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Claudia Sheinbaum is on track to become Mexico’s first Jewish and woman president
(JTA) — The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc.
The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the frontrunner, could become the country’s first Jewish president, too.
Earlier this month, Sheinbaum, 61, was announced as the candidate for the left-wing Morena party, which has been led by the country’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Since then, her momentum has only grown — a poll taken by the El Pais newspaper has 47% of voters supporting her, while Gálvez, her closest competitor, notched 30%.
If elected, Sheinbaum would join the ranks of the few Jews outside Israel who have been elected to their country’s highest office, including Janet Jagan of Guyana, Ricardo Maduro of Honduras, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Sheinbaum would also likely be the first Jewish person in history to lead a country of more than 50 million people.
Here is a primer on Sheinbaum and how her Jewishness has become part of the campaign.
She is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and political liberal who has beaten back crime.
Born to two science professors in Mexico City, Sheinbaum herself studied physics and became an engineering professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her research focused on, among other things, energy usage in Mexico’s buildings and transportation system. Along with a group of other experts on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she would go on to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
As Mexico City’s head of government, Obrador appointed Sheinbaum as his environmental secretary in 2000. She became a close ally and joined his new left-wing Morena party (named after the country’s Catholic patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe) in the early 2010s. In 2015, she was elected mayor of Tlalpan, Mexico City’s largest borough, before becoming mayor of the entire city in 2018. She stepped down as mayor this summer to enter the presidential race.
Like the term-limited Obrador — whose approval rating of over 60% has been one of the highest in the world — Sheinbaum’s platform includes fighting Mexico’s deeply rooted corruption, continuing cash transfers to Mexico’s most vulnerable populations and developing Mexico’s energy sovereignty. But Sheinbaum will likely be more pro-environment than Obrador — while the current president has bolstered Mexico’s oil industry, Sheinbaum has said most of the country’s future “has to be related to renewable energy.”
As mayor of Mexico City, Sheinbaum led the city through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While Obrador appeared to minimize the threat of the virus, Sheinbaum advocated for masks and increased testing early on. And in a country plagued by violence, she has reduced her city’s murder rate by nearly half.
But some controversy also brewed during her time as mayor. Despite expanding public transport, there were at least a dozen accidents, some deadly, in the city’s subway system. Critics say she hasn’t done enough to fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure.
Sheinbaum also faced controversy involving infrastructure disaster as head of Tlalpan. In 2017, during an earthquake that killed more than 300 people in total, an elementary school collapsed in Sheinbaum’s district, killing 19 children and six adults. An apartment had been built on top of the school, destabilizing it, and some criticized her for allowing district officials to approve the construction permits. She apologized for what happened, but some parents of the deceased children still hold her accountable.
Her Jewish identity is more political than religious.
Sheinbaum had Ashkenazi grandparents who immigrated from Lithuania in the 1920s and Sephardic grandparents who left Sofia, Bulgaria, in the 1940s to escape the Holocaust. She has said that she celebrated holidays at her grandparents’ houses, but at home, her family life was secular.
Sources told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018 that Sheinbaum feels connected to the history of Jews in political activism, but not as much so to the religion or its traditions. Like many secular, leftist Jews in Mexico, her parents moved to the south of the city to be closer to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a hotbed of political activism. She told a group of Jewish women voters during her mayoral campaign in 2018 that she was a proud Jewish woman.
She also hasn’t made any public pronouncement about Israel or spoken as a member of a minority, even though Jews make up less than 1% of the capital city’s population. It is not known if she belongs to any synagogue or other Jewish institution.
“In Mexico, most of the [Jewish community] is affiliated to one of the five or six major communities,” said Daniel Fainstein, the dean of Jewish Studies at the Hebraica University in Mexico City. The country is known for being home to multiple tight-knit Orthodox communities, many of whom don’t mingle much. “I don’t think she’s affiliated to any of those communities. … She’s not seen as, let’s say, one of us. … I think that she’s seen as someone from Jewish origins that is developing her work as an academician and then as a politician.”
Sheinbaum’s Jewishness is shaping up as a simmering issue in the race.
Even though Mexicans are generally devout Catholics, according to Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a Mexican sociologist at the University of California San Diego, the country has a strong history of separating religion from politics.
“Mexican politics has actually been quite secular,” he told JTA. “So the religion of the president and the religious practices of the president are never discussed.”
