latino 2

primary 11 24 trump rt shift

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no merri

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7/18 tag latnx

better than avg legis on climate? 5/15 steyer

fastest growing minority, UC

trump wall rapists

html patrick.george

apostates

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (born Ileana Ros y Adato; July 15, 1952) is the most senior U.S. Representative from Florida, representing Florida's 27th congressional district.

libre is koch

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MMA 10 26

Since early in his second term, President Donald Trump has been facing criticism from Spanish-language right-wing media figures over his approach to the economy, the Iran war, and mass deportation. Over the fall, some of these figures have warned that Republicans will suffer in the midterm elections as a result of the Trump administration “failing” on immigration and economic policy. It’s not just media personalities either — polls suggest that Latino voters could be a major swing demographic in November.

Figures in Spanish-language right-wing media cautioned that Trump policies could cause an electoral backlash from Hispanic voters who are unhappy with the administration’s “cruel approach” to immigration, the economy, and the war in Iran. Some of these figures have identified Trump’s approach to mass deportations as a primary reason for their anger towards the administration.

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AN 12 25

During a Monday morning, December 29 appearance on MS NOW, conservative Republican Sarah Matthews — who served as deputy White House press secretary in the first Trump Administration but is now an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump — argued that liberal firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is probably too progressive for Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race. But she didn't think the seat is totally out of reach for Democrats with a more centrist nominee.

Texas remains a red state; Trump carried it by roughly 14 percent in 2024. Yet it's far from the reddest of the red states, and Matthews believes that Republicans have vulnerabilities there — some of which Dallas-based journalist Mike Lee (not to be confused with GOP senator from Utah) identifies in a December 29 Politico Playbook column.

"Texas is still Trump country," Lee reports, "but the president's economic policies are starting to sting — and the fallout could hurt Republicans at the ballot box in 2026. Donald Trump took 56 percent of the vote in Texas when he won in 2024, improving his margins from both of his previous campaigns. Republicans also held onto their two-decade majority in the state legislature in the Lone Star State. But as 2025 closes out, polls show growing unrest within the Texas economy, and voters are beginning to blame Trump and Republicans for failing to produce results."

Texas is heavily Latino, and many Latinos voted for Trump there in 2024. But Lee notes that according to a UnidosUS survey of Latinos in November, two-thirds of the respondents were dissatisfied with his handling of the economy.

UnidosUS organizer Eric Holguín told Politico, "Right now, there's such a deep level of anger about what's happening."

Trump's immigration policies, according to Lee, are another liability for him in Texas.

"There are signs that Trump's signature policies are responsible for some of the malaise," Lee explains. "Trump's immigration raids may be hurting the broader Texas economy, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve. The raids have hit permanent residents and foreign students, and the fear has made foreign-born people more likely to miss work and less likely to visit shops and restaurants, the Fed's Texas Business Opportunity Survey said."

Lee adds, "About 13 percent of companies reported they were having a harder time finding and retaining workers, while only 2 percent said it was easier, the (UnidosUS) survey found. Hispanic Texans in the Rio Grande Valley were surprised to see ICE agents raiding local businesses, the AP reported back in July. Many of them voted for Trump and 'didn’t realize his deportation campaign would focus on their neighbors.'"

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MASSIVE DEM SHIFT LATINO NJ

Fox Noticias guest: Latino swing towards Democrats in elections “had to do with how aggressive the administration has been with deportations”

11/07/25

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latinos POd about help to migrants?!

// ITALIANS GOING FOR WHITE STATUS?

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AN 11 24 PRO PUB

Texas Democrats have long viewed the state’s growing Latino population as their ticket to eventually breaking through the Republican Party’s dominance. Tuesday night, however, showed that the GOP has made significant gains in peeling away those voters, and nowhere was that more apparent than along the border.

After years of losing the statewide Latino vote by double digits, Republicans set a high-water mark with Donald Trump capturing 55% of the critical voting bloc, besting Vice President Kamala Harris’ 44% share, according to exit polls.

In the traditionally Democratic strongholds along the border, Trump managed a near sweep.

He won 14 out of the 18 counties within 20 miles of the border, a number that doubled his attention-grabbing 2020 performance in the Latino-majority region. He carried all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley just eight years after drawing a mere 29% in the region — a feat that included delivering 97% Latino Starr County to Republicans for the first time since 1896. And, though he lost El Paso, one of the border’s most populous counties, he narrowed margins there in ways not seen in decades.

His gains along the border were the most for a Republican presidential candidate in at least 30 years, exceeding even the inroads made by native Texan George W. Bush in 2004.

Trump’s success in appealing to heavily Latino communities was evident throughout the country as he became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade County in more than three decades and nearly doubled his share of the Latino vote in Pennsylvania, even after a comedian at one of his rallies called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” But Trump’s performance is particularly striking in Texas, where Democrats have all but tied their fate to the idea that, as long as the state’s Latino electorate continued to grow and stayed reliably blue, Republicans would one day cease to win statewide elections.

In addition to dominating the presidential race, Republicans saw other gains along the border. U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican from Edinburg, held onto a key GOP seat anchored in the Rio Grande Valley, and Republicans picked up a state Senate seat and two state House districts in South Texas that were previously held by Democrats. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won reelection by carrying a majority of Latino voters, said the results amounted to “generational change.”

Democrats saw their own bright spots. Eddie Morales Jr., a state representative for a sprawling border district that stretches from Eagle Pass to El Paso, held onto his seat on Tuesday, though he narrowly eked out a victory two years after winning by a more comfortable 12-point margin. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, also won by an unexpectedly narrow margin of about 5 percentage points against a GOP challenger whom he vastly outspent.

Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said it’s too early to tell if Republican gains will hold or extend beyond Trump himself. But, Blank said, Democrats would be wise to worry about the possibility that this shift endures.

Trump’s success among Latino voters seemed to stem from an understanding that, in places like Texas, many Latinos “think of themselves as multiracial” and have grown up in communities where race and ethnicity are not top of mind, Blank said. Trump targeted Hispanic men who rarely vote by appealing “to their pocketbooks, to their masculinity, to their place in culture and society, but not directly to an identity as a racial and ethnic minority.”

“Does that mean that these voters are going to stay in the Republican column? We don’t know. Does it mean that they’re going to support somebody who’s not named Donald Trump? Unclear,” Blank said. “But he has changed the terms of the debate in a way that I think Democrats are uncomfortable with.”

Not unlike his appeal among other constituencies, Trump won over Latino voters by hammering Harris on economic challenges that many of them — rightly and wrongly — blame on President Joe Biden.

University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina said Trump’s challenge now would be to deliver on his promises to improve voters’ economic fortunes. And he said he’d expect voters to hold Trump accountable if he doesn’t. Cortina noted that many Latinos supported Bush’s 2004 reelection, only to desert the Republican Party in favor of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 amid a flailing economy.

“Realignments occur when there’s a sustainable change, and right now, it’s not clear we have that,” Cortina said.

He also said it would be premature to say whether Trump’s appeal — to say nothing of the Republican Party’s — was anything other than fleeting because, in local races, Latinos still tended to prefer Democrats.

One such example is the race for sheriff in Val Verde County, nearly three hours west of San Antonio.

In that race, Democrat Joe Frank Martinez held onto his seat, beating his Republican challenger after receiving 57% of the vote, even as Trump won the county with 63% of the vote.

According to Martinez, Project Red TX, a GOP-backed PAC, initially tried to get him to switch parties. When he declined, the PAC backed his opponent, who ran a campaign centered around the issue of immigration, even though that is not part of the sheriff’s job.

