• The “six-week” war enters week 11.
• Markets: Record highs on “a knife-edge.”
• Wall Street admits it was wrong about the U.S. economy.
• Trump’s dismal poll ratings.
• How big is the backlog in the Strait of Hormuz?
• When men use AI it’s good, but when women use it, it’s bad, a depressing survey shows.

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Good morning. Who’s your agent? That’s not a question that most of us who work outside the realm of entertainment are used to hearing. But it’s a question that author and MIT fellow Michael Schrage posed to a group of chief financial officers last week during a dinner that Fortune cohosted with Deloitte and Salesforce in Boston. Schrage was talking, of course, about AI agents, those software programs created to autonomously take action on your behalf and interact with other humans or programs.

The answer from our attendees was mixed: some CFOs had personal AI agents that they deploy to help manage workflow or prepare for, say, quarterly calls. Others are more focused on overseeing how agents are created and deployed through their organizations. And some were holding back to figure out the right guard rails and directives to put in place before unleashing too many of autonomous ‘workers’ throughout their corporations.

It was a timely and thought-provoking conversation for me because it touched on issues that I think every leader has to figure out right now:

The role of the CFO: They’re sometimes cast as the Debbie Downer of the C-suite: the keeper of the coin, Dr. No, the balancer of budgets, controller of costs, and reality check on corporate ambitions. But Deloitte research reinforces that the CFO is actually the enabler and core driver of innovation and the one “anchoring AI initiatives to measurable business outcomes,” as noted in its Tech Trends 2026 report. They have to measure the risk-to-return ratio on AI investments and figure out new ways of valuing the agentic workforce.

The role of the agent: Schrage talked about functional agents that are deployed across a team and personal agents that act on behalf of the individual. The latter may be designed to keep an eye on the former, and the bespoke nature of such agents raises fascinating ethical and legal questions about what happens to them when the human that spawned them moves on to another organization. It’s not a theoretical exercise. I have a digital twin. While it’s, ahem, somewhat simplistic and sycophantic in its current form, it could theoretically be deployed to one day write and speak on my behalf long after I’m gone. So who owns the IP on your digital self?

Corporate norms: If, as Schrage suggests, tomorrow’s leaders could include cyborgs with the intelligence, skills, judgement and authority of their human keepers, how should the work flow, assessment of employees, and corporate design be reimagined to accommodate this? Should super users be allowed to create as many agents as they like? How are costs and compensation calculated? Schrage predicts that “CEOs will be judged as much for their agents as for their hires,” as will other C-suite leaders. Their augmented ability to manage the augmented ability of others will make for very different relationships with coworkers, customers, and the communities they serve.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Founded in 2022, Augustus already holds banking licenses in Europe, which permit it to clear cross-border euro transactions. Its customers include large financial institutions, including the global cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, and Dabitz says the bank is processing billions of euros, while growing 10x year over year. Augustus has raised $40 million from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and Creandum, and from the founders of prominent digital finance firms Ramp, Deel, and Circle.

According to Dabitz, Augustus is only the eighth firm to receive a national bank charter from the OCC since 2010. While the agency has handed out other charters to firms like Ripple, these have been in the form of trust charters and similar “skinny” licenses that can come with significant restrictions like a ban on accepting customer deposits or no access to Federal Reserve master accounts.

Augustus has obtained its charter at a time when dollars and euros continue to make up 90% of global trade and, in a statement, the company said its mission is to “secure and advance Western currency dominance by upgrading clearing to the AI era.” It is hoping to do so with the help of a clearing system that is built on code capable of interacting with AI agents rather than on the existing legacy system of correspondent banks.

Under the legacy correspondent system, an overseas bank seeking to process dollar-based transactions will typically have to obtain a series of sign-offs from employees at an intermediary bank that has access to Federal Reserve accounts. This arrangement is slow since it requires banks to carry out the transactions during business hours across different time zones, and is prone to human error.

“We think that’s a broken process, and we think there’s an opportunity to rebuild it around stablecoins and technology, including, of course, AI,” said Dabitz, adding that the foundations of Augustus are built on code rather than legacy paper systems. Augustus currently has staff in New York and Dallas, and plans to ramp up its U.S. presence further now that has its charter from the OCC.

