generosity of European social programs, disdain their old parochialism and wars of religion, and their staffs are educated in English literature. Similarly, they are in general programmed to hate John Stuart Mill , Adam Smith, and John Locke, because that is who Republicans look to for inspiration.
    We were a British colony, and in some ways, still are.

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    Phil H

    QOTD: America doesn't pay all that much attention to European elections (or Canadian ones, for that matter) but since American culture is derived from Europe, that is natural.

    But what happens in Mexico is at least as important. After its first century of political instability from independence to the 1920s, Mexico achieved a degree of stability, in the form of one party rule. True democracy is a significant achievement for them, and I would hate to have that lost.

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    Greg Hurley

    LUK: I’m going to take a pass on the “why”. That just seems to be the way to the politically correct dragons. I will say that we need to be paying very close attention to Mexico. Their problems are already our problems. Eg: Fentanyl, unlawful immigration, drug cartel related crime. We should be working alongside their federal government in ways consistent with our principles and ideals to help them to gain control of their country. We need to quit acting like their problems are their problems.

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      Chris Lynch

      Very much agree. Helping them helps us.

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    Michael Berkowitz

    What, exactly, is the rationale for publicizing Trump's tax returns? Or anyone's , for that matter.

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    Edwinpace

    Qotd

    The problem is that those small European nations border bigger ones-- that often try to gobble them up. And our allies lie behind them.

    Latin America, thankfully, has few if any states desiring to invade their neighbors. Mexico is a concern for how it affects US society. But it's not trying to upset any Intl order.

    So we pay more attention to existential threats.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Sir. Orc

    Speaking as someone who actually cares a lot about what goes on in other countries, I’ve found it is surprisingly difficult to get good information on what goes on in Mexico or South America unless you are fully fluent in Spanish and know where to look (I am only partially fluent and not well versed with local news providers and channels). And what information you do find is hard to confirm. With Mexico in particular, I’ve noticed that a lot of the English-language press tends to softball or parrot the Mexican gov line and until recently had been rather lenient if not outright glowing in it’s attitudes towards ALMO.

    As for what European country your talking about, if you mean Ukraine I should point out they were treated with the same indifference until the invasion shattered pretty much every illusion we had of the prior geopolitical order and both press and politicians finally had to take Eastern European concerns seriously. The same goes for Taiwan and to a lesser degree Japan (Japan actually gets a fair bit of attention in the US at least culturally).

    So in short the question of the day makes a lot of lazy assumptions. I’ve personally tried to keep abreast of news in both Mexico and Canada for years (along with our other allies) but it is frustratingly difficult unless you have a site that readily consolidates the information. This is in fact one of the main reasons I subscribe to the dispatch.

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    1. Hpw1019

      I get daily emails from ForeignPolicy.com. They have several geographical newsletters. I get their Latin America newsletter.

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  7. Avatar photo
    SandyG

    Thanks for the Rockettes story. If she sues, she's got a good case, I think. "The liquor license that MSG got requires them to admit members of the public, unless there are people who would be disruptive who constitute a security threat . . . Taking a mother, separating a mother from her daughter and Girl Scouts she was watching over — and to do it under the pretext of protecting any disclosure of litigation information — is absolutely absurd."

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  8. Avatar photo
    Ed

    LUK: Easy; the soft bigotry of low expectations.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Philbnichols

    AAPWC - I'd bet the distress the dog's still feeling is mostly a product of reaction and sympathy with its owners' distress. Chill out and your dog will chill out, I think.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Abridge683

    QotD: A strong sense that we have a cultural superiority over Mexico and the other countries of South and Central America. We look to Europe, the Old World, as our cultural roots while the rest of the Americas to our south are contemporaries who, we seem to feel, bring little to the table. Spain, after all, was an enemy of England and I think some of that animosity carried over. Our corporate entities also worked hard to manipulate and plunder the resources and economies of many nations. And, heck, let's drum up a quick war - it's good for business.

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