This year, the group supported more than 50 local candidates, primarily in border counties. The three candidates it backed in Val Verde County lost, though Wayne Hamilton, a veteran GOP operative who heads the group, noted that he also supported a number of local candidates who won their races with Trump carrying the county atop the ballot. One such case was in Jim Wells County, where Trump received 57% and the Democratic sheriff was narrowly ousted by a Republican challenger.

Hamilton said Latino voters living at or near the border flocked to Trump over what they see as the Biden administration’s “collapse in border enforcement and failing to do their job” by preventing more migrants from crossing into Texas.

Record numbers of arrivals overwhelmed border infrastructure in numerous communities. In Val Verde, some 20,000 mostly Haitian migrants arrived almost at once in 2021, forcing officials to shut the international port of entry while they figured out how to respond to the situation.

Public outcry was most acute, Hamilton said, in counties with high poverty rates where residents were more likely to feel that their community was “being overrun by people that are even poorer, with even greater needs.”

Hamilton celebrated that Trump flipped Starr by 16 points this year, a 76-point swing from his 60-point deficit there in 2016.

Down the ballot, though, Democrats, including the incumbent sheriff, managed to hold on to their positions despite aggressive campaigns on the Republican side. “All of those candidates that ran as Democrats, all won, so the Trump presidency is basically an isolated seat,” Starr County Democratic Chair Jessica Vera said.

Still, she said, if national and statewide Democrats want to keep the county blue, they need to work together with local leaders to connect with voters there.

Hamilton said some newly converted Trump voters might feel less inclined to vote against their local Democratic officials, especially in the smaller border counties, because they tend to be known in the community.

“The further down the ballot you go, it all becomes more personal,” Hamilton said. “It’s not a guy I see on TV, right? It’s the guy I go to Mass with.”

Local Democratic Party officials, including Sylvia Bruni in Webb County, a longtime Democratic stronghold, said they had warned their state and national headquarters about the advances Republicans were making in their districts. But she said she had gotten little support and instead had to rely almost entirely on whatever funds her group could raise on its own.

That’s not going to be good enough in the future, Bruni said. “We need help.”

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Secret recording finds Texas Senate hopeful saying only Latino can defeat Ted Cruz - Alternet.org

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MSG fail 10 24 no pix twt

Popular, famous, and highly-influential Latino stars, and superstars including Bad Bunny, Luis Fonsi, Jennifer Lopez, and Ricky Martin, are lashing out at Donald Trump after his six-hour Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday served up racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic rhetoric. A New York Times headline described it as "Trump's racist rally."

The most-noted racist remarks came from a comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, in an attack calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean,” and saying, "these Latinos, they love making babies, too, just know that. They do, they do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country,” before talking about Black people carving watermelons.

The Trump campaign waited several hours before issuing a statement saying, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” It was unclear why other racist remarks made throughout the event, including by Hinchcliffe, were not addressed by the campaign.

"Battleground Pennsylvania," NBC News reports, "where polling margins show a razor-thin race between Trump and Harris, is home to thethird-largest Puerto Rican diaspora in the country. Last month, the former president invitedPuerto Rican artist Anuel AA onstage at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to publicly throw his support behind the Republican ticket."

Variety reports, "Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin were among the notable industry figures who boosted Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Sunday after a speaker at Donald Trump‘s political rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden called Puerto Rico 'a floating island of garbage.'"

"Bad Bunny, one of the world’s biggest music superstar[s] with more than 45 million Instagram followers, boosted Harris’ campaign video targeting voters in Puerto Rico and noting what a contentious relationship that Trump had with the island during his tenure in the White House. Lopez posted Harris campaign material targeted at Puerto Rico as well as the same video pitch that Bad Bunny boosted."

"Singer-actor Ricky Martin, with 18.6 million Instagram followers, did the same thing on his Instagram Stories feed, adding the comment 'I remember' on the Harris video. He also included a clip of Hinchcliffe’s 'garbage' comment."

Variety continued, reporting, "Luis Fonsi, the Puerto Rican singer who had a worldwide smash in 2017 with 'Despacito,' also reposted the Harris video and added a comment."

“We are not OK with this constant hate. It’s been abundantly clear that these people have no respect for us and yet they want our vote,” Fonsi wrote. “I purposely wrote this in English cause yes we’re American too.”

IFrame Content

Political strategist, CNN commentator, and co-host of ABC's "The View," Ana Navarro, has two million followers on the social media platform X and is a highly-influential Republican.

"Today, @KamalaHarris released policy proposals to help Puerto Rico. On the other hand at the Trump rally, this is going on," she wrote, pointing to a clip of Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."

"But nah. They’re not piece of s--- racists who treat Puerto Ricans as second-class US citizens. It’s just our imagination. Puerto Ricans, pay attention!"

She also noted posted a screenshot of Bad Bunny's post, in which he shared Vice President Harris's proposal for Puerto Rico with his 45 million followers.

IFrame Content

And, pointing to Hinchcliffe's racist remarks about Latinos making babies, Navarro wrote:

"Latinos, defend our community’s dignity.

Show some self-respect.

A vote against racism is a vote for @KamalaHarris."

Monday morning on "The View," co-host Sunny Hostin, who is Puerto Rican, served up a monologue strongly criticizing Donald Trump.

"This Puerto Rican has something to say about the island that I love, where my family is from," Hostin began. "Puerto Rico is 'trash'? We are Americans, Donald Trump. Americans. We voluntarily serve disproportionately high in the military, while you have bone spurs."

"And we vote."

"Pennsylvania is home to almost half a million Puerto Ricans. North Carolina, 115,000. Georgia, 100,000. Arizona, 64,000. Wisconsin, 61,000. Michigan, 43,000. Nevada, 27,000. We vote Donald Trump."

"Trash?"

"And by the way, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny, Luis Fonsi, and Mark Anthony have over 345 million followers on Instagram. I think you only have 26 million, since you care so much about size. And we don't like what was said about Puerto Rico. And we know how to take the trash out Donald Trump. Trash that has been collecting since 2016. And that's you, Donald Trump. And finally, my fellow Puerto Ricans, trash collection day is November 5th, 2024. Don't forget it."

IFrame Content

Former Fox News political commentator Geraldo Rivera let loose Sunday night:

"'A floating island of garbage…?' Referring to Puerto Rico??? 'Poisoning the blood of our nation…?' We have 'murder in our genes….?' Fuck these racists. Latino men of good will, have pride in yourselves and your ancestors. A vote for Trump is a vote against self-respect."

Monday morning he added: "Latino men, for the love of your parents and children, for your pride and your honor tell this little gringo s--- to go f--- himself."

See the video and social media posts above or at this link.

===

yikes

https://www.mediamatters.org/spanish-language-media/spanish-speakers-are-being-targeted-conspiracy-theories-about-climate-change

spanish-language TikTok creators have been pushing fringe conspiracy theories that argue against the existence of man-made climate change, proposing that climate change is a myth created by supposed elites to bring about the so-called Great Reset – a conspiracy theory that claims climate lockdowns will be used to strip individuals of their rights and possessions.

This comes as record heat waves are affecting the entire planet.

Misinformation about climate change on TikTok occurs despite the platform’s moderation policies, which prohibit “climate change misinformation that undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as content denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it.” Once again, non-English language content that violates platform policy is flying under the radar, spreading damaging misinformation in what is becoming a disturbing trend.