In a break from that unspoken tradition, former President Vicente Fox called Sheinbaum a “Bulgarian Jew” in an apparent attempt to minimize her candidacy. “The only Mexican is Xóchitl,” Fox added, referring to Sheinbaum’s opponent.
Fox later apologized, and Gálvez condemned Fox’s comments. But since announcing her candidacy, in only a few months of official campaigning, Sheinbaum has already released her birth certificate on Twitter — twice — and published campaign ads emphasizing her Mexican identity in the face of attacks about her origins.
Pardo-Guerra said he didn’t think Sheinbaum’s Jewish identity would play a major role when the votes are counted next year. But he said it can be difficult to distinguish “stupidity from antisemitism” in Mexican political discourse.
“What has been said about Claudia Sheinbaum on some occasions is very close to antisemitism,” he said. “Most of it is ignorance, but I wouldn’t say there isn’t some other position out there.”
Tabea Alexa Linhard, a comparative literature professor at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches courses on Mexican and Jewish Diaspora cultures, also said Fox’s tweet had “a little bit of both” antisemitism and ignorance.
“Different forms of antisemitism endure in Mexico, as they do elsewhere,” she wrote in an email. “It is hard not to see echoes of the conspiracy theories involving Barack Obama’s place of birth. It is a political ruse, but in the U.S., this certainly had important consequences, and this kind of dog whistle may also be consequential in Mexico.”
Most Mexican Jews probably won’t vote for her.
The average Mexican may not care about Sheinbaum’s religion, but the average Mexican Jew is probably not voting for her. Like most other Latin American Jewish communities, the majority of Mexico’s Jews lean conservative politically. Sheinbaum’s platform is not radically left-wing when compared to other leftist leaders in Latin America, but Gálvez, who founded two tech firms, may be more appealing to conservative-leaning Jews, many of whom are business owners.
“I think that most [Mexican Jews] will vote for Xochitl Galvez,” said Fainstein. “[Their decision] is not related to the Jewish or non-Jewish origins of the candidates.”
He added that most “upper middle class” people vote against Morena, not just Jews. However, he did mention that “there are other groups of Jews who are active in Morena and support Morena also.”
Linhard also said the Jewish vote will not be dependent on the ethnic background of the candidate.
“Mexico’s Jewish community is very diverse,” he said. “Some will identify with Sheinbaum, others will not. But the vote of Jewish Mexicans will likely depend … on her and her opponent’s platform.”
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The post Claudia Sheinbaum is on track to become Mexico’s first Jewish and woman president appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Antisemitic Incidents at Argentina Local Soccer Match Spark Official Investigations, Condemnations
Fans of Argentinian soccer club All Boys marched through the streets before their match against Atlanta soccer club, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag alongside Iranian and Palestinian flags. Photo: Screenshot
Argentinian authorities and soccer officials have launched investigations following antisemitic incidents by Club Atlético All Boys fans during Sunday’s local match against Atlanta.
Atlanta, a soccer team based in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, has deep historical ties to Argentina’s Jewish community, which has long been a significant presence in the area.
This latest antisemitic incident took place outside the stadium before the game had even started.
All Boys fans were seen waving Palestinian and Iranian flags, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag, and handing out flyers bearing messages like “Free Palestine” and “Israel and Atlanta are the same crap.”
Before a football match today against the Argentine sports club Atlanta, which is closely associated with the Jewish community, fans of the opposing team, All Boys, waved Islamic Republic and Palestinian flags while parading a coffin draped in an Israeli flag through the streets.… pic.twitter.com/IQs4v6eoFz
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 29, 2025
Then, during the match — which ended in a 0-0 draw — a drone carrying a Palestinian flag flew over the stadium, while some fans reportedly chanted anti-Israel slogans.
Local police confirmed they have issued citations to individuals accused of inciting public disorder and related offenses.
On Monday, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) condemned the incidents as “abhorrent” and confirmed the organization has opened a formal inquiry into the events.
“This is not folklore. This is discrimination,” the statement reads.
Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich also announced that a criminal complaint has been filed, citing “acts of violence, expressions of racial and religious hatred, and public intimidation.”
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, condemned the incidents and called on both local authorities and the soccer officials to “take firm action against these acts of hatred.”
“We urge the authorities to take all necessary actions and apply the full force of the law,” the statement reads. “Violence and discrimination must have no place in our society.”
