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claudia sheinbaum
Guatemalan President Denies Deal With US for Joint Strikes on Drug Cartels
“There is no agreement authorizing foreign military operations by any country in national territory,” the office of President Bernardo Arévalo said in response to a New York Times report.
May 28, 2026
While acknowledging a request for US support in fighting drug cartels, Guatemala's president on Thursday refuted reporting by The New York Times claiming his government "has agreed to carry out joint strikes with the United States military inside its territory"—action that would violate the country's Constitution.
Citing "three people familiar with the talks," the Times reported that "President Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala agreed to both airstrikes and other military action in a call with [US] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth... with operations to start as early as next month."
However, Arévalo's office pushed back in a statement stressing that “there is no agreement authorizing foreign military operations by any country in national territory."
The presidential statement said that Guatemalan Defense Minister Henry Sáenz wrote to Hegseth "to request US cooperation in operations led by Guatemalan security forces against narco-trafficking organizations as part of a strategy launched in 2024."
"This request falls within the framework of existing bilateral agreements on the matter, and adheres to constitutional provisions and laws regarding cooperation agreements on civil and military security," the office added.
Arévalo's office stressed that Guatemala's Constitution stipulates that foreign military forces can only be deployed in the country if authorized by a two-thirds vote of the national Legislature.
A source from Arévalo's government told El País Thursday on condition of anonymity that the Trump administration has been exerting "great pressure" for two months.
“What they offered us is to select one or two places to bomb and televise everything," the source said. "But we have been clear that this is not going to happen. It cannot operate a US military force in the country, simply because it is unconstitutional."
Arévalo's office said it is seeking US assistance in training, strategic and tactical support, and intelligence sharing, pointing to recent actions against drug trafficking, including the capture of an arsenal in Las Cruces, Petén, the seizure of a narcotics laboratory in Ayutla, San Marcos, and the capture of numerous suspected narco-traffickers.
Asked during a Thursday press conference about the possibility of joint combat operations like those reportedly carried out by US and Ecuadorian forces in the South American nation, Arévalo claimed unfamiliarity with the details of the agreement between those two countries.
Progressive US lawmakers are demanding answers about “reports of serious human rights violations and the bombing of what appear to have been civilian facilities" in Ecuador, including a "dairy and cattle farm with no known links to armed groups or drug trafficking" where unarmed civilians were allegedly tortured.
Arévalo brushed off a suggestion that his request for US cooperation could open the door to human rights violations in Guatemala, telling reporters that "the best defense against any violation of human rights is our respect and commitment to the laws of the republic and to current legislation."
While Guatemala does suffer from serious narco-trafficking issues, many Guatemalans are wary of US intervention, given past meddling including the 1954 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of reformist President Jacobo Árbenz, which was followed by decades of right-wing repression, civil war, and a US-backed genocide against Indigenous Mayan peoples during which around 200,000 people were killed.
In March, the Trump administration lifted longstanding restrictions on arms transfers to Guatemala.
“Now, our soldiers are going to have access to modern technology, radars, night viewfinders," Sáenz told La Hora on Friday.
The defense minister said he discussed closer counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States during the “Shield of the Americas” summit, during which senior officials from over a dozen nations—most of them ruled by right-wing governments—gathered at President Donald Trump's golf resort near Miami.
In addition to Guatemala, the Trump administration has been trying to pressure other Latin American nations into launching joint military operations against narco-traffickers. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has vehemently rejected US requests, even as President Donald Trump has threatened "to do something" about cartels in her country.
“The epicenter of cartel violence is not Mexico, it’s the United States,” Sheinbaum defiantly declared in March. “The cartels are fueled by the United States’ demand for drugs and armed with US weapons, and thanks to the United States, they are able to orchestrate enormous bloodshed and chaos throughout Latin America.”
In January, Trump ordered the bombing and invasion of Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was abducted to the United States on dubious "narco-terrorism" allegations that were then significantly walked back.
Trump has also threatened to attack Colombia, Panama, and Cuba, whose people are bracing for what many observers fear is an impending US war. If Trump does order military action against Cuba, it would be the 12th country he's attacked during the course of his two White House terms. Trump also ordered the ongoing bombing campaign targeting boats his administration claims—without providing evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Around 200 people have been killed by the US strikes.
As Nick Turse of The Intercept reported Wednesday:
Trump has turned the Western Hemisphere into a war zone as part of what he and others have called the Donroe Doctrine. This bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine has been used to justify strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean; an attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president; CIA operations in Mexico; joint counter-cartel operations in Ecuador dubbed “Operation Total Extermination”; and increased military and intelligence operations elsewhere in Latin America.