Media Matters found several Spanish-language posts on TikTok denying climate change, insisting it is a hoax made to impose oppressive or even lethal initiatives led by NGOs, like the UN's Agenda 21 and its much newer Agenda 2030, which sets a series of sustainable development goals for 2030. Agenda 2030 conspiracy theories, which are popular in Spanish, are often conflated with the Great Reset, which is also used to deny the need for action on climate change. Other theories include references to a secret weather control program known as HAARP and even flat earth theory. [vid]

other TikToks take clips from news programs where a supposed expert or study is used to sow doubt about the established facts of climate change. One clip had a guest who claimed, “There is no clear evidence that us, human beings, are capable of changing the earth’s climate,” but that what she has clearly seen is “President Biden asleep at the inauguration of the COP26.”Further, several of these news clips were sourced from Russian propaganda outlet RTand despite TikTok’s policy of labeling state affiliated news sources, the videos remained unlabeled – a common discrepancy between English and Spanish content on other major platforms as well.

Other common criticisms of climate science and action come in the form of testimonials or complaints from individuals who deny the existence of climate change without presenting evidence. Additionally, attacks on climate activist Greta Thunberg garner thousands of views and draw false equivalencies between her qualifications and scientists who deny climate change.

Conspiracy theories are increasingly crossing from the fever swamps of Spanish-language media like Telegram onto mainstream social media platforms and news networks like :{Americano Media.For instance, on the July 11 edition of Battleground Americano, host Jesús Márquez claimed that a so-called “New World Order” and the elites seek to manipulate all countries worldwide through international institutions, that they aim to “enslave the majority of the population,” and that “climate change is an excuse to drive changes that favor the elite.”}:

This makes it all the more likely that the growing Latino electorate will become the target of this type of misinformation in the coming election cycle.

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rep-paul-gosar-wants-to-redesignate-cesar-chavez-day-as-national-border-control-day

Rep. Paul Gosar wants to redesignate Cesar Chavez Day as ‘National Border Control Day’

The resolution reflects a priority of the Center for Immigration Studies

Rep. Paul Gosar is fighting a lawsuit from constituents he once blocked on Facebook. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Cal file photol)

By Emily Kopp

:{Posted April 1, 2019

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar introduced a resolution last week to designate the birthday of Cesar Chavez, March 31st, as “National Border Control Day.”

Many celebrate the birthday of Chavez, the iconic co-founder of the United Farm Workers union born to a Mexican American family, as a day to reflect on the dignity of agricultural workers and the contribution of Latinx immigrants to the United States.

But Gosar argues that Chavez’s legacy stands for something else entirely, according to a statement by the congressman.

“Cesar Chavez’s lifelong work to protect American workers should be echoed and celebrated throughout America,” Gosar said in his statement. “As open border Democrats continue to advocate against securing our southern border, it is critical to remember the damage illegal immigration does to legal American workers.”

The resolution argues that Chavez “recognized that flooding the labor market with people from abroad undermines the unionized American worker,” citing his calls for the boycott of non-unionized farms.

But the resolution has drawn rebuke from people who knew the labor leader as distorting his legacy, the Arizona Republic reported.

“No one championed immigrants earlier and more consistently than Cesar Chavez and the UFW,” longtime spokesman Marc Grossman told the paper. “But he did oppose strike-breaking by anybody, no matter who they were or what they came from, and that’s what the march was about.”

Gosar’s resolution followed a resolution introduced by Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., cosponsored by a few dozen Democrats, to designate March 31 “Cesar Chavez Day,” according to the Congressional Record.

According to a website devoted to the idea of creating National Border Control Day, the resolution reflects a longtime priority by the Center for Immigration Studies, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with ties to the Trump administration. The organization includes a button to donate on the site.

“Despite the appropriation of his name by the anti-borders crowd, Cesar Chavez dedicated much of his life to fighting against illegal immigration, which growers used to suppress the wages of American farm workers,” a spokesman for the nonprofit said in a statement. “Chavez ran an ‘Illegals Campaign’ to identify and report illegal workers, and even sent his own family to patrol the border when he felt Border Patrol wouldn’t do the job.”

While the center describes itself as a think tank with the mission of “research and publication of immigration issues,” it has published misleading reports to support nativist tropes like the idea that immigrants rely on welfare at a greater rate than natives that the conservative Cato Institute characterized as comparing “apples to elephants.”

And while the resolution cheers Chavez’s union for drawing on “nonviolence and mass mobilization to improve the conditions of persecuted and impoverished American workers,” Gosar has rarely voted in favor of the interests of union workers, according to the AFL-CIO.

Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva accused Gosar of concern trolling by “attempting to revise history and corrupt the achievements of Cesar Chavez by attempting to paint him as a right-wing anti-immigrant hack,” the Arizona Republic reported.

“In his advocacy efforts to improve the working conditions and economic well-being of the vulnerable men and women who harvest the food for our constituents’ tables, Cesar Chavez is the complete opposite of the Republican Party and their current anti-immigrant, anti-worker views,” Grijalva said in a statement.

The resolution does not mark the first time Gosar has leveraged headline-grabbing tactics to push an anti-immigration stance.

The congressman last year asked Capitol Police and the Department of Justice to “consider checking identification” of everyone attending President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and “arresting any illegal aliens in attendance.”

At least 27 lawmakers had invited Dreamers protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, to be their guests for the address.

A nearly identical resolution was introduced in the last Congress by Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.

“It seems only appropriate to deem his birthday as ‘National Border Control Day – seeing that Chavez spent his life addressing the harmful effects that illegal migration might have on this country,” Gohmert said in a statement.

But Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., then the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, denounced the effort as “shameful,” according to The Hill.

“Congressman Gohmert has done everything he can to attack the true legacy of César Chávez to weaken unions, undermine labor protections for workers, and derail immigration reform efforts that honor the dignity and contributions of workers and their families,” the congresswoman said in a statement.

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pbs newshour? 10 22 many latinos do not vote b/c can't tell diff between parties? dems lag on outreach?

an ah 1 23

When Donald Trump was competing with Jeb Bush in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Trump chastised the former Florida governor for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail. Trump argued that Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker, was encouraging Latino immigrants to avoid learning English.

But when Trump ran for reelection in 2020, outreach to Spanish-language media was a fundamental part of his game plan — especially in Florida. To a degree, it worked. While Trump lost the 2020 election, Florida was one of the states in which his victory was only possible thanks to conservative Latino voters.

When one of Trump’s former White House press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was sworn in as Arkansas governor in early January, she banned the use of the term “Latinx” in government communications and criticized the term for being grammatically awkward in Spanish. Many Spanish speakers find that term offensive (including Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona), and Sanders’ executive order seemed to be an attempt at Latino outreach.

English-only initiatives have been common among MAGA Republicans. But a new right-wing media outlet, Americano Media, is using Spanish to enamor Latino voters.

Reporting for Politico on January 23, journalist Natalie Allison explains that “Republicans have made notable inroads among Hispanic voters in recent election cycles. Now, a conservative media network is looking to cement and further those gains by trying to become the Fox News of Spanish-speaking America. Americano Media, which launched in March, is embarking on an aggressive expansion plan to shape center-right Hispanic opinion during the upcoming election cycle.”

According to Allison, Americano Media “has hired more than 80 Latino journalists and producers, are expanding their radio presence to television, and by the end of the year, will have studios in Miami, Las Vegas and D.C. with reporters covering the White House, Congress and embedding in 2024 presidential campaigns.”

“This month, Americano is launching a $20 million marketing campaign to draw in new viewers,” Allison reports. “It’s the latest development in an arms race to reach and win over the nation’s second-largest demographic group, one playing an increasingly critical role in election outcomes.”

