Chapo's ex-lawyer elected Mexican judge

Silvia Delgado, 51, was a member of Guzman's legal team in Ciudad Juarez, where the Sinaloa cartel co-founder was detained before being extradited to the United States in 2017.
She was elected a judge in the crime-plagued border city of Ciudad Juarez, results from the June 1 election showed.
She received the second-highest vote of the five women who were elected to the bench in northern Chihuahua state, alongside five male judges.
Delgado's candidacy was one of the most controversial in the election, which will make Mexico the world's only country to choose all of its judges and magistrates by popular vote.
She argued that her defense of Guzman did not make her a criminal.
"Every person has the right to counsel," she said, talking up her experience to voters.
She was one of around 20 candidates identified by the rights group Defensorxs as "high-risk" for the legitimacy of the judiciary due to allegations of cartel links, corruption and sexual abuse.
The Sinaloa cartel was one of six Mexican gangs designated terrorist organizations in February by US President Donald Trump.
Mexicans were called on to elect 881 federal judges, including nine members of the Supreme Court, as well as hundreds of local judges and magistrates.
An election for the remainder of the judiciary will be held in 2027.
Critics have warned that asking citizens to elect judges will erode democratic checks and balances and leave judges more vulnerable to criminal influence.

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Euronews

a day ago

• Euronews

Stephen Fry on J.K. Rowling: ‘She seems to be a lost cause'