Firms like Ripple have been pushing for years to modernize the correspondent banking system, but Dabitz says that lately there is newfound political momentum in the U.S. to do so, leading agencies like the OCC to grant charters to facilitate the process.

Dabitz is perhaps an unlikely figure to help lead this transformation. At age 25, he bears little resemblance to silver-haired figures like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who have long defined the cautious banking industry. Officials at the OCC, however, may have been reassured by Dabitz’s team at Augustus, which includes longtime veterans like Greg Quarles, a former executive at the agency and the former CEO of Green Dot Bank, who is serving as the company’s President. Augustus’s CFO is former JPMorgan executive Joe Schenone, while other members of its C-Suite have done stints at firms like Brex and Revolut.

Dabitz himself is the recipient of a Thiel Fellowship, which is awarded by its billionaire namesake to those who drop out of college in favor of entrepreneurship. He says leading Augustus reflects the culmination of a lifelong dream, following a childhood where his favorite toy was a safe, and where his parents likened him to Scrooge McDuck. Like many other kids he liked Harry Potter, though perhaps unsurprisingly, his favorite scenes included the goblin-run Gringotts Bank.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine received a text from our editor, or so they thought. It turned out to be completely fake. Scams like this, apparently, are becoming the new normal. 

That’s the bet behind Frame Security, a New York and Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup. The company launched publicly Monday with $50 million in funding, led by Index Ventures, Team8, and Picture Capital, Fortune learned exclusively. Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and Elad Gil also participated.

Frame is trying to make “security awareness training” sound less like a mandatory HR video, and more like a real cybersecurity category that the company calls “human risk security.” Translation: Employees are still the easiest way into a company, and AI has made tricking them cheaper, faster—and much more convincing.

“The world of poorly written phishing emails is pretty much gone,” CEO Tal Shlomo told Fortune. “Attackers and adversaries now know your company very well and in detail.”

Frame’s platform lets companies create AI-generated simulations and training based on how employees actually work. That can mean, Shlomo said, a voice-cloned call coming from the CEO, a video, or an attack mentioning open positions, or something recently event-related at the company. These simulated attacks are meant to be equally as convincing as the real ones. 

Shlomo and his cofounder and CTO, Sharon Shmueli, have a familiar Israeli cyber pedigree (they served together in the Israeli intelligence collection unit, Unit 8200, in the IDF), but with particularly good timing. Shlomo was one of Wiz’s earliest employees, joining at 21. Shmueli—previously CTO at Team8’s venture platform at 25—was the first employee at Bionic, which CrowdStrike acquired. The two met more than a decade ago. “We think as one and operate as two,” Shlomo said.

Frame’s pitch is resonating, Shlomo says, because companies are tired of generic training. “It treats every company as every other company, where in reality, they’re vastly different,” he told Fortune.

While nearly 96% of organizations provide some form of security awareness training, around 90% of data breaches still involve the human element. The growing risk is contributing to Frame’s market—the global security awareness training market—which is projected to exceed $10 billion by 2027.

The company already has between 20 to 30 customers, mostly large U.S. enterprises, including AlphaSense and Louis Dreyfus Company. Shlomo said customers are signing three-year contracts, with deals ranging from mid-five figures to mid-six figures. He declined to disclose revenue or valuation.

Investors are betting this is more than phishing drills with an AI gloss. “Fifty million in anyone’s world is a gigantic sum of capital,” Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures, told Fortune. But, he said, “when you’re going after something big, you want to raise a big amount of money.”

Shah is also clear about the risk: “If the only budget and solution we provide is in replacement of existing security awareness training, it’s more of a tool than a platform,” he said.

His bull case is that humans are not exiting the security equation anytime soon. Shah added, “I also think humans are imperfect, and we make mistakes.”

In other words: The next big cyber category may be your gullible coworker.

