MEXICO FIRST: Mexico yesterday elected its first woman and not only its first woman, but also its first Jewish person to be President of the country.

  Claudia Sheinbaum, 61, is a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City. She prevailed in an election that brought out the greatest number of voters in Mexico’s history and as a Jewish woman will preside over one of the most Catholic countries in the world.

  Sheinbaum is expected to continue in the vein of her leftist predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who doubled the minimum wage and lifted millions of Mexicans out of poverty. 

 The new President will face a list of continuing problems, including the increasingly powerful and violent drug cartels. As many as 37 political candidates were murdered during the campaign season by criminal gangs letting everyone know who’s in charge. 

  But for the moment, Sheinbaum focused on her history-making election. “For the first time in 200 years of the republic, I will become the first female president of Mexico,” she said. “And as I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone. We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our ancestors, our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters.”

THE BREAKING POINT: Donald Trump over the weekend told Fox News that “I’m not sure the public would stand for it” if he is sent to prison. Trump said, “I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

  He didn’t elaborate on what that might mean. Trump was convicted of 34 felonies last week.

 Trump carried on his campaign against the justice system and perceived political enemies, telling three credulous Fox News hosts that; “These are bad people. These people are sick, and they do things that are so destructive… if it weren’t me, they’d be going after somebody else, and I know a lot of the competition. They wouldn’t do so well.”

  They didn’t challenge him.

  In the debate about Trump’s possible punishment, The NY Times published opposing opinions from two lawyers about whether he should be sent to prison.

From Norm Eisen a veteran lawyer: “A prison sentence would send a message to Mr. Trump and his followers that you cannot get away with conspiracies to interfere with an election. Because we know that Mr. Trump faces charges related to attempted election interference in 2020 — the election he still claims he won — and is once more seeking the presidency, a criminal sentence and the deterrence it may bring is singularly important to justice and as an alarm bell to the American people.”

From Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge:  But the bottom line is this: The factors pointing to imprisonment are outweighed by Mr. Trump’s unique position. Justice Merchan pulled his punches in imposing fines, not detention, for Mr. Trump’s repeated violations of his court orders. Anyone else would have been jailed. Mr. Trump no doubt will be treated differently — that is, less harshly — than other criminal defendants in our extraordinarily punitive criminal legal system. But we shouldn’t equalize the treatment of defendants by ramping up everyone’s punishment. Our criminal legal system is far too retributive and leans too heavily on imprisonment, no matter what the crime. Besides, Mr. Trump is different, because he was president and could become president again.

THE WAR ROOM: Two far-right Israeli ministers threatened to resign and dissolve the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he accepts the peace deal endorsed by President Biden. Biden spoke Friday about what he called a three-phase proposal to end the war in Gaza that would link the release of Hamas-held hostages to a “full and complete ceasefire.”  However, the two Israeli ministers made it clear they reject an immediate ceasefire. Netanyahu has also signaled he is not ready either, casting doubt over Biden’s proposal.

  Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he had “made it clear” to Netanyahu that he would not “be part of a government that will agree to the proposed outline and end the war without destroying Hamas and returning all the hostages.”

FIRE SEASON: A wind-driven fire has burned thousands of acres 60 miles east of San Francisco, causing residents to leave behind their homes and the closure of two major freeways near the central California city of Tracy. From the air it looks like an expanding ring of fire.

  The fire erupted Saturday in the dry grassy hills surrounding the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the center for nuclear weapons science and technology development. The Laboratory itself is not believed to be threatened.

THE SPIN RACK: Presidential son Hunter Biden goes to trial today on three felony gun charges that could get him up to 25 years in prison if convicted, although that’s unlikely. A judge rejected Biden’s earlier guilty plea. — Chad Daybell, who was convicted in Idaho of killing his ex-wife and the two children of his current wife, was sentenced to death over the weekend. — One person was killed and 24 wounded in a shooting at a birthday party just after midnight yesterday in Akron, Ohio. At least two of the wounded were listed in critical condition. — The Edmonton Oilers will face the Florida Panthers in the final round for hockey’s Stanley Cup. — Simone Biles won her ninth national all-around title gymnastics title. The 27-year-old Biles had returned to competition just last year after getting over a mental block known in the sport as “the twisties.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Rupert Murdoch, the 93-year-old mogul behind Fox news and a string of tabloids including The New York Post, got married for the fifth time Saturday at his Tuscan-style vineyard estate in the hills of the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.

 Murdoch got married for the first time in 1956. His latest bride is Elena Zhukova, 67, who was introduced to him by his third wife, Wendi Dung. 

  He believes in marriage.

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