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Every day, President Claudia Sheinbaum gives a morning presidential press conference and Mexico Solidarity Media posts English language summaries, translated by Mexico Solidarity’s Pedro Gellert Frank. Previous press conference summaries are available here.
Mexico to build first solar-thermal power plants in Baja California Sur
Minister of Energy Luz Elena González announced that as part of the 2025–2030 National Electricity System Expansion Plan, the first two solar-thermal plants with storage will be built in Baja California Sur, with an investment of US$800 million. The project aims to boost electricity supply in the state and accelerate the energy transition to reach the legal goal of 35% clean generation by 2030.
Solar-thermal plants in BCS to reinforce self-sufficiency and energy sovereignty
Deputy Minister for Planning and Energy Transition Jorge Islas Samperio presented the solar-thermal plant projects in Baja California Sur, which incorporate firm-capacity, non-intermittent technology. With these two plants, the region’s self-sufficiency and energy sovereignty will be strengthened. Worldwide, installed capacity with this technology reaches 1,400 MW.
CFE announces solar-thermal plant to meet demand in Baja California Sur
The head of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) Emilia Calleja reported that as part of Plan Mexico 2025–2030, a solar-thermal plant with two 50 MW units will be installed in Baja California Sur. The plant seeks to cover the state’s growing tourism, urban, and industrial demand. The project will require between 240 and 480 hectares of land, take 48 months to build, and involves an estimated investment of U$400 million per 50 MW.
Sheinbaum expands Health Routes to IMSS-Bienestar hospitals
President Sheinbaum announced that, following the massive distribution of medicines and supplies from August 18 to 24 to healthcare centers, the Health Routes program will also be extended to IMSS-Bienestar hospitals. The aim is to reinforce supply and guarantee free medical care for the population.
U.S. places García Luna at the level of El Chapo and El Mayo
Following Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada’s guilty plea, the President recalled that the U.S. Attorney General acknowledged cooperation with Mexico in reducing crime and combating organized crime. She also noted that the DEA director stated that “we have taken down three major drug traffickers: García Luna, El Chapo, and El Mayo.”, in the process putting Calderón’s former security minister on the same level as the top drug lords.
Sheinbaum questions Marea Rosa: “They built on lies, now they want a party”
The President stated that the opposition Marea Rosa demonstrations were based on the lie that the National Electoral Institute (INE) would be eliminated. Now, she said, its leaders —including former INE board members such as Lorenzo Córdova and right-wing figures— are seeking to form the “Somos México” party.
Sheinbaum stressed that while they have the right to form a party, it is striking that they no longer feel represented by the PAN, PRI, or MC. She questioned why they offer no proposals beyond defending proportional representation and the idea that Mexico is an authoritarian state, “when Mexico is not authoritarian.” The President also recalled that many of these figures have been involved in electoral fraud and that since 2000 the term PRIAN has been used to describe their alliance of interests.
Mexico to send Washington security stats for Mexico City
Sheinbaum reported that she has asked the Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE) and the Ministry of Security and Citizen Participation (SSCP) to provide data on crime in the Mexican capital to White House adviser Stephen Miller. She noted that from 2018 to date, homicides have fallen by nearly 60%, stressing it is important that the U.S. be aware of the real progress that has been registered. “Yes, there are issues to address, but (the situation) is not like he imagines,” she explained.
The 4T guarantees well-being and poverty reduction
Sheinbaum responded to statements from France and Germany that spoke of a collapse of the welfare state in Mexico, asserting the opposite: “The people of Mexico have rights, and these can only be fulfilled when healthcare and education are provided by the State—that is our vision.”
She noted that neoliberal privatization created inequality, while the 4T is advancing the strengthening of ISSSTE, IMSS, and IMSS-Bienestar toward a single public healthcare system. She emphasized that reducing inequality and poverty is possible because wellbeing resources come from funds obtained from the eradication of corruption.
People’s Mañanera August 26
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on solar-thermal plants, medicine supply, organized crime & US cooperation, new neoliberal party, crime, and the welfare state.
Kristi Noem Signs Waiver for Texas Border Wall Construction
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
The waiver allows US Department of Homeland Security to waive any legal requirement, including environmental laws, to ensure rapid construction of five miles of border wall.
A Revolution in the Judiciary
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
Appeals to international courts remain pending, but they cannot overturn Mexico’s judicial reform and will have no more value than a declaration; they cannot oppose the sovereign decision to elect the judiciary.
The post People’s Mañanera August 26 appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The gap between CEO compensation and median worker pay at Starbucks hit 6,666 to 1 last year. In other words, to make as much money as their CEO made last year, typical baristas would’ve had to start brewing macchiatos around the time humans first invented the wheel.
Starbucks takes the prize for the most obscene corporate pay disparities of 2024. But jaw-dropping gaps are the norm among America’s leading low-wage corporations.
This year’s edition of the annual Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess reportfinds that CEOs of the 100 S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100,” have enjoyed skyrocketing pay over the past six years.
