(Originally published by the Journal of Democracy in September 2024.)

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), with only two weeks left in office, signed into law a raft of constitutional amendments that will remove nearly seven-thousand state and federal judges and replace them with popularly elected ones. The amendments approved on September 15 — just before his protégé, Claudia Sheinbaum, takes the helm — are a last-ditch effort in his longstanding plan to undermine democracy in Mexico.

This was not AMLO’s first attempt to run roughshod over Mexico’s checks and balances, or even his second. In 2022, President López Obrador proposed “Plan A” — a constitutional amendment to gut Mexico’s National Electoral Institute (INE), the highly regarded independent body responsible for overseeing elections. Democratic checks and balances prevailed: The amendment failed to gather the required two-thirds majority in the Senate. So López Obrador unleashed “Plan B” in 2023 which would drastically reduce INE’s staff and give the executive branch control over its budget and operations.

Continue reading the essay here.