Experts contend that, like the boat strikes, any airstrikes carried out against drug cartels would likely constitute illegal acts of murder, even if conducted with the permission of governments in targeted countries.
“As with the boat strikes, depending on the facts, further attacks could amount to premeditated killings outside of armed conflict, which some of us lawyers would refer to as murder,” former US State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told The New York Times on Thursday.
“Congress never authorized any of these strikes," he added. "So US personnel who participate in these actions could face consequences down the road, after the Trump administration.”
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Mexico Healthcare Transition Provides Model for US
Pretty much every other country in the world has settled on one model for everybody, because it’s cheaper and less convoluted. We could solve a lot of problems in America by following this example.
Apr 19, 2026
In 2026, the US health care system is more costly, more unequal and more unstable than at any point in its history.
Last month, a survey released by the West Health-Gallup Center found that an estimated 28 million Americans (roughly 11%) had skipped meals to afford health care expenses in the last year. “Ambulance deserts” – where emergency services take over 25 minutes to arrive – are rapidly forming across the country, affecting millions of people. With the announcement last year of cuts to Medicaid and the federal government’s failure to extend ACA subsidies, the future looks especially bleak.
At the same time, we’ve seen huge increases in profits for insurance companies and hospitals. Greed and short-sighted pursuit of profits have brought American health care to the breaking point. This is a man-made natural disaster.
The US system is an outlier on the world stage in a number of important ways. For one, we’re the only developed country that doesn’t provide universal health care. Every one of our peer nations has some form of basic coverage for all citizens – the U.K., Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia… We’re the only ones that decided to leave a significant percentage of the population (generally around 8%) without any coverage whatsoever.
American health care is also, by far, the most expensive in the world. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), we have roughly twice the per-capita health care costs of other wealthy nations, yet some of the worst outcomes. We consistently under-perform in areas like life expectancy, infant mortality and deaths from treatable diseases.
According to a study conducted in 2020 by Yale epidemiologists for the medical journal The Lancet, a universal health care system in the US would prevent around 68,000 unnecessary deaths per year. These are people who die from preventable diseases, simply because they don’t have access to health insurance. If they lived in any other country in the developed world, they’d survive.
Mexico, another country where coverage has historically been less-than-total, announced last week that they will be implementing a universal health service designed to guarantee access to health care for the entire population. As Mexico moves forward with its initiative, it may provide a model for how the US can repair our dysfunctional, fragmented system. Mexico’s decree unifies three fragmented public systems (IMSS, ISSSTE, IMSS-Bienestar, taking a patchwork model and consolidating it into one program to prevent unnecessary duplication of costs. Hopefully, we can learn from both their successes and their mistakes.
America also has a patchwork model, combining elements of several different approaches to health care. For working people under 65, we have employer-provided private insurance. For veterans and military personnel, we have the V.A. (Veteran Affairs). For the over-65 population and people with certain disabilities, we have Medicare. For people below the poverty line, we have Medicaid. And for those without any health insurance at all, we have out-of-pocket payments. Pretty much every other country in the world has settled on one model for everybody, because it’s cheaper and less convoluted. A unified system is the best tool for cost control. We could solve a lot of problems in America by following this example.
A majority of Americans favor a universal health care system. This would increase equality of access, bring down costs and help to resolve one of the greatest inequities in American life, something which separates us from the rest of the developed world and which has increasingly become unsustainable in recent years. If the status quo is maintained, health care costs will continue to rise, patients will continue to avoid care because they can’t afford it and for-profit companies will continue to find ways to pass the costs on to patients, even if it bankrupts or kills them.
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As Trump Pushes Privatization, Mexico's Sheinbaum Embraces Healthcare as a Human Right
Healthcare is neither a commodity nor the exclusive privilege of the wealthy—it is a human right. Far from “outrageous,” guaranteeing healthcare to all is about ensuring that everyone can live a rich and fulfilling life.
Apr 15, 2026
On April 6, the Trump administration announced it will increase payments to privately-run Medicare Advantage, or MA, plans by 2.48% in 2027—this will result in more than $13 billion in additional payments to companies like UnitedHealth, CVS Health, and Humana. Unsurprisingly, following this announcement, shares of those companies rose by more than 9%.
MA plans have been a significant source of growth and profit for insurance companies. As the Medicare Rights Center reports, this profitability is driven by enormous overpayments, including from fraudulent billing practices such as “upcoding.” This involves submitting billing codes that make patients appear sicker than they really are to secure higher government payments than are warranted. Despite this, the Trump administration is currently considering a policy that would automatically enroll seniors into MA plans as the “default enrollment option”—a proposal outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s extremist Project 2025.