Renowned British actor, author and broadcaster Stephen Fry has labelled Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling a 'lost cause' and stated that she has been 'radicalised by TERFs' - the acronym that stands for 'trans-exclusionary radical feminist'. The term is used by transgender activists against gender critics like Rowling, who has dedicated much of her online presence to defending her views while expressing transphobic views. During the recording of the podcast The Show People, Fry, who previously narrated all seven Harry Potter audiobooks, said: "She has been radicalised I fear and it maybe she has been radicalised by TERFs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her.' As reported by The Daily Mail, Fry continued: 'It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her I am afraid. I am not saying that she not be called out when she says things that are really cruel, wrong and mocking. She seems to be a lost cause for us.' 'I am sorry because I always liked her company,' he added. 'I found her charming, funny and interesting and then this thing happened, and it completely altered the way she talks and engages with the world now.' He continued by saying that Rowling's 'contemptuous' comments 'add to a terribly distressing time for trans people.' Stephen Fry spoke in the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court ruling in April that determined that 'woman' meant a biological female and not gender. Lord Hodge said the five Supreme Court justices had unanimously decided that 'the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex.' Many expressed fears that the ruling could put trans and non-binary people in danger. Stonewall's chief executive Simon Blake said that the ruling 'will be incredibly worrying for the trans community and all of us who support them.' Meanwhile, Rowling celebrated the ruling by posting a picture of herself smoking a cigar on her yacht. Fry's recent comments have been met with a torrent of bile online... ... as well as some support, highlighting quite how divisive the issue remains. Fry is not the only former Harry Potter star to speak out and criticise Rowling's continued hateful rhetoric. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have all spoken out against her controversial views. Last year, Radcliffe told The Atlantic that Rowling's views 'make me really sad', adding: 'Because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.' Watson expressed her support, stating: "Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren't who they say they are." Meanwhile Rupert Grint said: "I firmly stand with the trans community... Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgment." Rowling previously said that she wouldn't forgive the Harry Potter stars who have criticised her views. 'Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women's hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces,' she wrote on X. Earlier this year, Rowling reignited tensions with the actors by taking an indirect jab at Radcliffe, Watson and Grint. In March, she was asked: 'What actor/actress instantly ruins a movie for you?' Rowling replied: 'Three guesses. Sorry, but that was irresistible.' By contrast, Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the franchise, said he remains 'grateful' to Rowling. 'I'm not really that attuned,' said Felton. 'The only thing I always remind myself is that I've been lucky enough to travel the world. Here I am in New York. And I have not seen anything bring the world together more than Potter, and she's responsible for that. So I'm incredibly grateful.' His comments sparked a wave of differing reactions - some applauded him for what they called a 'classy response,' while others condemned his words as 'atrocious,' 'spineless,' and 'disappointing.' Should an artist's faith determine what happens to their work when they die? The death of one of France's most successful rappers has raised this question. French rapper Werenoi, whose real name was Jérémy Bana Owona, died on 17 May 2025, aged 31. He was France's top album seller in 2023 and 2024, and his death shocked both the music industry and the public. 'Rest in peace my man. A news that saddens me and courage to the loved ones especially', popstar Aya Nakamura wrote on social media. Following the release of his first song 'Guadalajara' in 2021, Werenoi quickly rose to great success. His 2024 album 'Carré' was named best rap album at the Flammes Awards, and he was the opening act for Burna Boy at the Stade de France in April. With more than 7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, he was an example of a vibrant francophone music scene that keeps growing worldwide, according to the platform's new report on francophone content. Culture minister Rachida Dati called the rapper 'the icon of a generation.' 'In an age of overexposure and ever-present social media, he had opted for privacy. Cultivating discretion, he revealed himself only through his lyrics', Dati said in a statement on 20 May. One of the only known facts about Werenoi's private life was his faith. The rapper was Muslim. In the hours following his death, debates erupted on social media over what should be done with his music according to Islam. 'Werenoi was a Muslim, and we invite you to listen to his music as little as possible, out of respect for his faith," online rap publication Raplume said in a social media post that has since been deleted. 'Avoid streaming Werenoi's tracks, he was a Muslim, it's for his faith', one user said on X. A tribute to the artist by French rap radio station Skyrock elicited similar criticism. Other fans felt that listening to Werenoi's music was a way of paying their respects and ensuring that his legacy lives on. 'When he was alive, Werenoi was making music, going on Skyrock and selling albums, so it's only natural that when he dies, the rap world should pay tribute to him by playing his music', one user wrote on X. The rapper's team and relatives have not publicly weighed in on the debate, leaving fans to decipher mixed messages. Werenoi's music videos were removed from YouTube, but the audio versions still remain available on the platform. A source close to the rapper told French newspaper Le Parisien that the videos had only been temporarily hidden to allow the family to grieve. Werenoi's producer later denied this claim. Rumours even said the artist's entire discography would soon disappear from all streaming platforms, but this has yet to happen. The teachings of Islam are up to interpretation. Many on social media argue that music is haram, meaning it is forbidden by Islamic law. Listening to Werenoi's music after his death would bring him sins in his grave. But the word 'music' does not actually appear in the Quran and many artists around the world are practising Muslims. 'The prohibition of music by some branches of Islam is not based on any consensus but rather on controversial interpretations of certain suras and hadiths [statements attributed to the prophet Muhammad]', musicologist Luis Velasco-Pufleau wrote in a 2017 blogpost. Fundamentalist Islamic movements like Salafism and Wahhabism strictly prohibit music while other traditions, like Sufism, are more lenient. There have been similar controversies in the past. The death in 2019 of British rapper Cadet, who converted to Islam at 15, also ignited online discussions on the future of his music - much to the dismay of some users. 'When anyone else passes away Muslims will send their condolences as normal... But when it's a Muslim [rapper] we go into theological debates about sharing his music etc', London-based imam Shabbir Hassan posted on X (then Twitter) at the time. 'Just take a lesson from his death and make du'a [a Muslim prayer] for him. That will benefit us/him the most.' For some, this question tends to be overly politicised. 'It's fascinating how cultural topics can raise this kind of political and religious debates,' streamer iliesomg said on decolonial YouTube channel Paroles d'honneur. He said that listening to Werenoi's music should be a personal decision for Muslim believers, guided by their own approach to spirituality. Numbers show that Werenoi's audience, Muslim or not, does not seem ready to let go of his art. Sales for his last album 'Diamant noir', released in April, rose by 72% in the week after his death, making it the most listened album in France.