Repudiamos enérgicamente las expresiones antisemitas ocurridas hoy en las inmediaciones del estadio Malvinas Argentinas.
Exigimos a las autoridades correspondientes, a la AFA y al Club All Boys que actúen con firmeza ante estos hechos de odio.
La violencia y la discriminación no… pic.twitter.com/3AmY7IQscY— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) June 29, 2025
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Jewish hate crimes.
According to a recent report by DAIA, Argentina experienced a 15 percent increase in antisemitic activity last year, with 687 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded — up from 598 incidents in 2023 — marking a significant rise nationwide.
The study indicates that 66 percent of the antisemitic incidents originated in the digital realm, with a significant rise in Nazi symbols and conspiracy theories, but there was also a 34 percent increase in reported physical assaults, with such hate crimes rising in schools and neighborhoods.
The post Antisemitic Incidents at Argentina Local Soccer Match Spark Official Investigations, Condemnations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian nuclear program degraded by up to two years, Pentagon says
A satellite image of Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. Photo: File.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday that US strikes 10 days ago had degraded Iran’s nuclear program by up to two years, suggesting the U.S. military operation likely achieved its goals despite a far more cautious initial assessment that leaked to the public.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, offered the figure at a briefing to reporters, adding that the official estimate was “probably closer to two years.” Parnell did not provide evidence to back up his assessment.
“We have degraded their program by one to two years, at least intel assessments inside the Department [of Defense] assess that,” Parnell told a news briefing.
U.S. military bombers carried out strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 using more than a dozen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.
The evolving U.S. intelligence about the impact of the strikes is being closely watched, after President Donald Trump said almost immediately after they took place that Iran’s program had been obliterated, language echoed by Parnell at Wednesday’s briefing.
Such conclusions often take the U.S. intelligence community weeks or more to determine.
“All of the intelligence that we’ve seen [has] led us to believe that Iran’s — those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated,” Parnell said.
Over the weekend, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program have been.
Several experts have also cautioned that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of the deeply buried Fordow site before the strikes and could be hiding it.
But US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week he was unaware of intelligence suggesting Iran had moved its highly enriched uranium to shield it from US strikes.
A preliminary assessment last week from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the strikes may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months. But Trump administration officials said that assessment was low confidence and had been overtaken by intelligence showing Iran’s nuclear program was severely damaged.
According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, the strikes on the Fordow nuclear site caused severe damage.
“No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged,” Araqchi said in the interview broadcast by CBS News on Tuesday.
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Switzerland Moves to Close Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Geneva Office Over Legal Irregularities
Palestinians carry aid supplies received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
Switzerland has moved to shut down the Geneva office of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed aid group, citing legal irregularities in its establishment.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May, implementing a new aid delivery model aimed at preventing the diversion of supplies by Hamas, as Israel continues its defensive military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group.
The initiative has drawn criticism from the UN and international organizations, some of which have claimed that Jerusalem is causing starvation in the war-torn enclave.
Israel has vehemently denied such accusations, noting that, until its recently imposed blockade, it had provided significant humanitarian aid in the enclave throughout the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians.
With a subsidiary registered in Geneva, the GHF — headquartered in Delaware — reports having delivered over 56 million meals to Palestinians in just one month.
According to a regulatory announcement published Wednesday in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) may order the dissolution of the GHF if no creditors come forward within the legal 30-day period.
The Trump administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Swiss decision to shut down its Geneva office.
“The GHF confirmed to the ESA that it had never carried out activities in Switzerland … and that it intends to dissolve the Geneva-registered branch,” the ESA said in a statement.
Last week, Geneva authorities gave the GHF a 30-day deadline to address legal shortcomings or risk facing enforcement measures.
Under local laws and regulations, the foundation failed to meet several requirements: it did not appoint a board member authorized to sign documents domiciled in Switzerland, did not have the minimum three board members, lacked a Swiss bank account and valid address, and operated without an auditing body.
The GHF operates independently from UN-backed mechanisms, which Hamas has sought to reinstate, arguing that these vehicles are more neutral.
Israeli and American officials have rejected those calls, saying Hamas previously exploited UN-run systems to siphon aid for its war effort.
The UN has denied those allegations while expressing concerns that the GHF’s approach forces civilians to risk their safety by traveling long distances across active conflict zones to reach food distribution points.
The post Switzerland Moves to Close Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Geneva Office Over Legal Irregularities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.