A bipartisan Senate group is raising red flags over Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed constitutional reform package, which seeks to upend the country’s judiciary and independent oversight apparatus.
The reform package, framed by López Obrador as a strictly internal issue, is drawing U.S. attention over its potential to disrupt elements of the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship, the single largest country-to-country trade partnership on Earth.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and ranking member James Risch (R-Idaho) partnered with the top senators in the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, Chair Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and ranking member Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), on a joint statement calling on Mexico to consider the ramifications of its institutional reforms, including to the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA).
“An independent and transparent judiciary is a hallmark of any democratic country. We are deeply concerned that the proposed judicial reforms in Mexico would undermine the independence and transparency of the country’s judiciary, jeopardizing critical economic and security interests shared by our two nations,” the senators wrote.
“We are also alarmed that several other constitutional reforms currently under discussion may contradict commitments made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, which is scheduled for review in 2026.”
López Obrador is pushing the swan song reform package — his term ends Oct. 1 — in an effort his allies characterize as a blow against corruption and government waste, but one that opponents and many outside observers see as a blatant power grab.
At the core of the reform package is a proposal to rebuild Mexico’s federal judiciary as an elected body, making all federal judgeships subject to popular vote.
López Obrador is also proposing electoral reforms, further militarization of the national police force, the elimination of seven independent agencies — ranging from the country’s public information watchdog to its antitrust regulatory body — and a slew of other minor reforms, down to a constitutional ban on vaping devices.
Two Mexican magistrates presented a complaint Monday signed by more than 1,100 federal judges at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, calling on the multilateral body to ensure Mexico’s reform process sticks to the country’s acquired international treaty obligations.
Magistrate Rogelio Alanís García said he expects López Obrador’s proposals will draw international attention, because they are all but certain to have effects beyond Mexico’s borders.
“We’re sure it will [draw international attention], because Mexico’s adherence to its international obligations is related with the fact that Mexico is not an island, alone in the world. We belong to a region that is North America and America in general, and to a hemisphere, which is the Western [Hemisphere],” Alanís said.
“That’s why Mexico, in a sovereign manner, has assumed those duties. And precisely within this regional integration, which is an economic integration that’s been going on for 30 years, it’s of vital importance to the legal certainty of investments, of the economy, of politics, of the law itself, that we carry out this defense.”
Yet López Obrador seems certain to ram through most, if not all, of his proposed constitutional reforms when the country’s new Congress is seated Sept. 1.
The alliance led by López Obrador’s Morena party won a landslide in June, and the country’s electoral authorities assigned the three parties in the grouping a constitutional supermajority in the lower Chamber of Deputies through proportional representation.
The electoral authority’s representation proposal — challenged by the opposition but likely to stick — would put López Obrador’s party three votes short of a Senate supermajority.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s political protege, has made efforts to show no daylight between herself and the powerful outgoing president, and both López Obrador and Sheinbaum have been critical of U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar, who warned against the pitfalls of an elected judiciary Thursday.
That means López Obrador has few, if any, significant political obstacles ahead for his ambitious last-month agenda.
“We strongly urge the López Obrador Administration, as well as the incoming Sheinbaum Administration, to pursue only those reforms that enhance professional qualifications, combat corruption, protect judicial autonomy, and strengthen investor confidence. These considerations are essential to preserving the democratic values and mutual prosperity that unite our nations,” Cardin, Risch, Kaine and Rubio wrote.