This is a big departure from 2015, when Trump, interviewed by Breitbart News, said of Jeb Bush, “I like Jeb. He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”

Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, Americano’s founder and CEO, told Politico that Americano’s goal is to be a “Fox News in Spanish.” And some Democrats are taking notice.

Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of the Democrat-friendly Courier Newsroom network, told Politico, “There is an information war in Latino and bilingual communities in this country. It’s a very smart and very alarming move by conservatives to double down on their investment in Americano Media.”

an ah 1 23

the 2022 midterms went much better than expected for the Democratic Party, with Democrats slightly increasing their U.S. Senate majority and winning key gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Republicans flipped the U.S. House of Representatives, but their new House majority under Speaker Kevin McCarthy is only in the single digits — not the 40-seat or 50-seat supermajority that pundits at Fox News and Fox Business were predicting.

However, two states where Democrats suffered major disappointments were Florida and Texas. Florida is known for close elections, but Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigned from the far right and was reelected by 19 percent. MSNBC’s Joy Reid has argued that Florida shouldn’t be considered a swing state anymore — it has become a full-fledged red state.

Texas has long been a red state, but Democratic strategists believed they were making headway when their candidates only lost in Texas by single digits in statewide races in 2018 and 2020. President Joe Biden lost the Lone Star State by about 6 percent in 2020 compared to the double-digit losses Democrats typically suffered in statewide races in Texas during the 1990s and 2000s. But in 2022, incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott defeated Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 11 percent.

Journalist Luisita Lopez Torregrosa, in an article published by the Texas Observer on January 4, offers a Texas/Florida comparison. Both states, she notes, were bad for Democrats when it came to statewide races in 2022. But Torregrosa stresses that from a demographics standpoint, there are major differences between Florida voters and Texas voters.

Texas, Torregrosa observes, is a state in which non-Hispanic whites are now a minority. Democratic strategists have long fantasized about flipping Texas, based on its demographics. But so far, that hasn’t happened.

“Texas has been a majority-minority state for close to two decades, but Latinos command far less political and economic influence here than they do in Florida,” Torregrosa notes. “Non-Hispanic white Texans make up about 39.4 percent of the state’s 30 million population. Latinos account for nearly half, around 40.2 percent, with Blacks making up 13.2 percent, Asian-Americans 5.5 percent, and American Indians 1.1 percent.”

A Florida/Texas comparison, according to Torregrosa, underscores the fact that there is no “one-size-fits-all” model where U.S.-based Latinos are concerned. Florida has a large Cuban and Cuban-American community, while Texas’ Latino community is heavily Mexican and Mexican-American/Chicano.

READ MORE:**Where woke goes to die': Why Florida is now a red state**

“With a dominant contingent of conservative Cubans and Venezuelans, Florida Latinos enjoy more power in their state and in Washington than Latinos do in Texas,” Torregrosa explains. “Florida’s 27-member congressional delegation is 26.5 percent Latino. Latinos occupy high-level statewide and county posts and make up around 20 percent of the state legislature in Tallahassee. By comparison, Latinos are under-represented in Texas. Only 19 percent of the state’s congressional delegation — the second largest in the country — are Latino. The state legislature is 61 percent white, though the state is only 39.4 percent white. There is, to be sure, Latino local political power in many Texas communities, especially around the Rio Grande Valley, but the state is run by primarily white Republicans.”

For Democrats, one of the most discouraging things about the 2022 election results in Florida was the fact that DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio fared well in some of the state’s most heavily Latino counties.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with a 19-point reelection landslide, got about 77 percent of the vote in the ten precincts with the heaviest Latino populations,” Torregrosa observes. “The only notable exception came in Central Florida, where Puerto Ricans continue to support Democrats. The Puerto Rican population in Florida has grown substantially since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, and thousands migrated to Florida.”

During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Donald Trump chastised former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the campaign trail (Bush is a fluent Spanish speaker who has had no problem being interviewed in Spanish on Univision). But in 2022, GOP groups in Florida aggressively targeted Latino voters with Spanish-language ads.

“Abbott and DeSantis each orchestrated the right-wing agenda with an eye beyond their states,” Torregrosa says of the 2022 midterms. “Abbott has done so relatively quietly, DeSantis visibly and volubly all over the country. Both men easily won reelection, but DeSantis’ landslide has more repercussions. He turned Florida crimson red and polished the Republican brand, giving himself a springboard to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination should he decide to defy his former mentor and now rival, former President Donald Trump…. For now and the foreseeable future, Abbott and DeSantis will continue to advance their brand of radical conservatism.”

facebook: youtube

https://www.mediamatters.org/spanish-language-media/dozens-spanish-language-**election-fraud**-youtube-videos-demonstrate-platforms

https://www.mediamatters.org/spanish-language-media/despite-policies-election-misinformation-persists-spanish-youtube

JUNE 22, 2018

UPDATED 3 YEARS AGO

Big Oil eyes U.S. minority groups to build offshore drilling support

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The largest U.S. oil and gas lobby group is seeking to convince Hispanic and black communities to support the Trump administration’s proposed expansion of offshore drilling, arguing it would create high paying jobs, including for storm-displaced Puerto Ricans.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) launched its “Explore Offshore” campaign earlier this month to counter offshore drilling foes in coastal southeast states from Virginia to Florida, where lawmakers and governors on both sides of the aisle have expressed fear an oil spill could ruin tourism.

“We want to build support in minority communities because the message that increasing the supply of affordable energy and good paying jobs will resonate,” said Erik Milito, API’s director of Upstream and Industry Operations.

As part of the campaign, API has partnered with a number of black and Hispanic business groups, including the Virginia, Florida and North Carolina Hispanic Chambers of Commerce and the Florida Black Chamber of Commerce and South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce.

A Pew Research poll published in January showed that 56 percent of Hispanics and 54 percent of blacks opposed offshore drilling, compared to 48 percent of white people.

The Interior Department in January announced a proposal to open up nearly all U.S. offshore waters to drilling, triggering a backlash from coastal states that rely on tourism.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a Senate panel in April that he is likely to scale back the proposal following meetings with coastal governors. Shortly after he unveiled his offshore drilling proposal, Zinke offered an exemption for Florida after he held a private meeting with Republican Governor Rick Scott.

The oil and gas industry is keen to pursue seismic testing in areas they believe hold the largest reserves along the southern Atlantic coast and to Florida’s eastern Gulf shorelines.

The API campaign published op-eds in local newspapers this week, including one by Stephen Gilchrist, chair of South Carolina’s African American Chamber of Commerce. In it he touts API’s major talking point that oil and gas exploration jobs offer locals an average salary of $116,000 without requiring a college degree.

“It’s a myth that communities of color are not interested in supporting offshore exploration,” he wrote in South Carolina’s Post and Courier. “I’ve personally attended town hall meetings up and down South Carolina’s coast where there has been significant support for the economic opportunity offshore exploration holds - especially in communities that have been historically disenfranchised.”

JOBS OUTWEIGH ENVIRONMENT

API, however, acknowledged it needs to hold community meetings and improve local outreach to sway minority communities that have been inclined to oppose offshore drilling.

Miriam Ramirez, a co-chair of the API’s Florida campaign and a former Puerto Rico state senator said she thinks the lure of higher-paying jobs, especially for victims of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, would create economic opportunities that outweigh environmental concerns.

“We have an influx of thousands of Puerto Ricans in Florida, including doctors and engineers who plan to relocate permanently,” Ramirez said.

A study released in March by Oceana, an Ocean conservancy group, found Interior’s offshore drilling plan would put more than 2.6 million jobs and nearly $180 billion in gross domestic product at risk for only two year’s-worth of oil and just over one year’s-worth of gas at current consumption.

