MEXICO CITY >> For months, tensions have been building in Mexico over the president’s sweeping plans to overhaul the judiciary, straining diplomatic ties with the United States and shaking the country’s political system.

This week, those tensions exploded into the open.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said Tuesday that his government was “pausing” relations with the U.S. Embassy in response to criticism by the U.S. ambassador over the final crusade of his six-year presidential term.

“Hopefully there will be a statement from them that they are going to be respectful of the independence of Mexico,” López Obrador said of the United States during his daily news conference. “As long as that doesn’t happen and they continue with that policy, then there is a pause with the Embassy.”

“‘Pause’ means that we are going to take a break,” he added, saying it would also extend to the U.S. State Department. And in a possible bid to ease concerns over the potential effect on trade, López Obrador also said that overall U.S.-Mexico relations would not be affected.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico and the Mexican Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

López Obrador also announced a pause in relations with the Canadian Embassy, which had conveyed Canadian investors’ concerns over the judicial overhaul.

In a statement, several ranking members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed “deep concern” that the proposed changes could contradict commitments Mexico made in the 2020 trade agreement between it, Canada and the United States.

The president’s freezing of diplomatic relations with the U.S. Embassy comes after comments made last week by Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador, calling the proposed judicial changes “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” Salazar asserted that the measures could threaten Mexico’s trade relationship with the United States by corroding confidence in Mexico’s legal framework and emboldening drug cartels to “take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges.”

Mexico’s newly elected Congress could start voting as early as next week on the changes proposed by López Obrador. If passed, they would shift the entire judiciary from an appointment system largely based on specialized training and qualifications to one where just about anyone with a law degree and a few years of experience could run in elections to become a judge.

The measure could force more than 5,000 judges, from the Supreme Court down to local district courts, from their jobs.

Thousands of federal judges and court workers have already joined nationwide strikes, and hundreds of protesters took to the streets in more than 20 Mexican cities on Sunday, in hopes of bringing attention to what they called an attack against the judiciary.

López Obrador says the overhaul is needed to prevent impunity and rulings that allow drug traffickers to go free. Although his term ends in October, the new Congress — where the ruling party, Morena, and its allies have secured large majorities in both houses — has a one-month window while López Obrador is still in office to approve the dozens of proposed constitutional changes, including the president’s plan to elect judges and justices by popular vote.

Changing how judges and justices are selected, López Obrador has said, would wring corruption out of the judiciary and ensure everyone, not just the rich, has access to justice. And — as he himself has admitted — it would allow his government’s projects to go unchallenged by Mexico’s Supreme Court.

“The judiciary is hopeless, it is rotten,” he said in May of last year, when he first presented his ideas for an overhaul. “It is completely at the service of the conservative bloc.”

But others, citing the president’s barrage of attacks on judges who have ruled against some of his plans, say the measures amount to a thinly veiled pretext for eroding judicial independence and enhancing the power of López Obrador’s nationalistic political movement.

“They intend to disappear us as an institution,” said José Fernando Miguez, a spokesperson for the striking workers and a judicial officer in Mexico City. “They intend to disappear people who have spent their entire lives working as judges and magistrates with extensive experience.”

So far, Claudia Sheinbaum, the president-elect and López Obrador’s protégée, has fully embraced his initiative. After Salazar voiced his concerns, Sheinbaum told reporters: “There has always been a dialogue, but there are matters that only concern the Mexicans.”