See you tomorrow,

Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: lily.lazarus@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

That’s the warning from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. The American AI Jobs Risk Index—an analysis mapping the economic and geographic impact of AI job risk across 784 occupations—shows exactly where the white-collar workers most threatened by AI displacement live. 

Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and the study’s lead researcher, said that with the proper organization, these workers will become a stronger political force than any the U.S. has seen in recent decades. This geographical concentration, which he terms the “Wired Belt,” includes the suburban rings surrounding America’s biggest metros, many of which exist in swing states.

“These are people who are on LinkedIn,” he told Fortune. “They know their congressman’s phone number. They’re good at writing, web design, data analysis, marketing. Their political activism is likely to be much more forceful.” 

The looming threat of AI automation has struck a chord with millions of Americans. A recent NBC News poll found the technology is less popular than President Donald Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even after its deadly Minneapolis crackdown. Besides the cybersecurity risks and environmental impact that fuel anger toward the technology, one of the main concerns stirring fears and frustration is that knowledge work is appearing increasingly susceptible to AI automation. 

The swing-state voters who could decide America’s next election

The study estimates that 9.3 million jobs are vulnerable to AI automation across the country. That amounts to a towering $200 billion in lost income. In an extreme scenario where AI is able to replace a larger share of labor, that figure rises to $1.5 trillion.

Chakravorti’s research identifies several primary clusters with a high concentration of knowledge-driven work, including metros like San Jose, Seattle, Boston, and New York. These areas face 3.5 times the job loss and over five times the income loss compared to traditional manufacturing regions. 

But the real political punch lies in the suburban rings of pivotal swing states, specifically around Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Detroit. These are the regions that everyone comes to know during each presidential election: Bucks County, Pa.; Gwinnett County, Ga., or Maricopa County, Ariz. They’re the spots with the biggest door-knocking efforts, where TV journalists swarm undecided voters and poll after poll shows a tightening race. All of that is because who takes the White House is most likely decided by voters in these regions. And it doesn’t take much. In 2024, Trump won Wisconsin by roughly 29,000 votes.

American AI Jobs Risk Index/Fletcher School at Tufts University

Chakravorti said in a recent essay in the Financial Times that one-sixth of vulnerable jobs exist in swing states, representing an estimated $119.5 billion in income.

It’s not exactly clear who will harness the power of the Wired Belt. The Trump administration has taken a laissez-faire approach to AI regulation. But the president is now reportedly weighing government oversight over AI model releases. Some progressives, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have proposed actions like a national data center moratorium. 

While many of the Wired Belt voters Chakravorti characterizes tend to lean Democratic, there was a shift to the right in the 2024 election. He said whichever party successfully offers a plan for greater human capital investment and a transition to an AI-driven economy that supports these disgruntled workers will hold the keys to these critical suburban districts in the midterms, and in 2028.

“There is an opportunity to just get those 100,000 voter swings in the swing states and the election, you know, could be operating in a way, you know, moving in a very different direction in terms of the outcomes.”

But it’s not exactly clear to what extent AI will impact the job market. Some tech companies have credited AI with recent layoffs, but the unemployment rate among young workers—those most threatened by automation—is down to 7.6% from a high of 9.2% last September. 

Still, there are small signs the AI job apocalypse that economists and business leaders warn about could slowly be turning into reality. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ April jobs report showed a better-than-expected 115,000 gain, but white-collar sectors like financial activities and information services lost nearly 24,000 roles collectively. 

Whatever the case, Chakravorti predicted the mere threat of job loss could be enough to trigger a new political wave across suburban America.

“The threat should be enough to push people into action if they begin to start connecting the dots,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Mah Sing, No. 422 on Fortune’s Southeast Asia 500 list, had a blockbuster 2025, reporting decade-high real estate sales of 2.51 billion ringgit ($633 million); the conglomerate also lifted its 2026 property sales target to 2.76 billion ringgit ($696.3 million). It also earned 260.1 million ringgit ($66 million) in profit last year, up from 240.8 million ringgit the year before.

Now, the firm is making two bets: Premium residential real estate in Kuala Lumpur’s urban core, and industrial land for data center development.