France 24

2 days ago

• France 24

Stephen Miller: how an anti-immigrant crusade is remaking US policy

Stephen Miller no longer feels at home in his country. As tens of thousands of people across Los Angeles took to the streets last weekend to protest against a wave of immigration enforcement raids on workplaces and warehouses in the city's garment district, the deputy White House chief of staff took to social media to square off against Californian Governor Gavin Newsom. 'Huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations,' he wrote. 'A ruptured, balkanised society of strangers.' Miller has become the face of US President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies at their most militant. He is a figure who increasingly frames his calls for mass deportations as a public safety measure to keep the West free from foreign invaders pouring in from the global South – despite the government's own findings that even illegal immigrants commit crimes at dramatically lower rates than US-born nationals. During Trump's first term in the White House, Miller was the key architect of the president's 'Muslim ban', a 2017 executive order that banned people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. Miller was also a vocal supporter of the policy of deliberately separating children from their parents at the Mexican border to discourage families from trying to seek asylum – a practice that reached new heights as a deliberately punitive measure under Trump. Miller has hardly softened since his return to the halls of the White House. Weeks before the wave of armed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on workplaces set off mass demonstrations in Los Angeles, Miller hammered the agency's leadership for its failure to make arrests at a rate that would allow Trump to keep his pledge to deport a million undocumented migrants in his first year. What the country needed, he said, was 3,000 arrests each and every day – a dizzying increase from the daily average of about 650 in the president's first five months in office. As of 2023, more than 13.7 million people were believed to be living in the US without legal authorisation, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The mass demonstrations that greeted this rise in arrests has so far not deterred the administration. Echoing Miller's warnings of degenerating inner cities overrun with foreign invaders, Trump on Monday called on ICE to ramp up their raids in Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, accusing the Democratic Party – without evidence – of using millions of undocumented migrants to artificially bloat their voter base and steal elections. 'I have directed my entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tie of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia,' he wrote on social media. Rut Bermejo Casado, associate professor in politics and public policies at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, said that Miller had played a powerful role in changing the public debate around immigration during the Trump interregnum. 'I think he's key,' she said. 'He has had time to strategically plan his policies from the first administration to the second one, and he has refined the coherence of the discourse – a cultural nativist discourse. During the first administration, [the Muslim ban] or the policy about separating families were just initiatives, not very well planned in advance. He has since had time to plan the discourse and the methods very well, to do it in a more rational way, and also to make it more difficult to … stop all of them.' Enfant terrible Miller, 39, rose quickly from being a congressional staffer to sit at the right hand of the president of the United States. Born and raised in the wealthy liberal enclave of Santa Monica in southern California, Miller found himself thrust into the state school system after an earthquake devastated a number of rental properties managed by his family's real estate business. In high school, Miller quickly made a name for himself as an arch-contrarian with a taste – and talent – for provoking his liberal peers. In a school divided between largely working-class Latinos and children from wealthier White families, he railed against his classmates' supposed lack of ' basic English skills ' and the school's policy of making announcements in both Spanish and English. Classmates recall a young Miller ostentatiously leaving his garbage lying around for custodial workers to clean up, at one point standing up to deliver a now-infamous speech calling on his classmates to throw their leftovers on the ground, according to Jean Guerrero's book, "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda." 'Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?' he said. Warming to his role, the teenage Miller became an unrelenting critic of the school administration's allegedly liberal leanings and soon caught the attention of Larry Elder, a right-wing radio host who would have the ferociously articulate Miller on as a guest more than 70 times. At North Carolina's elite Duke University, Miller quickly leveraged his growing media presence and ties with right-wing ideologues such as David Horowitz to land a gig as a bi-weekly columnist for the campus newspaper. Flourishing in the tense climate of the US War on Terror, he was the national campus coordinator of Horowitz's Terrorism Awareness Project, designed to warn students of " Islamofascism", the threat of Islamic jihad and 'mobilise support for the defence of America and the civilisation of the West'. His big break came when three White lacrosse players were accused of raping a Black woman who had been hired to strip for them. Miller's outspoken support for the three men became a constant refrain across the national right-wing media landscape, with the college junior appearing on the Bill O'Reilly Show and Nancy Grace to denounce what he called 'the moral bankruptcy of the left's politically correct orthodoxy and the corruption of our culture'. When the players were found not guilty after a four-month secret investigation by the state attorney general, Miller championed it as a vindication of his view that the US had become a hostile place for White Americans. 