“Jobs that come from offshore drilling do not guarantee local good paying jobs compared to the tourism industry, which can keep jobs local,” said Pricey Harrison, a North Carolina state representative and president of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators.

Julio Fuentes, president of Florida’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said he is reaching out to new Puerto Rican evacuees, as well as existing local communities that are skeptical of offshore drilling, by hosting roundtables with business leaders and community organizations.

“I always like to talk about the safety aspect of it,” Fuentes said.

“Since the BP oil spill, there have been over 100 new industry standards put in place,” he said, referring to the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 that caused tremendous damage to beaches and coastlines in Gulf coast states.

But environmental justice advocates counter that there is no way to guarantee safe offshore drilling.

Marce Gutierrez-Graudins, president of conservation group Azul, said it takes only one spill or accident to deprive lower-income Hispanic communities access to the shore, which she argues is an important form of escape from the stress of urban areas where many minorities live.

Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-base/

How do we know anything at all about the 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020? Are they mostly racist? Sexist, homophobic, xenophobic? Are they white working-class males who suffer from status anxiety as the U.S. population grows more diverse? Are Trump supporters wealthier voters or poorer? Are they anti-elites, or elites themselves? Are working people becoming the core of the Republican Party, as Senator Josh Hawley proclaimed on election night? Or did Joe Biden bring them back into the Democratic fold?

Answers to these questions traditionally come from exit polls supplemented by what we hear from political commentators, labor union officials, and community leaders. An NBC poll (February 21, 2021) reported that the news is not good for labor progressives:

The GOP is rapidly becoming the blue-collar party.

In the last decade, the percentage of blue-collar voters who call themselves Republicans has grown by 12 points. At the same time, the number in that group identifying as Democrats has declined by 8 points.

Are working people really flocking to the party of their bosses? Or are the polls really screwed up? Given the massive polling errors during the Trump elections, there is reason to be skeptical. Just recall the pre-election polling of the critical "Blue Wall" states. On the morning of November 3, 2020, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight poll-of-polls had Biden up by 8.4 percent in Wisconsin, 7.9 percent in Michigan and 4.7 percent in Pennsylvania. That forecast was off by 3.5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 5.1 points in Michigan and a whopping 7.8 points in Wisconsin, thereby underestimating the Trump vote by 16.4 points in these three key states alone. And in the Senate race in Maine, the poll-of-polls had Susan Collins losing by 8 percent the day before the election. She won by 10.6 percent. Exit polls, which analyze who voted for whom demographically, are even less accurate.

This is why we have been searching for another way to determine whether or not the political inclinations of white working-class voters are radically different from their Black and Brown brothers and sisters. Is it possible that the polls are missing critical features that bind working-class people together rather than divide them by racial and ethnic identities?

Asked another way: Is there an alternative to polls?

Yes. Political polling can be avoided by examining the actual election results, precinct by precinct, and then linking those precincts to the census tracts that contain those precincts. This approach doesn't rely on any political questions and therefore is not subject to misleading subjective responses to hot-button issues. It also doesn't depend on whether someone tells the pollster the truth, or doesn't recall their vote correctly, or if the poll sample is skewed. The Census doesn't ask people their political preferences or their stances on various issues, or even their religion. It just gathers information on hundreds of demographic features like race, ethnicity, age, gender, income, occupation, housing, and the like.

Since we know the actual results in each election district and since we know the demographic information of the neighborhoods connected to each voting district, we are able to determine (to a high degree of certainty) if neighborhoods with more white working-class people disproportionately support Trump. To do this, we use a statistical method called multiple regression.

A Few Notes on Methodology

How multiple regression works: Imagine an average neighborhood in Pennsylvania with a given percentage of old, young, Black, white, Hispanic, working class folks and a certain median income. Now what would happen to the Trump vote if we moved to a new neighborhood with exactly the same demographics except that the percentage of white people increased? Our guess is that the Trump vote would go up and in fact it does. A multiple regression does that with each characteristic at the same time. So we can say what happens to the Trump vote if we increase the percentage of white working class men in the neighborhood and change nothing else.

There are limitations using this approach to be sure. Polling, while imperfect, does have the benefit of tying individuals and their characteristics to their individual behaviors (how they say they voted). This provides a more fine-grained analysis assuming that the responses and polling samples are reasonably accurate. Using census data is constrained by the fact that we are looking at how groups (neighborhoods), not individuals, are voting, and therefore there will be more uncertainty since neighborhoods are not demographically coherent. So pick your poison: Use polls that may be skewed due to the passions Trump engenders, or focus on neighborhood census data which is less precise, but free from the Trump phenomena. We're going with the neighborhood approach.

Lastly, the independent variables are income or education or working class occupations plus gender, Black, Hispanic, Asian and size of the precinct vote. The dependent variable is the percentage of the Trump vote in the precinct. The model explains 70 to 80 percent of the variation in the Trump vote depending on which definition of working class is used. All the independent variables are highly significant (all p values smaller than 0.000).

What the Study Found

Our study focuses on 3,058 voting precincts and their surrounding neighborhoods in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania.

Finding #1: The Pennsylvania white working class in general shows significant Trump support.

We didn't want this answer, but there it is: White working-class neighborhoods strongly support Trump. This is the case no matter how working-class is defined: by education (high school or lower); by income (below the median); or by occupation (non-management service and blue-collar occupations). Pennsylvania neighborhoods with a preponderance of these white working-class groups lean significantly towards Trump.

Finding #2: The Pennsylvania white working-class neighborhoods do not form a coherent political entity. They are divided politically by higher and lower paying occupations.

Our findings show significant splits among white working-class neighborhoods, including among white working-class men.

Overall, white neighborhoods strongly support Trump while Black neighborhoods do not. But that homogeneity breaks down when white working people are defined by different types of working-class occupations. To see this clearly, we focused on neighborhoods with lower-paying service jobs (Low Service Neighborhoods), and higher-paying blue-collar construction and production neighborhoods (Blue-collar Neighborhoods). Low Service jobs, which make up approximately 16.4 percent of all Pennsylvania occupations, consist of four census-defined occupations (with May 2019 median Pennsylvania wage estimates noted in parenthesis):

Healthcare support occupations ($13.53/hr.)
Food preparation and serving related ($10.72)
Personal care and service ($11.58)
Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance ($13.60)

Blue-collar job categories (23.3 percent of the state's occupations) include:

Natural resources (($15.21)
Construction ($23.91)
Maintenance ($22.60)
Production ($18.17)
Transportation and moving, ($15.61)

Our statistical method allows us to focus in on the white workers in these occupations.

The Results:

Read the above chart as follows: For every one standard deviation increase in the neighborhood variable in the demographic column, what is the percentage increase or decrease in the Trump vote, holding all the other variables constant? For example, if the percentage of Black residents in an average neighborhood goes up by one standard deviation (about 21%), the Trump vote would go down 11.5% holding constant all the other independent demographic variables.

And to be clear:

At the neighborhood level, we find that an increase in white blue-collar males has about seven times the positive impact on the Trump vote as the same increase in white blue-collar women. [Note: The regression shows that if the percent of white blue-collar men and women is increased by one standard deviation, the rise in the Trump vote would be 9.2% for these men and only 1.4% for these women.]
At the neighborhood level, an increase in Low Service white women correlates with an increase in the Trump vote. But there was no impact at all from a similar increase in Low Service white men. (That an increase of women in any occupation would have bigger impact than a similar increase of white men is a counter-intuitive surprise that deserves more careful study.) [Added note: With the gracious assistance of Oberlin politics professor Michael Parkin, we tested and retested this result. The finding remained: Women in lower paid service occupations had a small but positive impact on the Trump vote whereas the men in those same occupations did not.]
Overall, the neighborhood increase in the percentage of white blue-collar workers has a much larger impact on the Trump vote than a similar increase in white Low Service workers.