The Low-Wage 100
In 2024, average compensation for Low-Wage 100 top executives rose to $17.2 million, up 34.7 percent since 2019 (not adjusted for inflation). Global median worker pay at these firms stood at just $35,570, after increasing at a nominal rate of only 16.3 percent since 2019 – significantly below the 22.6 percent U.S. inflation rate. The Low-Wage 100 pay ratio increased 12.9 percent to 632 to 1 over the past half decade.
Buybacks bonanza
Here’s yet another sign of the Low-Wage 100’s skewed priorities: between 2019 and 2024 these firms spent a combined $644 billion on stock buybacks. This once-illegal financial maneuver artificially inflates the value of a company’s shares and, in the process, pumps up the value of CEOs’ stock-based compensation. Even the most inept executives can rake in vast fortunes through this scam.
Every dollar spent on buybacks represents a dollar not spent on workers. The tradeoffs can be downright staggering. At Lowe’s, for instance, every one of their 273,000 employees could’ve gotten an annual $28,456 bonus over the past six years with the money the retailer blew on stock buybacks. Lowe’s median worker pay in 2024: $30,606.
If McDonald’s had spent their buyback outlays on worker bonuses during this period, they could’ve given all their employees an extra $18,338 per year — more than that company’s median wage.
Siphoning resources from workers to make CEOs even richer is especially outrageous at a time when so many Americans are struggling with high costs for groceries, housing, and other essentials.
Stock buybacks also divert resources from capital investments vital to long-term growth, such as employee training or upgrading technology, equipment, and properties.
At 56 Low-Wage 100 companies, outlays for stock buybacks actually exceeded capital expenditures between 2019 and 2024. If we exclude Amazon, a CapEx outlier, the Low-Wage 100 as a whole spent considerably more on buybacks than on capital expenditures over this six-year period.
Extensive research has also shown that excessive CEO compensation is bad for business because extreme internal pay disparities undermine employee morale and boost turnover rates.
Solutions to executive excess
As poll after poll after poll has shown, Americans across the political spectrum are fed up with overpaid CEOs and want government action. In one rather amusing recent survey, 80 percent of workers said they view corporate CEOs as overpaid, and nearly 70 percent said they do not believe their own company’s CEO could do the job they do for even one week.
How could policymakers incentivize more equitable pay practices? Several bills in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures would increase taxes on corporations with huge CEO-worker pay gaps. Polls suggest this would be enormously popular. In onesurvey of likely voters, 89 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Independents, and 71 percent of Republicans said they’d like to see tax hikes on companies that pay their CEOs more than 50 times what they pay their median employees.
Congress could also increase the 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks that went into effect in 2023. If that tax had been set at 4 percent, the Low-Wage 100 would have owed approximately $6.3 billion in additional federal taxes on their share repurchases during the past two years. That revenue would’ve been enough to cover the cost of 327,218 public housing units for two years.
Policymakers have ample tools for tackling the problem of runaway CEO pay. Now they just need to listen to their constituents and get the job done.
The post The Low-Wage 100 appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
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Washington. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem signed a waiver Tuesday to ensure the expeditious construction of approximately five miles of new, 30-foot-high border wall in Starr and Hidalgo counties in the Texas Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector.
“These miles are part of an existing contract for the border wall, which is already under construction, using U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Fiscal Year 2019 appropriations. This is the seventh waiver signed by Secretary Noem for border barrier construction projects along the southern border,” the statement said.
The Secretary’s (Noem) waiver authority allows DHS to waive any legal requirement, including environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, to ensure the expeditious construction of physical barriers and roads.
“Projects implemented under this waiver are crucial steps to securing the southern border and strengthening our commitment to border security,” the agency argued.
“These funds will be used to construct a combination of primary and secondary border walls, river barriers, patrol roads, and the technology necessary to integrate them all, such as cameras, lights, and sensors. This will provide agents with the information and situational awareness needed to respond to irregular activity, as well as the access, mobility, impedance, and denial attributes necessary for successful interdiction,” the text adds.
Currently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has approximately 100 miles of new border barrier in various stages of construction and planning, funded by prior-year appropriations. Additionally, CBP received $46.5 billion for the construction of the border barrier system through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR 1), signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025.
The waiver was issued pursuant to Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
People’s Mañanera August 26
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on solar-thermal plants, medicine supply, organized crime & US cooperation, new neoliberal party, crime, and the welfare state.
Kristi Noem Signs Waiver for Texas Border Wall Construction
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
The waiver allows US Department of Homeland Security to waive any legal requirement, including environmental laws, to ensure rapid construction of five miles of border wall.
A Revolution in the Judiciary
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
Appeals to international courts remain pending, but they cannot overturn Mexico’s judicial reform and will have no more value than a declaration; they cannot oppose the sovereign decision to elect the judiciary.