'Three of our peers faced a devastating year-long persecution because they were White and their accuser Black,' he wrote. Rising star Miller's newfound national celebrity catapulted him into the fast-radicalising world of Republican politics, where he landed his first job as press secretary first to Tea Party heavyweight Michelle Bachmann and then Alabama senator Jeff Sessions. While working for Sessions, Miller played a key role in torpedoing a bipartisan immigration bill that would have tightened border security while providing a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented migrants in the US. The proposed legislation's collapse would mark an abrupt end to the Republican party's efforts to reach a compromise on undocumented migration, wilting before the onslaught of rising far-right calls for mass deportations. It was during these formative years that Miller would deepen his contacts with far-right figures such as Steve Bannon, frequently lobbying his publication Breitbart to cite reports from the explicitly anti-immigration Centre for Immigration Studies, a think-tank founded by the eugenicist John Tanton. 01:40 In leaked emails, he enthusiastically encouraged the publication to draw comparisons between US immigration policy and Le Camp des Saints, a French dystopian novel popular across the far right that imagines refugees from the global South flooding the West and overwhelming its White population. When Trump announced his presidential bid with a promise to crack down on irregular immigration and build a wall on the Mexico border, Miller launched himself into the campaign. Bermejo Casado said that Miller and his allies had been instrumental in the growing militarisation of immigration policy in the US. 'If they say that we are in a crisis, we are in an exceptional time, we need exceptional measures, that brings onto the table methods and tools that were unpalatable or would be considered draconian if we were in another moment,' she said. No more half-measures During Trump's first term, Miller led the fight to dismantle Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a programme giving short-term renewable protections to undocumented migrants who had been brought to the US as children. He fought for, and won, a sharp reduction in the number of refugees accepted by the US each year – despite the fact that Miller's own family fled to the US at the turn of the century to escape anti-Semitic pogroms in the Russian Empire. Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute's US Immigration Policy Program, said that the US's longstanding gridlock over immigration reform had given Trump a powerful platform on which to call for drastic action. 'The fact that the US immigration system is so outdated and overwhelmed and under-resourced means that yes, Trump has been able to exploit some of these really long-standing problems,' she said. 'In terms of the politics, even under the Biden administration there were leaders of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions who were calling for more federal action. They wanted coordination of new arrivals, they wanted help with the reception of tens of thousands of people who didn't have community ties that were trying to go into these city shelters – which are not designed for receiving immigrant families in such large numbers. So some of this is really a reflection at the end of the day of congressional inaction.' She said that the relentless spectacle of armed ICE raids and military planes packed with shackled deportees were designed to send a very clear message to Trump's base. 'Manufactured crisis of the nation: Stephen Miller depicting L.A. protests as an existential fight' 18:36 'There's rhetoric, and there are images,' she said. 'And there are these high-profile moves like Alien Enemies Act deportations, putting people in jail in El Salvador, sending people to Guantanamo Bay, using military planes for deportations. These are a very calculated part of the administration's rhetoric and narrative, and the story that they're trying to tell about immigration. And while those moves are happening, they've been laying the groundwork for doing the things that will actually lead to the deportation of large numbers of people over time – because the high-profile ones are not that.' Despite Miller's zeal, though, the ICE raids that set off the Los Angeles protests reveal the extent to which the Trump administration has been hard-pressed to deliver on its promised mass deportations. Liam Haller, a researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, said that ICE just didn't have the means to make Miller's dream a reality. 'While immigration hawks such as Miller have certainly achieved short-term policy implementations such as increased ICE raids, long-term or fundamental reforms remain elusive,' he said. 'Although the ICE raids have garnered much attention and significant blowback, the agency is fundamentally constrained. They still do not have the manpower to enact deportations on the scale originally envisioned – which is largely why deportation numbers under Trump's second term still fall near where they were under Obama.' With Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' potentially devoting more than $150 billion to immigration enforcement, including the hiring of 10,000 new ICE agents and the construction of new detention centres capable of housing 100,000, Miller's dream of mass deportations may soon find itself on surer footing. In any case, Bermejo Casado said, the architect of Trump's most hardline immigration policies had already succeeded in taking the debate around migration into muddier waters. 'I think there has been a change – before, the discourse was to control borders, to focus on irregular migrants, but I think that focus has blurred in the last years, and particularly with the far-right discourse against migration,' she said. 'But it's very different, because in one case you are focusing on 'They are not law-abiding people' and this other one your focus is that 'They are not like us – they are different, they are not culturally integrated'. And that is also part of the discourse of Miller.'