The blue-collar occupations in our study earn wages that are near or above the median hourly wage for the state, which is $18.99 per hour. While Trump has modest support from Low Service and Blue-Collar white women, the guts of his white working-class support seems to be centered with more middle-income blue-collar white men.

This suggests that millions of white male working people in low-paying service industry jobs—from waiting tables to cleaning building—did not support Trump. And there is only weak support for Trump among white women in the same occupations.

Finding #3: Pennsylvania neighborhoods with increased percentages of Hispanic residents between 2010 and 2019, increased their support for Trump between 2016 and 2020.

This is a shocker.

We compared 2016 and 2020 election precincts in Pennsylvania: 1280 precincts showed percentage increases in the Trump vote, and 1760 precincts showed percentage decreases. Next we calculated the change in demographic factors between the last census in 2010 and the latest data for 2019 in the "more-for" and "less-for" Trump precincts. As we would expect, the "more-for-Trump" neighborhoods, showed, on average, increased percentages of blue-collar workers, of those with lower educational levels, and of those with lower incomes. Also, there were fewer Black and Asian residents. But much to our surprise, the percentage change in the Hispanic population in the last decade was significantly higher in the "more-for-Trump" neighborhoods than in the "less-for-Trump" neighborhoods.

Why?...

ca lost seat 1st 1x? NY by 89 ppl tx gets 2

evidence of Trump's final act of 'sabotage'

Igor Derysh Salon

April 28, 2021

Democratic lawmakers and election experts expressed concerns that Monday's release of the Census Bureau's congressional apportionment data reflected a systematic undercount of Latino residents that may be linked to former President Donald Trump's efforts to change census rules.

The Census Bureau that Texas would gain two House seats after the latest population count, while Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon and Montana would each gain one. California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia will each lose a seat. But those numbers were well short of the projected changes, particularly in states with fast-growing Latino populations like Texas, Florida and Arizona. All three of those states were projected to gain one additional seat apiece, sparking concerns that Latino residents were undercounted, which could have important effects on political power and the distribution of federal funds.

"There is a serious issue with undercounting of Hispanics in this Census," warned Sam Wang, a professor who runs the Princeton Election Consortium and Princeton Gerrymandering Project. "The states that underperformed relative to July 2020 population estimates included Texas, Florida, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada — all Hispanic-rich states. A real risk of poor representation."

Dave Wasserman, an election data expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, agreed that lower-than-expected counts in Arizona, Florida, Texas and California may suggest a "larger-than-expected, systemic undercount in heavily Hispanic areas."

It will be months before the Census Bureau releases more detailed data in August, and only after that can the congressional redistricting process begin.

"The initial results are surprising enough that once more details are released, we will be able to better determine to what extent the Latino population was fairly and accurately counted," Arturo Vargas, president of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, told The Los Angeles Times.

Myriad factors undoubtedly affected the census count, not all of which are political. "The census numbers as a whole have been shaped by a lot of negative and positive forces," Thomas Wolf, senior counsel at Brennan Center for Justice, told Mother Jones. "We had wildfires, COVID, displacement, hurricanes."

But many were quick to blame Trump's failed attempt to add a citizenship question to the census for a potential undercount of Latino voters after accusing the administration of trying to "sabotage" an accurate count. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected the attempt and advocacy groups spent months on outreach to traditionally undercounted communities, but some fear damage may already have been done.

"It caused people to not respond to the census," Kimball Brace, president of the redistricting consulting firm Election Data Services, told the Arizona Daily Star. "And, as a result, they were all lower than what they were anticipating. … If you got all of those press reports and commentary and everything else talking about how much Trump doesn't want people to respond if they're Hispanic, you don't necessarily have to have a question on the survey."

The reapportionment data stunned political observers in Arizona, which saw its population grow by 11% over the last decade but failed to gain a House seat. Some lawmakers faulted Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who invested nearly $2 million to boost response rates, for not doing enough to counter Trump's impact on the count.

Arizona state Sen. Martín Quezada, a Democrat from Phoenix, faulted Trump's census efforts for costing the state an additional seat but said Ducey deserves blame too after Quezada's bill to fund census efforts in areas heavily impacted by COVID-19 was rejected by the Republican-led legislature.

Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said in a statement that "Ducey refused to stand up for Arizona and instead followed former President Trump's strategy to intimidate Latinos and discourage their participation."

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said on Twitter that he had helped lead the effort to extend the census deadline "because we *knew* Latinos, Native Americans, and Arizonans in rural & hard-to-reach areas weren't being counted. This undercount is an intentional part of Trump's legacy."

A spokesperson for Ducey pushed back on the claims, telling KPNX-TV that the state's rates were similar to other states and that response rate from tribal communities was high.

Census Bureau officials also told NPR they are confident in the accuracy of the population number.

But the missed projections were evident in other states with large and growing Latino populations, including California, which lost a House seat for the first time in history. Democrats widely blamed Trump.

"The Trump administration did everything it could to prevent an accurate count in the #2020Census, and now Californians are paying the price," tweeted Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif. "The culture of fear he instilled within our communities jeopardizes billions in funding that our state deserves."

Though Texas emerged as the big winner with two additional seats, state Democrats slammed Republican officials for failing to counter Trump's efforts to "manipulate" the census.

"Knowing we were at risk of a considerable undercount, Gov. Greg Abbott and our Republican leaders did nothing," Rep. Chris Turner, chairman of the state House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement. "Last session, House and Senate Democrats filed bills and attempted to amend the budget to ensure Texas invested in counting every resident. All these efforts were blocked by the Republican majority," he added.

Monday's release was largely touted as a win for Republicans, with states carried by Trump seeing a net gain of three seats while states won by President Biden lost three. While red states will see a slight boost in their Electoral College power, it's not entirely clear how the data will affect redistricting.

"Reapportionment itself means little compared to the redistricting fights to come. The bigger shift in House seats are likely to come from how districts are drawn, not how many districts each state gets," Wasserman, of the Cook Political Report, told Axios. "On balance, I think this reapportionment offers a small boost for Republicans, but the bigger boost is likely to come from how Republicans draw these seats in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia."

California is expected to lose a Democratic seat while West Virginia will lose a Republican seat, presumably canceling each other out. Illinois and Ohio already have heavily partisan maps so Illinois' Democratic majority and Ohio's Republican majority are each expected to lose a seat, also canceling each other out, according to Wang, the Princeton University professor. Pennsylvania is expected to lose a Democratic seat, but since Democrats control the map-drawing process in New York, they are likely to cancel that out by eliminating a seat that favors Republicans, Wang predicted. New "fair map" laws and independent redistricting commissions in Ohio and Pennsylvania may lessen the partisan impact.

Michigan's new independent redistricting commission is expected to reverse the state's heavily partisan Republican gerrymander, but it's not clear how that state's map will shake out. Colorado also has an independent commission that will likely add a Democratic seat, according to Wang, but Oregon's bipartisan process is expected to cancel that out with an additional Republican seat. Montana's new seat (doubling the state's House delegation from one to two) will almost certainly favor Republicans, and North Carolina's Republican-led legislature is also likely to add a favorable seat, although the state's districting maps have faced numerous legal challenges in recent years.

That means few changes to the makeup of Congress across those states, leaving Republican-led Texas and Florida as the major question marks.