Mah Sing has recently acquired land fewer than 500 meters from Kuala Lumpur’s city center, and hopes to roll out a “premium offering” later this year, Lionel Leong, Mah Sing’s deputy group CEO, told Fortune. The move will be a departure from the firm’s M Series properties, based around “affordable luxury” homes priced at 500,000 Malaysian ringgit ($126,000) to target the mass market.

Malaysia, too, had a good year, with the economy growing by 5.2%, ahead of government forecasts. Leong says Malaysia’s success is benefiting local firms like Mah Sing. “The spillovers are quite natural. The current administration is doing a lot to bring in FDI, and the middle class is growing.”

Humble beginnings

Mah Sing was founded in Kuala Lumpur in 1965 by Leong’s grandfather, as a small plastics company. The name derives from the firm’s ambition to expand across both Malaysia (“mah”) and Singapore (“sing”). In 1994, under the leadership of Leong’s father, Tan Sri Leong Hoy Kum, Mah Sing pivoted hard towards property development. 

Now, property generates more than 80% of Mah Sing’s revenue. “On the margin side, it’s actually a lot better moving into properties,” Leong explains, adding that the new venture has allowed Mah Sing to leverage its entrepreneurial strengths while tapping into Malaysia’s push to urbanize.

When he was young, Leong recalls visiting construction sites alongside his father, who had begun taking an interest in real estate in the 1990s. “He would drive us out far away from town,” he said. “It was very hot, but he’d be on the ground talking to all the technical personnel.” (He eventually joined the firm in 2013, first to oversee the group’s strategic development and operations, and later being appointed as deputy group CEO in 2024.)

In recent years, Mah Sing has expanded beyond residential projects into data centers and industrial parks, in a bid to tap Malaysia’s AI boom. 

Leong points to a 150-acre site in Southville City, Selangor, which the firm hopes to develop into a large-scale data center hub. “The site has strong fundamentals, including proximity to key infrastructure, access to power, water and dark fiber connectivity, and the potential to tap renewable energy solutions,” he says.

The firm has also identified Johor Bahru as a key growth market, due to its proximity to neighboring Singapore, and increasing levels of cross-border economic activity. Mah Sing has procured a 419.15-acre freehold site within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone, which was formally established last January to allow businesses to set up complementary operations on both sides of the causeway.

In the long run, Leong says Mah Sing’s key strategy is diversification. The firm ventured into the manufacturing of rubber gloves in response to the spike in demand for PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We’re looking to have a balanced and diversified business,” he concludes. “In the long haul, we want to cushion ourselves from things like market cycles and political uncertainties.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

On Sunday, the market veteran hiked his year-end forecast for the S&P 500 to 8,250 from 7,700—making him the most bullish among top Wall Street forecasters. The higher target represents an 11.5% jump from Friday’s close, adding to a year-to-date gain of 8%.

Yardeni’s call now tops views at Oppenheimer (8,100), Deutsche Bank (8,000), Morgan Stanley (7,800), Citigroup (7,700), JPMorgan (7,600), and Goldman Sachs (7,600).

To be sure, some firms will likely boost their predictions as more earning roll in. But JPMorgan already raised its view on the S&P 500 late last month, reversing a cut it made earlier to 7,200.

Yardeni pointed out that while he has been upbeat on earnings, Wall Street is already ahead of him, even after lifting his outlook.

“We’ve never seen consensus earnings expectations rise so quickly for the current and coming years as they have in recent months,” he said in a note. “The result has been an earnings-led meltup in the stock market.”

He sees earnings per share among the large-cap companies coming in at $330 this year, up from an earlier view for $310, with 2027 EPS seen at $375, up from $350.

Similarly, his forecasts for S&P 500 revenue per share went by $100 for both 2026 and 2027 to $2,200 and $2,300, respectively, nearly matching the current consensus.

“Our key assumption is that the economy will remain resilient, and so will earnings,” Yardeni added. “That’s been our mantra since we first started writing about the Roaring 2020s during the summer of 2020.”

