Mexico disagrees with US suspension of Mexican cattle imports over screwworm
On Sunday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said she was suspending such imports through the southern U.S. border, with her agency adding the suspension would be in place on a "month-by-month" basis.
Mexican Agriculture Minister Julio Berdegue said the measure would only be in place for 15 days, which Sheinbaum repeated in her regular press conference on Monday.
"Minister Berdegue has already spoken with (Rollins) and proposed that it would only last 15 days to keep working, and we hope that this measure, which we consider unfair, will be lifted very soon," Sheinbaum said.
The U.S. and Mexico had reached an agreement last month on the handling of the damaging pest, which can infest livestock and wildlife and carry maggots that burrow into the skin of living animals, causing serious and often fatal damage.
The U.S. said the efforts were not enough, which Sheinbaum rebuffed.
"We can't be rushing to react to whatever's said that day, especially from the U.S. agriculture secretary," Sheinbaum said. "Mexico is no one's pinata."
The president added that she hoped the suspension would not represent a significant economic hit to Mexico, given the assumption that it should last 15 days.
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Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Insight: This family self-deported to Mexico, and lost everything
URUAPAN, Mexico, July 26 (Reuters) - As broadcasters declared Donald Trump the next President of the United States, Sonia Coria turned to her husband and asked if they should go home. For seven months they had been living in Glendale, Arizona, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with Coria's aunt and slowly building a life far from the threats and cartel violence that made them flee Mexico. Coria, 25, took odd jobs as a cleaner and her husband, Carlos Leon, also 25, worked as a gardener. Their eldest child Naomi, eight, was going to a local charter school, making friends and picking up English. In the small kidney-shaped pool of the condominium building where they lived, she had learned to swim. Little Carlos, five, was learning to ride a bike. Their neighborhood in western Glendale - a city of some 250,000 people just outside Phoenix - was home to lots of Mexican migrants. Opposite their apartment block was a small butcher, Carnicería Uruapan, named after the town they had fled in the dangerous Mexican state of Michoacan. They had bought their first car on installments - a tan-colored 2008 Ford F-150 pickup truck that cost them $4,000. They were still poor, sometimes going to soup kitchens for a meal or picking up appliances and toys that neighbors had thrown out, but it was a life they could only have dreamed of back home in Mexico. Trump's campaign, and his victory, changed how they felt about living in the United States. They had followed the law, entering the United States at a border crossing and applying for asylum. The application was in process. But they now worried they could lose everything. "We run the risk of them taking away the little we've managed to scrape together," Coria remembers telling her husband that night as election coverage played on the television. Leon nodded and hugged his wife. They began to cry quietly, afraid Carlos and Naomi would hear them as they played on the floor in the bedroom they all shared. The kids had been allowed to stay up late, so that Coria and Leon could watch the results come in. The family's account is based on interviews with Leon, Coria and NGOs that helped them on their return to Mexico. Reuters was not able to verify all details of their journey, but core facts were supported by photos, videos, messages, and customs documents the family shared. As the Trump administration vows to enact the "largest deportation operation in American history," authorities have raided workplaces, sent alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and deployed National Guard and active-duty Marines to contain anti-government protests in Los Angeles. Beyond the 239,000 people the administration has deported so far, some cuffed and led on to planes, the very public expulsion of migrants has had another effect: triggering tough and complicated decisions in immigrant households across the U.S. on whether to stay or leave. As they discussed returning to Mexico, Leon set one condition: That they wait until after Trump took office on January 20, to save up some more money and to see if he proved as hardline on migration as he'd promised. In the end, fear led them to leave before Trump had even been sworn in. Despite high-profile deportations to Guantanamo or El Salvador, the total number of deportations under Trump trails former President Joe Biden's last year in office. Increasingly, persuading migrants to leave of their own accord has become a core strategy. "Self-deportation is safe," reads a DHS flyer on display at immigration courts in the U.S. "Leave on your own terms by picking your departure flight." The Trump administration in March launched an app called CBP Home designed to help people relocate and in May, Trump unveiled "Project Homecoming," a sweeping initiative that offers "illegal aliens" $1,000 and a free flight to leave. Since then, "tens of thousands of illegal aliens" self-deported through CBP Home app, a Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters, without giving further details. More than 56,000 Mexicans have voluntarily returned from the U.S. since Trump returned to the White House, according to Mexican government figures. Figures from last year were unavailable. Self-deportation is not a new idea. During the Great Depression and