The post Kristi Noem Signs Waiver for Texas Border Wall Construction appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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This editorial by Bernardo Bátiz V. appeared in the August 25, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
With the speech of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Norma Lucía Piña Hernández on August 19th, a historic era for the country’s highest court concluded. She said so herself, but I add, the important thing is that the judicial reform constituted a true revolution, a bloodless revolution that fundamentally transformed one of the three branches of government, the only one whose members were not directly elected by popular vote.
This profound revolution has a date: September 15, 2024. But it began with the project presented in February of that same year by then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, shortly before the end of his term. The initiative was the starting signal for a process that laboriously made its way amid harsh criticism and active resistance from a broad sector of public servants, members of that branch of government. Magistrates, judges, secretaries, clerks, judicial officers, and, of course, also Supreme Court justices participated. Perhaps it was the first time they took to the streets to protest and chant slogans, far from the comfort of their offices.
That historic change finally ended with the approval of the constitutional reform. Appeals to international courts remain pending, and they cannot overturn the reform and will have no more value than a declaration; they cannot oppose the sovereign decision that approved the changes in accordance with the requirements of our Constitution.
The hard data is as follows: in the Chamber of Deputies, the bill passed with 357 votes in favor, 71 percent; in the Senate, the vote was 86 senators in favor, 67.1 percent. The approval of at least 17 of the 32 state legislatures was also required. The requirement was met when 24 local legislatures voted in favor, 75 percent; two states, Querétaro and Jalisco, rejected the reform, and in several others, discussion was postponed.
Before the reform, the judiciary was the least known of the three branches. Neither the media nor the public paid much attention to it. It seemed like a kind of aristocracy isolated from the people, with income and benefits superior to those of other public servants. From time to time, it was the target of criticism. I recall one case when they approved the anatocism, which is the charging of interest on interest [related to the FOBAPROA bank bailout], a vice pointed out by Saint Bonaventure in the Middle Ages as theft under the pretext of a contract.
We cannot forget that of the three branches of government through which the Mexican people exercise their sovereignty, according to Article 41 of the Constitution—the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial—only the first two have historically been elected by the people through direct vote. They reach their positions, or “assignments,” as the founder of Morena called them, through free and direct vote. The third branch, the Judiciary, on the other hand, was traditionally appointed through procedures involving members of the other two branches.
The unexpected reform came as a surprise and provoked resistance from traditional opponents of change. Now, with the intervention of many public servants, specifically from the Judiciary, who, as I repeat, not only criticized the reform but also openly opposed it in various ways. On reflection, a side effect of the reform was that it caused a sector traditionally removed from politics to join the fight to defend its interests.
Despite everything, the reform was passed and is now law; for the first time in Mexico, judges were elected by popular vote, and I think we should celebrate this. From now on, the third branch, like the executive and legislative branches, derives its legitimacy from the direct will of the Mexican people expressed at the ballot box. This translates into greater legitimacy and strengthens autonomy and the commitment to justice, which, according to the classic definition, is nothing less than “giving to each what is his, what is due to him.” Nothing more, nothing less.
I believe we should welcome this transformation that faced so many obstacles, nurture it, and perfect it because democracy is certainly the form of government that entails the most difficulties and requires complicated procedures, but it is also the only one that unquestionably respects popular sovereignty.
One of the most repeated objections was that the popular election of public servants in the Judiciary would jeopardize their independence when issuing rulings; of course, this is not the case. On the contrary, in my opinion, the judges’ freedom of decision is more solid and poses fewer risks if they are elected than if they are appointed.
We must remember that judges resolve conflicts; that is, they must decide which of the litigants is right and which is wrong. That’s why half the world—those who win trials—satisfy the decisions, while the other half—those who lose—are prone to criticize the outcome of the proceedings and often think that “the judge sold out.”
Certainly, there have been cases in the past, and perhaps still are, in which judges fail to rule in accordance with the law or fail to take into account the reality of the facts underlying their rulings. In my opinion, this has never been absolute or widespread. As a litigator, a former prosecutor, and now a member of the Judicial Council, I have appreciated that cases of corruption are rare.
We must protect the freedom of judges, which can be compromised for two very different reasons: the judge can distort justice out of greed, when he or she decides to “sell out” his or her ruling, or when he or she is forced to do so out of fear of a real or imagined threat. A good system of justice administration must seek remedies for both of these potential vices.
People’s Mañanera August 26
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
President Sheinbaum’s daily press conference, with comments on solar-thermal plants, medicine supply, organized crime & US cooperation, new neoliberal party, crime, and the welfare state.
Kristi Noem Signs Waiver for Texas Border Wall Construction
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
The waiver allows US Department of Homeland Security to waive any legal requirement, including environmental laws, to ensure rapid construction of five miles of border wall.
A Revolution in the Judiciary
August 26, 2025August 26, 2025
Appeals to international courts remain pending, but they cannot overturn Mexico’s judicial reform and will have no more value than a declaration; they cannot oppose the sovereign decision to elect the judiciary.
The post A Revolution in the Judiciary appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
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