A new US indictment puts Mexico’s president in a political predicament

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has spent the past year and a half since Donald Trump took office mastering a high-stakes balancing act, managing to satisfy both her constituents at home and her demanding neighbors to the north.The United States’ indictment and extradition request for 10 Mexican government officials this week could throw that balance off kilter.The charges from U.S. federal court in New York allege ties between the sitting governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha Moya, and the Sinaloa drug cartel, which the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization last year. Nine other current and former Mexican officials are also named in the indictment on drug-related and weapons charges. Why We Wrote This The Trump administration has taken the rare step of charging a group of ruling-party Mexican officials in U.S. federal court. The move puts Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo in a tough spot with her own political constituents. On Thursday, Dr. Sheinbaum dismissed the idea of arresting or extraditing anyone named in the U.S. indictment, and she accused Washington of “meddling” in Mexico’s affairs.The president said that Mexican prosecutors would conduct their own investigation to “determine whether there is evidence establishing that the allegations made by the U.S.