again in 1954's Operation Wetback, U.S. deportation campaigns pressured over a million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to leave - far more than through formal deportations. "Self-deportation is not an accident, but a deliberate strategy," said Maria Jose Espinosa, executive director at CEDA, a non-profit organization in Washington that works to improve relations between the U.S. and Latin American countries. On January 19, Coria, Leon, and the two kids packed what they could fit into their F-150 and drove toward the Mexican border. It was just a three-hour drive. A few weeks before, they had witnessed immigration enforcement detaining the father of a Mexican family living two doors down from them. That, Coria said, had made up their minds. A lawyer they saw at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix reinforced their view, telling them that their asylum application was weak and they would likely be deported. The consulate told Reuters the lawyer, Hugo Larios, did on occasion offer free consultations, but they did not have access to details of what was discussed or a record of the Coria-Leon family visiting in January, only in April 2024. Larios did not respond to requests for comment. It was a hard decision to leave. They had fled their hometown in February last year after armed men claiming to be members of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel began showing up at the avocado farm where Leon was working as a guard, demanding protection money. Leon didn't have the money to pay, and the owner was away. Now, they were going back. Uruapan is one of the most violent cities in the world, with an official murder rate of nearly 60 per 100,000 inhabitants. In recent years organized crime has taken over the area, running or extorting farms and businesses and killing those who refuse to pay. But the family hoped their savings would make a difference. They had managed to scrape together $5,000 and the plan was to buy land and open an auto repair shop using their pickup truck to help with the business. At 5 p.m., on January 19, they drew up to the Dennis DeConcini border crossing at Nogales. As they passed Mexican customs, the Mexican National Guard stopped their vehicle and asked for papers, the family said. Leon didn't have the car title, just a temporary permit issued that day, so officials confiscated the truck and threatened to arrest him for vehicle smuggling. The officials also took $5,000, the family's entire savings, for what they called a fine before Leon could go free. With no car and no money, Coria, Leon, Naomi and Carlos sat on the ground outside customs, surrounded by their remaining possessions - 100 kilos of clothing, tools, kitchen utensils, a television, refrigerator, and children's toys. "We lost everything," Coria recalled, in tears. "We left with nothing and came back worse off." A spokesperson from Mexico's National Customs Agency declined to comment on the specifics of the Coria case. She said in an email to Reuters that its office "acts in strict adherence to the legal framework governing the entry and exit of merchandise, as well as the customs control applicable to persons and vehicles crossing points of entry into the national territory." Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told journalists this month that her government is strengthening its "Mexico Embraces You" program to receive Mexican migrants voluntarily returning from the U.S. to ensure "they are not subject to any act of corruption by customs or immigration when they enter our country." The program offers a $100 cash grant, job placement, free transportation to their places of origin, and facilities for importing goods, but the family returned before it went into action. As the sun began to set, the dry desert air turned cold. The family worried about where to spend the night and how they would reach Michoacan, some 2,000 kilometers away. They were spotted by Francisco Olachea, a nurse with Voices from the Border, a humanitarian organization that works on both sides of the border. Olachea remembers approaching the crying family outside customs and offering them a hand. They loaded the Corias' belongings onto the NGO's ambulance and a rented pickup truck paid for by Olachea and another NGO, Salvavision. That night, Olachea took them to NANA Ministries, a Christian organization in the border town of Nogales. They were offered water, fruit, coffee, and pozole, a traditional Mexican broth made from corn kernels with meat and vegetables. The four spent the night in a small room. Together, Voices from the Border and Salvavision raised just over $1,000 to buy the family bus tickets to Michoacan and send some belongings to Sonia Coria's mother's house in black garbage bags. What they couldn't send was donated to the church where they had spent the night. On January 20, the family returned to Uruapan. The four of them shared a small room with no door in the tin-roofed home belonging to Coria's mother. The couple slept on the floor, and the kids shared a bed with no mattress. They later moved into an even smaller room at an aunt's house. Leon eventually found work in a car repair workshop. Coria got a job in a Chinese restaurant. The children complain about leaving the United States. Carlos asks for his bike; Naomi is forgetting her English. In June, a 62-page letter from customs seen by Reuters informed them that their truck had been seized and had become property of the federal treasury. Also, that they owe the equivalent of $18,000 in customs duties for bringing in the F-150 to Mexico.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
As food prices rise, Mamdani wants public grocery stores in New York. Can it work?