Not only did the U.S. economy bounce back quickly from the COVID pandemic, it weathered the supply shock from Russia’s war on Ukraine, aggressive rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, and President Donald Trump’s trade war.

In fact, Yardeni hiked the probability that the Roaring 2020s will continue to 80% from 60% simply by merging it with his meltup scenario, which had 20% odds.

Any meltdown will represent a buying opportunity because it won’t trigger a recession or bear market, he added, while keeping his recession odds at 20%.

Still, he maintained his recommendation on global stocks, particularly those in emerging markets excluding China, saying there are relatively cheaper buying opportunities overseas.

The upgraded S&P 500 forecast also comes as U.S. stock indexes have hit new highs, rebounding sharply from the selloff triggered the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Despite the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed and oil inventories rapidly dwindling, investors are betting that the current ceasefire will be extended with a lasting peace eventually reopening the strait.

That’s led to a stark split between Wall Street analysts and energy experts, who have been warning that oil supplies could head off a cliff in the coming months or even weeks, dragging the global economy down in the process.

Yardeni acknowledged the risk of renewed fighting and the possibility it could produce stagflation, forcing central banks to hike rates and prompting bond vigilantes to push up yields.

“Nevertheless, for now, we are sticking with our 10,000 target for the S&P 500 by the end of 2029,” he wrote. “It might arrive ahead of schedule.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The $189 billion now estimated for the April-June quarter is $79 billion more than what Treasury saw in February. And after adjusting for a larger-than-expected cash balance at the start of the quarter, the new borrowing guidance is actually $122 billion higher.

With tax-filing deadlines coming in April, the spring quarter typically requires less borrowing than other times of the year. For comparison, the Treasury Department borrowed $577 billion during the January-March quarter and expects to borrow $671 billion July–September quarter.

But this filing season, Americans benefited from new tax breaks enacted in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In addition, the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs earlier this year, and importers have started getting refunds. As much as $166 billion could be returned.

For Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial, the borrowing update is the latest example of the immense supply of fresh debt that the Treasury Department is issuing.

In a recent blog post titled “The bond market is shouting,” he pointed out that the Federal Reserve has cut the benchmark rate by 175 basis points since mid-2024, but the 10-year Treasury yield has only dipped by about 35 basis points while the 30-year yield touched 5%.

“That kind of disconnect is not normal,” Malek warned. “In fact, analysts who have tracked the relationship between Fed policy and long-term yields going back to 1990 describe it as unprecedented. The bond market is not broken. It is sending a message. And if you know how to listen, it is shouting.”

The shouting is coming from “bond vigilantes,” a term coined by Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni in the 1980s, referring to traders who protested huge deficits by selling off bonds to push yields higher.

But unlike prior episodes when bond vigilantes made a dramatic splash in financial markets, today’s moves are “a slow, structural pressure campaign” driven by three forces, according to Malek.

The first is the enormous supply of bonds being issued as annual budget deficits run at roughly $2 trillion per year with interest costs alone at $1 trillion. The recent explosion of debt even prompted the IMF to warn the “safety premium” on Treasury bonds is disappearing.

“When you flood the market with supply and simultaneously chip away at the credit quality perception, bond buyers require higher yields to compensate,” Malek wrote.

Second, the term premium has widened from near zero, when it was suppressed by the Fed’s bond purchases, and has recently been “reasserting itself with a vengeance,” he said.

The third factor is the changing makeup of the Treasury bond market. Steadfast buyers like central banks in China and Japan have pulled back, while less patient investors like hedge funds have stepped in.

A wildcard is the tech sector, which has seen so-called AI hyperscalers issue a tsunami of corporate debt that’s competing against Treasury bonds for investors’ dollars. Meanwhile, incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is expected to shrink the central bank’s balance, adding more upward pressure on yields.

Ultimately, the bond market is sending a message about the economy, and it isn’t swayed by trendy narratives, Malek said.

“It can only price what it sees,” he concluded. “And what it sees right now—$39 trillion in debt, a trillion dollars a year in interest costs, six Fed cuts that barely moved the long end, a foreign buyer base in quiet retreat, and a new Fed chair likely to pull back the one remaining artificial support—is a future where capital is scarce and patience is rewarded, but complacency is not.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 200 points, or 0.40%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.33%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.28%.