Euronews

2 days ago

• Euronews

Trump approves Iran attack plans, holds off on giving final orders

US President Donald Trump has reportedly approved plans to attack Iran but is holding off on giving final orders on whether or not to strike the country as its conflict with Israel over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme intensifies. The US president is holding off on giving the go-ahead for the attacks in case Iran decides to back off and surrender to his demands, according to a senior Trump aide who spoke to US media outlet The Wall Street Journal. Trump has repeatedly called on Iran to unconditionally surrender its and abandon its nuclear programme amid a heated exchange of cross-border missile strikes with Israel. The conflict, which has entered its seventh day, has claimed the lives of dozens of Israelis and hundreds of Iranians so far. Asked on Wednesday on whether Washington plans to join Israel in attacking Iran, Trump gave a blunt response saying 'I may do it, I may not do it'. Trump has even suggested that the US assassinating Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not off the table. The 47th US president claims that Washington knows where Khamenei is hiding but are not interested in killing him 'for now'. In a recorded speech, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected the US president's calls to surrender, vowing to continue attacks and promising to carry out an intense 'punitive operation' against Israel. In the early hours of Thursday, Israel's military warned people Thursday to evacuate the area around Iran's Arak heavy water reactor. The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes. The Israeli military said Thursday's initial round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter. The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors in a stunning setback to transgender rights. The justices' 6-3 decision in a case from Tennessee effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by President Donald Trump's Republican administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to Tennessee's. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a conservative majority that the law does not violate the Constitution's equal protection clause, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same. 'This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound,' Roberts wrote. 'The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best.' In a dissent for the court's three liberal justices that she summarised aloud in the courtroom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, 'By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.' The decision comes amid a range of other federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. In April, Trump's administration sued Maine for not complying with the government's push to ban transgender athletes in girls' sports. The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 — instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people. In addition, the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court fights continue. The president also signed another order to define the sexes as only male and female. The president of the American Academy of Paediatrics, Dr. Susan Kressly, said in a statement the organisation is 'unwavering' in its support of gender-affirming care and 'stands with paediatricians and families making health care decisions together and free from political interference.' Kressly said the Supreme Court's decision 'sets a dangerous precedent for legislative interference in the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship.' The justices acted a month after the United Kingdom's top court delivered a setback to transgender rights, ruling unanimously that the Equality Act means trans women can be excluded from some groups and single-sex spaces, like changing rooms, homeless shelters, swimming areas and medical or counselling services provided only to women. Five years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace. That decision remains unaffected by Wednesday's ruling.