When Zohran Mamdani sailed to a surprising but decisive victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary last month, he did so propelled by a platform laser-focused on making the country's largest city more affordable for working people. Among his proposed policies for achieving that vision – which include free childcare and a rent freeze for tenants – is the proposal to create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping food prices low rather than on making a profit. 'Without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers,' Mamdani said on his website. 'They will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing.' The proposal seems to be resonating. Two-thirds of New Yorkers polled said they support the creation of municipal grocery stores, according to an April 2025 report published by the Climate & Community Institute and Data for Progress. Another 85% said they were paying more for groceries this year than last, and 91% were concerned about how inflation is affecting food costs. (While inflation is one factor contributing to sticker shock at the cash register, US food companies' profits have soared as they have continued to raise prices faster than both inflation and wage increases.) 'From 2020 to 2024, the food consumer price index rose 23.6%, so we already know working-class families spend a much larger percentage of their household monthly income on food than middle- and upper-class families,' said Justin Myers, an associate professor at California State University, Fresno whose past research has investigated public grocery stores. Plus, he said, 'the average cost of groceries in New York City is 18% higher than the national average.' But could city-owned grocery stores really lower the cost of food? According to many experts, the idea isn't as out there as it might seem. While Mamdani's proposal might feel novel, there's plenty of precedent for state-supported food infrastructure. According to Anna Chworow, deputy director of the UK-based non-profit Nourish Scotland, the 20th century was full of these kinds of initiatives: wartime Britain had 'British restaurants', a chain of over 2,000 restaurants that served price-capped meals, and Poland had 'milk bars', subsidized cafeterias where meals cost two-thirds or half of what they might at a traditional restaurant. Similar establishments are starting to pop up today in India, Turkey, Indonesia, China, Mexico and Brazil, said Chworow, whose organization put out a recent report on the subject. These kinds of establishments have often been very well-received by the communities they serve. One operator of a milk bar in Warsaw told Chworow of a community that, upon hearing that their local milk bar would no longer be funded by the government, staged a protest by taking over the kitchen. 'There was a real sense of civic activism around keeping that place open,' Chworow said. Closer to home, 'public options have been part of the fabric of this nation since its founding, between the postal service, public libraries, and public parks,' said Margaret Mullins, director of public options and governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. In fact, NYC already has six grocery stores that enjoy government support in the form of steep rent discounts, including Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, through the city's Economic Development Corporation. 'Sometimes in places where the private market won't step in, the public can and should,' Mullins said. Across the country, many municipalities have done the same. Big cities like Madison, Wisconsin, and Atlanta, Georgia, are currently exploring ways to use city support to address food deserts, while small towns in Kansas and Florida have turned to town-owned grocery stores after privately owned grocers have shut down or left. These initiatives often begin when a community has already been failed by the private sector. Atlanta councilmember Marci Overstreet knows firsthand what it's like when a community is left completely at the mercy of private grocery stores. As councilmember of a district with limited access to fresh food, Overstreet began doing everything she could to lure grocery developers to her area, attending trade shows in Vegas and setting up meetings with big-box grocers. Time and again, she watched as store representatives would punch in her zip code and disqualify her district on the spot for not being deemed a profitable enough area to be worth opening a store in. 'Finally, we had to say, 'You know what, no one's coming. Cavalry is not coming. We're going to have to take care of this ourselves,'' Overstreet said. Overstreet spent eight years trying to solve the grocery problem in her district, which included spearheading partnerships with public schools and local churches where people could pick up food. Today, she's proud to be bringing a new, full-size grocery store to her district with the backing of Invest Atlanta, the official economic development authority of the city, in partnership with Savi Provisions, a specialty private grocer. The resulting public-private partnership isn't an exact parallel for the municipally owned stores that Mamdani has proposed for New York, but it's a reminder that when the private market left to its own devices is failing a community, government officials can find creative ways to step in. As much as New York might learn from looking to other cities, some experts say there's even better proof that government-owned grocery stores can work to be found in a surprising place: the US military. Every branch of the military has its own public grocery system, sometimes referred to as an exchange or commissary, that allows military families to buy groceries on military bases at significantly lower prices than what civilians can get from traditional grocers. 'Military families buy groceries for 30 to 40% cheaper than what grocery stores in the area sell, simply because they're not taking a full wholesale and retail markup like a lot of stores are,' said Errol Schweitzer, a grocery store veteran and former VP at Whole Foods, who has written about the commissary model before. According to Bill Moore, the former director and CEO of the Defense Commissary Agency, the commissary system saved military families approximately $1.58bn in 2023. Passing along similar benefits to civilians is quite possible, according to Schweitzer. 'It's not a radical proposal,' he said. 'There already is heavy government intervention in the food system every day.' So what would it take practically to make Mamdani's proposal work in NYC? According to Overstreet, the councilmember from Atlanta, community buy-in is key. In her district, Overstreet sought feedback about what kinds of products community members wanted access to, down to the preferred variety of apple. Overstreet and her team did this through roundtables, pop-up meetings, and both paper and online questionnaires to try to reach the widest array of people. Chworow, who researched public food infrastructure over the last century, said that creating a universally useful resource – not one that just serves targeted groups, like low-income families – is also crucial. 