The Center for American Progress estimates that making MA the default option would generate nearly $2 trillion in overpayments over 10 years, while significantly jeopardizing traditional Medicare’s financial stability. It would give for-profit corporations more control to restrict patient choices and deny doctor-recommended care.
Instead of more privatization that puts profits over people, we should embrace Medicare For All (M4A). Yet, President Donald Trump contends that paying for our current safety nets is already too much for the wealthiest nation on Earth. He remarks: “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Sheinbaum’s embrace of universal healthcare—as well as her support of Cuba—shows us what is possible when the well-being of people is championed unconditionally.
For Trump, spending billions in an illegal war takes precedence over providing healthcare for Americans. His 2027 budget calls for a 10% reduction in all nondefense spending, including reducing funding to the Department of Health and Human Services by $15.8 billion. This, at the same time, that a measles outbreak sweeps the nation, uninsured rates continue to climb, and the prevalence of children with chronic conditions grows to unprecedented levels.
While Trump prioritizes death and destruction, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum offers a different vision. On April 7, she issued a presidential decree establishing the Universal Health Service (Servicio Universal de Salud), which will allow patients from across Mexico to seek free care at any public health institution. Universal access will be rolled out in phases starting with emergency care and continuity of care in early 2027. Radiotherapy, laboratory tests, imaging studies, and other specialized services will be added later that year. Finally, in 2028, universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization will be consolidated. For Sheinbaum, “The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received.”
The transition to universal healthcare began on April 13 when Mexicans aged 85 and older were eligible to register for their new Universal Health Credential. As Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Clark notes, these new credentials are “the guarantee of the right to healthcare” for Mexican citizens and eligible foreign residents.
This is the fundamental difference. In Mexico, healthcare is recognized as a human right enshrined in their Constitution. In 2023, then-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alicia Bárcena said before the United Nations General Assembly, “In Mexico, we believe that coverage must be universal, public and free, starting with the most marginalized areas and prioritizing, as always, the poorest.” She continued: “It is unacceptable to profit from illness. In Mexico, we know that public health is not for sale. It is a public and universal good, and we defend it."
By contrast, for Trump, healthcare is a privilege meant solely for those who deserve it. During his first presidential campaign, he remarked: “Where I come from, you have to prove your worth. You have some guy with no college degree working a minimum wage job; no ambition, no goals, nothing to show for it. Yet for some reason, the current [Obama] administration believes he—and millions of people like him, should have access to health insurance. It’s outrageous.” While Mexico starts with “the poorest,” Trump finds it “outrageous” to provide healthcare to minimum wage workers.
Trump’s position is immoral and vile. Healthcare is neither a commodity nor the exclusive privilege of the wealthy—it is a human right. Far from “outrageous,” guaranteeing healthcare to all is about ensuring that everyone can live a rich and fulfilling life.
For most (if not everyone), lacking healthcare will prevent them from living the kind of life they desire. Those suffering from untreated illness may struggle to spend time with their loved ones, pursue the opportunities they desire, and exercise their political rights. Since, at some point, everyone will eventually get sick, healthcare is a universal good that benefits each of us. Moreover, as the Covid-19 pandemic made clear, our individual health is not solely a personal issue. My health impacts the lives of others around me just as their health impacts mine. Healthcare is thus a collective and communal good.
Still, one might object that even if healthcare is not a commodity, the market is still the best mechanism to allocate scarce resources; Trump’s push toward privatization will be better than Sheinbaum’s universal care.
Such blind faith in the market is misguided. Despite spending far more than other countries with universal coverage, more than a quarter of Americans report skipping consultations, tests, treatments and follow-ups because of costs. Roughly 21% report skipping medication for the same reason. Studies consistently find that universal care provides more access, better quality, and lower costs than privatized healthcare.
Ironically, Trump once understood this. In his 2000 The America We Deserve, he writes, “We must have universal healthcare. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole if the issue of access to healthcare were dealt with imaginatively. With more than 40 million Americans living day to day in the fear that an illness or injury will wipe out their savings or drag them into bankruptcy, how can we truly engage in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as our Founders intended?”
Trump was right. What we need is not more privatization that exploits the sick and dying, but rather a politic that works to radically defend life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. What is needed is the imagination to rethink how we use (and misuse) our country’s wealth and resources. Sheinbaum’s embrace of universal healthcare—as well as her support of Cuba—shows us what is possible when the well-being of people is championed unconditionally.
A better future is possible—already, in the US, support for M4A continues to grow, and several 2026 midterm candidates have made it an explicit part of their platforms. Together, by embracing life and rejecting capitalism, we can make America great.
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