U.S. oil futures rose 2.7% to $97.97 a barrel, while Brent crude climbed 2.7% to $104.01. Gold fell 0.76% to $4,695 per ounce.

The U.S. dollar was up 0.2% against the euro and up 0.14% against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was steady at 4.36%.

On Sunday, Iran responded to the U.S. ceasefire offer, saying talks must focus on permanently ending the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon.

Sources also told the Wall Street Journal that Iran proposed gradually reopening the strait as the U.S. lifts its naval blockade.

While nuclear issues would be negotiated during a 30-day window, Tehran rejected demands to dismantle its nuclear facilities and suspend uranium enrichment for 20 years, the report said. Iran also requested the release of its frozen funds abroad.

Trump soon blasted Iran’s response as “totally unacceptable” without pointing to any specific proposals. He earlier accused Tehran of “playing games” with the U.S. for nearly 50 years, but added, “They will be laughing no longer!”

Analysts pointed out that Iran’s position has changed little, indicating the leadership believes it has the upper hand and is unwilling to budge.

Unless the Strait of Hormuz opens soon, global oil stockpiles will soon start hitting critically low levels and trigger a spike in prices.

Last week, Trump attempted to break the deadlock by announcing a military effort to guide commercial ships out of the Persian Gulf. A few ships made it through the strait as U.S. destroyers fought off Iranian attacks. But less than two days later, he paused Project Freedom.

Earlier on Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CBS News’ Face the Nation that the U.S. “did stop Project Freedom at Iran’s request.”

“If we militarily reopen the strait—which is a challenge, it’s not a one or two-day endeavor, that’s an effort to do that—they said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, let’s make a deal. Let’s make a deal, we’ll agree to reopen it. Let’s engage in the talks about the nuclear program, and let’s make a deal,'” he added.

The pause in Project Freedom was meant to pursue a deal with Iran, but “if it’s clear in the next few days that there’s not a good path to a negotiated settlement, we’ll go back to the military method to open the strait,” Wright warned.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The wave of violence in the conflict-torn state of Guerrero started on Wednesday when a powerful group known as Los Ardillos began to fiercely attack the communities in a rural mountainous region.

Thousands of people – including children and the elderly – were forced to flee in just a span of days after what they say were years of mounting attacks. At least one person was injured, said an organization representing the community, People’s Indigenous Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata (CIPOG-EZ).

Videos show families fleeing their homes early in the morning Sunday – on Mother’s Day – cloaked by darkness with nothing more than backpacks. Others images shared with The Associated Press show heavy gunfire echoing over farms and drones rigged with explosives laying in the brush.

“These have been days of terror,” said Marina Velasco, a representative for CIPOG-EZ. “They’ve been bombing communities with drones, and how can one defend themselves from a drone, with bombs falling from the sky.”

Community groups and local religious organizations said Los Ardillos have sought to take over the land for years in their battle for territory with a smattering of other rival criminal groups.

Velasco said families have fled to nearby towns, where many now take refuge in a soccer field. Velasco said while there is a small presence of state actors, communities like these have largely been “abandoned” by Mexican forces in the face of attacks from criminal groups. Mexico’s federal government and local state authorities in Guerrero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The organization CIPOG-EZ has documented 76 people in the region slain by the conflict with the group in recent years, and 25 more who have gone missing.

Cartels have been using drones and more elaborate weapons for years to wage war, a sign of how entrenched the conflict is in regions like Guerrero, where cartels have splintered into rival factions. Increasingly, communities have taken up arms themselves to fight back against groups like Los Ardillos.

The bloodshed comes as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has come down more heavily on cartels than her predecessor as she has faced mounting pressure from President Donald Trump, who has threatened to take military action against the groups, which Sheinbaum has called “ unnecessary.” The push by Sheinbaum has resulted in a sharp dip in homicides – around 40% – since she took office, a figure which the government has boasted even as it’s been r oiled by a number of scandals in recent weeks.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com