'As soon as you start to target the interventions, there's a level of stigma that comes around it, and people are reluctant to use them because they don't want to be associated with the stigmatized group,' Chworow said. 'Promoting it as a universal service removes those barriers, and it also oftentimes makes the economic model better.' Some of how military commissaries – and grocers like Walmart, for that matter – deliver low prices is through economies of scale, using their size and buying power as a network to negotiate lower prices with wholesalers. That could pose a problem to Mamdani's plan, as he's proposed opening just five municipal grocery stores total, one for each borough. But Schweitzer pointed out that the city already buys extraordinary amounts of food for public schools, hospitals and community colleges; by linking the grocery stores to those existing agreements, he noted, they might likewise take advantage of economies of scale that would otherwise be out of reach. Schweitzer, who has written extensively about how to make a public grocery sector work, also recommends looking to successful grocery store chains for cues. Operating like Aldi (which is to say, opening lots of smaller stores with a limited assortment) or Costco (which is to say, operating as a warehouse store; 'literally a distributor that sells to the public'), he said, could help make municipal grocery stores a success. Lastly, noted Caruso, it was worth reminding community members that such an initiative will take time to realize. Overstreet noted that it took her eight years of work to get the new grocery store in her district under way. The historical precedent, efforts in other cities, and parallels with the US commissary system of course don't prove that New York's attempts will be successful. Municipal grocery stores will have to battle many of the same problems that have sunk hundreds of private grocery stores in the city in recent years. But these examples do provide ample evidence that government-run food infrastructure can work, given the right support and proper management. 'It's not to say that anything is easy, but of course it can be done,' said Mullins. 'Just look at these other public options – the post office, public libraries, public schools. These are great things that have been critical parts of communities for a very long time.'
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Kamala Harris' former advisor left flustered after being asked simple question about economy
A former senior adviser to Kamala Harris was left visibly flustered during a live television segment after he failed to accurately answer a basic question about the current U.S. inflation rate. During a Friday appearance on Fox News ' America Reports, anchor Sandra Smith pressed Mike Nellis, once a Senior Advisor to former Vice President Harris, on the latest economic data, asking, 'Do you know what the inflation rate is?' 'Yeah, it's like about three or four percent,' Nellis responded. But Smith quickly fired back, correcting him. 'No. It's below three. And it's been a long time since it's gotten there. I mean, you're looking at 2.5 percent inflation now.' According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.7 percent year-over-year in June. While slightly above Smith's figure, the inflation rate has remained below 3 percent for several consecutive months, reflecting a significant cooldown from its 9.1 percent peak in June 2022 - the highest in four decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite the data, Nellis insisted that inflation continues to rise. 'Inflation is still going up,' he said. 'And it's rising, according to the latest stats.' 'That's not the case,' Smith countered. 'Inflation has come down. Inflation by nature is growth in prices, but the growth has slowed.' Earlier in the segment, Nellis blamed Republicans and President Donald Trump for ongoing economic concerns. 'Right now the president of the United States is Donald Trump. Republicans are in control of Congress,' Nellis said. 'They're currently in recess rather than doing anything about inflation.' He went on to claim that beef and alcohol prices hit record highs over the July 4 weekend and criticized Trump's promises to reduce prices immediately after taking office. 'Donald Trump promised to make grocery prices go down on day one,' Nellis said. 'We're six months in and everything's more expensive.' Smith pushed back, noting that 'prices have definitely come down,' but that 'they can go down more.' Meanwhile, some economic indicators suggest relief for American consumers, according to AAA, average gas prices hit a four-year low in June. The tense exchange came just days after the Democratic Party had its own messaging blunder when its official X account posted a graphic blaming inflation from 2021 to 2024 on 'Trump's America' - even though Joe Biden and Harris were in charge the whole time. The post later deleted. The White House later shared the same graphic again, this time fixing the mistake and crediting the Biden administration. That slip-up highlights the tough spot Democrats are in as they face growing criticism over the party's handling of the economy. A new Wall Street Journal poll this week showed that 63 percent of voters view the Democratic Party unfavorably - the worst rating they've seen in 35 years. Just 33 percent said they view the party favorably, and only 8 percent said they had a 'very favorable' view, according to the poll. In contrast, Republicans, while also viewed more unfavorably than favorably, had stronger numbers - sitting at just 19 percent. President Trump's job approval stands at 46 percent, higher than the 40 percent approval rating he received at the same point in his first term, according to the WSJ. When asked which party they trusted more on major issues such as inflation, tariffs, and immigration, voters consistently favored Republicans. 'The Democratic brand is so bad that they don't have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party,' Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who conducted the WSJ poll with Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, said. 'Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they're for and what their economic message is, they're going to have problems.' Republicans currently hold a financial edge as well, with campaign filings showing the Republican National Committee has over $80 million on hand, compared to $15 million held by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the WSJ reported.