Texas's all-Republican state government will almost certainly try to draw two new favorable seats, but Wang warned that may prove challenging. The Lone Star State's map is already heavily tilted toward the GOP, while rapid demographic changes increasingly threaten to unseat Republicans in previously favorable districts.

Florida's Republican government is expected to try to add a favorable seat but that effort could be challenged under Florida's new "Fair Districts" requirement approved by voters. Since the state's Supreme Court is all Republican, however, advocates have been skeptical that law will actually be enforced.

"Republicans seem likely to get a net advantage from redistricting. But it's mainly because of single-party redistricting in states like Florida and North Carolina," Wang wrote on Twitter.

The Cook Political Report projects that Republicans will gain three to four additional House seats from the next round of redistricting.

"The most predictable effect of redistricting is that red states' delegations are likely to get redder and blue states bluer," Wasserman wrote on Twitter, "meaning the nation's political conditions are likely to continue to deteriorate."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/latinos-in-the-us-and-the-road-to-prison-a-historical_us_594799bce4b0d188d0280003

Sofía Espinoza Álvarez, Contributor

Director, Empower Global Foundation

Latinos In The U.S And The Road To Prison: A Historical Reminder

https://www.target.com/p/latino-young-men-and-boys-in-search-of-justice-testimonies-paperback/-/A-51080507

In “Message to My Seventeen-Year-Old Self,” Roberto Martínez, a California Correctional inmate, writes that he wishes he would have taken school more seriously. “Prison ain’t anything like the thug life lies romanticize it to be; it doesn’t make you a man.” In this compelling collection of first-person testimonials—essays, poetry and letters—Latino men and boys who have been or are incarcerated write movingly about their past and future. The book also incorporates essays by community advocates seeking criminal and juvenile justice system reform. Leaders of organizations including Barrios Unidos, Homeboy Industries, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice and National Compadres Network contribute pieces that address issues such as culture-based healing and violence prevention. Many use artistic expression as a form of healing, and this volume includes a wide variety of art, from poetry to drawings, tattoos and murals. Acclaimed author and former gang member Luis J. Rodríguez writes in his foreword that the disproportionate number of young men of color in the justice system is rooted in economic, political and historical factors. He asserts that the United States’ punitive laws and practices—including three-strike laws, gang and gun enhancements, zero tolerance and school removals—have fueled a massive prison industrial complex, and ultimately, more gangs and violence. With the publication of this collection of first-person testimony and articles by system reform advocates, editors Frank de Jesús Acosta and Henry A.J. Ramos seek to humanize disadvantaged Latino young men and call attention to the need for a restorative rather than punitive justice system. This volume confirms that—for both the Latino community and the country as a whole—the “school-to-prison pipeline” must be closed now.

fla coc

http://www.fshcc.com/fshcc-programs-balance-energy

clean coal

As a peninsula, Florida is unfortunately more exposed and susceptible to natural and manmade disasters. Over reliance on any one energy source could lead to disastrous situations. Over half of Florida’s electricity is generated by natural gas. There is a need for the state to explore alternative energy sources that enhance reliability and ensure access to affordable energy. Clean coal, nuclear, and cost-effective energy efficiency are readily available alternatives that can provide for enhanced reliability and affordability.

By providing a reliable, affordable, and environmentally compatible source of electricity, clean coal and nuclear energy keep Florida businesses competitive. Clean coal and nuclear plants also are engines of local job growth, and keep businesses operating expenses predictably low for the life of the energy facility.

Most concerning for our members is that Florida may be 70% reliant on natural gas by the end of 2020, and our members are concerned about relying on one fuel that experienced a peak price of $13.69 per million British thermal units on July 2, 2008. This overreliance on one fuel could undermine recent growth in our economy and burden Florida families with high electricity prices. To combat this overreliance, BEF suggests Florida policymakers embrace alternatives to natural gas that promote and achieve reliable and affordable electricity.

dodger stadium

history AA latino urban renewal

http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-most-shocking-times-rich-people-displaced-poor-people-profit-america

Presidential Hopefuls Who Deny Climate Science Can Forget About Winning the Latino Vote

Mike Gaworecki / DeSmogBlog

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/magazine/how-do-you-define-a-gang-member.html

Steyer said latino vote key in beating prop 23?

In ways that might be unexpected, voter suppression, too, has become a climate issue.Al Jazeera reported [19] earlier this week that climate is a high-priority issue for voters of color, in no small part because communities of color have been some of the hardest hit by the impacts of climate change and extraction. Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight.com found that non-white voters were almost twice as likely [20] to see climate change as a “top priority,” skewing traditional perceptions of climate as a white issue. Unfortunately, voters of color, who tend to vote for Democrats, are also those most likely to face challenges getting to the polls. The Supreme Court’s repeal [21] of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 last summer opened the floodgates for even more brash gerrymandering and voter suppression [22] by conservatives this election cycle. [23]

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Ruben Barrales (born 1962) is the former Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush, and was also the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.^[1][2][3] He then served as the CEO of the San Diego RegionalChamber of Commerce. He is currently the President and CEO of GROW Elect, apolitical action committee that recruits, endorses, trains, and funds Latino Republican candidates for public office.^[4] He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Public Policy Institute of California. Barrales has also run as a candidate for the state government post of California State Controller.

Barrales identifies as a Mexican American and is recognized as the first Latino person to serve on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.^[5] Barrales has also appeared in the Hispanic Business Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Hispanics” list on three occasions within the last ten years^[6] ^oC ^b2 ^dept ^int

After years of boycotting this racist, sexist, and homophobic company on a national level, National Council of La Raza (NCLR) helped broker an agreement to put an end to the boycott. It was signed by the directors of the GI Forum, NCLR and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). The agreement called for Coors to provide sponsorship money to these organizations and help Chicanos become distributorship owners, i.e. Tom Flores in CA, for which these organizations agreed to increase Coors' "market share" of Latino drinkers. That means the promotion of drinking Coors beer and increasing the number of drinkers and alcoholics in our communities.

Eyeing potentially restive Hispanic voters in 2012, GOP operative Dan Garza is launching an “economic freedom” message campaign aimed at Latinos, and hiring big name business and religious figures to help in key states.

Garza told iWatch News he hopes to raise $1 million by the end of 2011 for his campaign, dubbed the Libre Initiative, which will tout such core Republican values as less economic and business regulation. Among the big name donors he has approached are “representatives of the Koch family,” said Garza, who worked in the White House’s public liaison office under George W. Bush and then did stints with Spanish language media. Garza declined to say, however, whether Koch interests have committed any funds yet to the initiative, a 501 (c) (4) which is permitted to keep donors names secret.

Two GOP operatives familiar with the initiative say Garza told them he has already secured commitments for about $1 million — including funds from Koch family interests.

Charles and David Koch control the nation’s second largest privately owned company, Kansas-based Koch Industries, with big interests in oil and gas, paper products and derivatives trading. The two Koch brothers are each reportedly worth about $21 billion. Over the last few decades the brothers and Koch family foundations have been financial angels for numerous conservative think tanks, grassroots groups and politicians.

A spokesman for Koch declined to comment.

Garza’s fledgling effort is but the latest example of GOP drives to win the hearts, minds and votes of the fast- growing Hispanic community — efforts that in the 2012 elections could be crucial in swing states like Florida and New Mexico.

On Friday and Saturday in Albuquerque, the Hispanic Leadership Network, run by Jennifer Korn, another alumnus of the Bush public liaison office, is hosting a conference featuring several prominent Latino officials as part of its drive to build a Hispanic grassroots political network. Korn’s group was created earlier this year by the Republican-affiliated American Action Network; the network is chaired by former Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican.

