President Claudia Sheinbaum held her Monday morning press conference at Cineteca Nacional Chapultepec, a new state-owned cinema complex in the fourth section of Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park.
“Today is a very good day because we’re finally inaugurating the entire route of the Toluca-Mexico City train,” she said at the beginning of the mañanera.
“We’re inaugurating [the] Santa Fe-Observatorio [section],” Sheinbaum said.
(Read Mexico News Daily’s story on the inauguration here.)
During her engagement with reporters, Sheinbaum responded to questions on a range of topics, including Senator Adán Augusto López Hernández’s decision to step down as the leader of the Morena party in the Senate and U.S. President Donald Trump’s invitation to Mexico to join the Board of Peace, a new U.S.-led intergovernmental organization.
Sheinbaum acknowledges López Hernández’s decision to step down as Morena’s leader in the Senate
Sheinbaum told reporters that López Hernández informed Interior Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez of his decision to step down as Morena’s Senate leader a few days ago.
“We found out that he was going to join Morena’s territorial work,” she said, referring to López Hernández’s intention to participate in the ruling party’s grassroots efforts to garner additional support ahead of the 2027 elections.
López Hernández said on Sunday that he will stay on as a senator but will no longer lead Morena in the Senate. The senator has faced accusations related to the alleged criminal activity of the man who served as his security minister when he was governor of Tabasco between 2019 and 2021.
But Sheinbaum indicated that López Hernández wasn’t pressured to step down as Morena’s Senate leader, saying his decision to resign from the position was his alone.
“And he will always help [Morena],” she added.
López Hernández left the governorship of Tabasco in 2021 to become federal interior minister during the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who founded Morena. He resigned from that position in 2023 to take part in the contest to become Morena’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election. His reputation has been significantly tarnished by accusations that he has links to La Barredora, a crime group his former security minister, Hernán Bermúdez Requena, is accused of heading up.
Asked whether she was considering offering López Hernández an ambassadorship — a subject of speculation in recent weeks — Sheinbaum said that was not the case.
Sheinbaum: SRE will respond this week to Trump’s invitation to join Board of Peace
Six days after Sheinbaum revealed that Trump had invited Mexico to join the Board of Peace, the president was asked whether she responded to the invitation during her call with the U.S. president last Thursday or whether the Mexican government had made a decision one way or the other.
“We didn’t speak about that in the telephone call,” Sheinbaum said, adding that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will respond to Trump’s invitation this week.
The Trump administration launched the Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, and issued invitations for 60 countries to join the board, The Hill reported.
Around 20 countries promptly accepted Trump’s invitation and became founding members of the Board of Peace, while several others expressed their intent to join the board.
At least a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, declined Trump’s invitation to join the board, while more than 20 didn’t publicly respond to the invitation.
CNN reported that “the board, indefinitely chaired by Trump, was originally conceived as a limited body tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, which was devastated by Israel’s two-year war.”
“However, its purpose has since expanded to tackle conflicts the world over, and the charter draft, which was sent along with the invitations to join, does not even reference Gaza,” CNN said.
An update for Mexican fans of Korean boy band BTS
Sheinbaum revealed that she received a response to the letter she sent to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung requesting his assistance in a quest to have the wildly popular Korean boy band BTS play additional shows in Mexico.
Her plea to the Korean president came after tickets for three BTS concerts scheduled for Mexico City in May sold out in less than 40 minutes last month.
On Monday, Sheinbaum said she was told by Lee that authorities in South Korea have contacted the promoter of BTS, a seven-member K-pop boy band formed in 2013.
“We hope it’s good news,” she said.
“… The president of Korea replied [saying] ‘thank you very much for the interest of Mexicans in this music group,’ [saying] that he very much appreciates the letter and that contact with the … [promotion] company of BTS was already made,” Sheinbaum said.
She added that Lee told her that he expects BTS’s promoter to contact the Mexican government “soon.”
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies (peter.davies@mexiconewsdaily.com)