And this summer the Republican State Leadership Committee — chaired by GOP super-consultant Ed Gillespie —announced plans to spend $3 million in 2012 recruiting 100 Hispanics to run for state legislative office and boosting GOP support for women and other minority candidates.

“Voters would like to have someone they can identify with,” Gillespie told iWatch News, noting that currently there are only 39 Republican Hispanic state legislators nationwide. “The immediate perspective is to increase our share of the Hispanic vote in 2012, which would be significant,” Gillespie said.

Hispanics are the nation’s fastest growing minority: there are some 50 million living in the U.S., about 16 percent of the nation’s population, according to the 2010 census. One in five voters in 2012 is expected to be Hispanic in states such as California, New Mexico and Texas.

The GOP’s stepped up drive to woo Hispanics may be complicated by the get-tough stances of many leading Republicans on the issue of illegal immigration — and the sometimes harsh rhetoric of conservative Tea Party activists.

But Republicans see new opportunities in part because of the impact of the recession. Unemployment in Hispanic communities has been running at more than 11 percent, compared to the latest national figure of 9.1 percent.

In 2008, the Obama campaign reportedly spent about $20 million on a robust Hispanic outreach effort, and was rewarded with 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. The President’s overall job approval rating dropped to 48 percent among Hispanics, according to a recent Gallup survey, down from 60 percent in January. The drop in support is usually attributed to the impact of the struggling economy and disappointments about the failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

Democrats know they can’t take the Hispanic vote for granted. In mid-August, the White House hosted 160 Hispanic leaders for two days of meetings that included access to cabinet officials and key presidential advisers, according to The Washington Post. The get-together seems to be part of a stepped-up drive by the White House and President Obama’s reelection campaign to revive Hispanic enthusiasm before next fall. .

“I think both sides are going to spend a lot of money to win the Hispanic vote,” said Jose Mallea, the campaign manager in 2010 for GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Mallea, who worked for White House chief of staff Andy Card while Garza was at the public liaison office, said he “offered to help Dan” with the Libre Initiative . “I think it’s a great idea. He told me he had funding,” Mallea said.

The gist of the Libre Initiative, based in Mission Texas, is simple: “By increasing awareness of economic freedom, people will vote accordingly,” said Garza. “Our effort is to expand the conversation from just immigration to issues of the economy, jobs and small business.”

To achieve these goals, the Initiative has hired Michael Barrera, the former president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and John Mendez, a Southern California evangelical minister. Garza, who left the White House in 2006, also boasts media skills that could help: he did a stint in 2008 as host of Agenda Washington, a Sunday morning show on Univision, the Spanish language cable network. Garza previously was president of Hispanicand Poder magazines.

The Colorado-based Barrera will focus on reaching out to small business and entrepreneurs in the Southwest, while Mendez will be doing “outreach to mostly faith-based groups,” Garza said.

Garza said the initiative plans to target three big states California, Florida and Texas, plus the Southwest and Northeast. To spread its message widely, the initiative will “align with organizations that support economic freedom,” such as the American Enterprise Institute, CATO and the Mercatus Center, Garza said. “We want to be a partner and a resource.”

Other groups are taking different tacks.

Korn of the Hispanic Leadership Network, toldiWatch News that this weekend’s conference in Albuquerque will explore a range of issues affecting Hispanics, including jobs, housing and education. The meeting will feature New Mexico’s Governor Susana Martinez, former attorney general Alberto Gonzales — whose Justice Department Korn once worked for—and several other Hispanic political figures.

Korn, who was national Hispanic director for President Bush’s reelection drive in 2004, said her group has a budget of about $1 million annually, and plans to hold two conferences a year to help build a grassroots network that will include Hispanic leaders who want to be media surrogates. The group hosted a similar get-together in Florida early this year — which drew former Gov. Jeb Bush — and plans another one in the Sunshine State in early 2012.

Coleman of the American Action Network told iWatch News that the critical issue for the Hispanic network group is how best to “mobilize voters on the ground. It’s getting email and identifying organizations. It ranks as one of our top priorities.”

The Republican State Leadership Committee’s drive to recruit 100 Hispanic candidates for state legislative offices is “the first step on the escalator” to higher office, said Gillespie, noting that Sen. Rubio came out of the Florida legislature. “The Southwest,” Gillespie said, “is an area where we have a real opportunity and ready candidates.”

American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-linked group that Gillespie helped launch, also is trying to make inroads in the Hispanic vote in 2012. This summer, the group’s affiliate, Crossroads GPS, spent about $158,000 on Spanish language television spots hammering President Obama’s economic policies. The ads ran in nine markets with substantial Latino populations, including Denver, El Paso, Miami and Reno.

Crossroads declined to say what they’d spend next year on ads aimed at Hispanic voters. But Steven Law, the group’s president, said that “Hispanics are a huge priority for us… Hispanics are also becoming a crucial voting bloc in a number of states, and we need to be communicating with them on our issues.”

Social Issues, Politics, Karl Rove, Republican Party, Bush family, George H. W. Bush, Ed Gillespie, Jeb Bush

===

koch ass kick 2012 leads to Among those groups receiving money from the Koch donor network, GOP operatives say, are Concerned Women for America and the Libre Initiative, which was launched by Dan Garza, a former White House aide under President George W. Bush.

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Mercury, ozone, and Latinos

A 2000 study by the CDC found that, on average, Latino children have higher levels of mercury in their bodies compared to non-Hispanic white children. According to a 2004 study by the League of United Latin American Citizens, 39 percent of Latinos live within 30 miles of a power plant. Latinos are also less likely to have health insurance than any other racial or ethnic group: nearly one in every three (32.4 percent) lack health insurance.^[12]

A 2008 analysis of several studies on Latinos – based largely on previously unreleased data from the polling firm Bendixen & Amandi's 2008 National Survey of Latinos on the Environment – found that they face disproportionate risk from toxic mercury pollution because of a combination of cultural, economic and linguistic factors.

One of the biggest threats was from fishing: mercury poisoning occurs by ingesting contaminated fish and, according to the survey, 31 percent of Latinos fish regularly, with 76 percent of those eating and sharing what they catch with their families. These families include young children and women of childbearing age, the two most vulnerable population sectors to mercury poisoning. Another study conducted by the University of California-Davis titled, "Fishing for Justice or Just Fishing," revealed that Hispanic anglers fish close to their urban communities because of a lack of transportation options. The fish caught in urban areas tend to contain the highest concentrations of mercury contamination.

This exposure is already showing high levels of mercury contamination among Hispanic anglers. According to another University of California-Davis study, Hispanic anglers in California on average ingest 13.9 micrograms of mercury per day via fish they catch, mostly in local waters--almost twice the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe limit. The "Fishing for Justice or Just Fishing" study also found that this problem is compounded by several factors, such as fish advisories and warning signs rarely posted in Spanish.^[13]

A 2011 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Latino Coalition on Climate Change, the Center for American Progress and the National Wildlife Federation, "U.S. Latinos and Air Pollution," found that nearly one out of every two Latinos lives in the most ozone-polluted cities in the country.^[14]

The California Latino Water Coalition (CLWC) describes itself as "a statewide coalition of influential Latino leaders that supports development of San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta environmental, conveyance and sustainability solutions along with additional water resources in California. With actor-comedian Paul Rodriguez as chairperson, the organization's goal is to demonstrate the need for a comprehensive statewide water infrastructure plan, a program that includes groundwater and surface water storage capabilities, conservation and water resources stewardship, water recycling and desalinization." ^[1]

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Personnel

From the CLWC website: ^[1]

Paul Rodriguez, Chair
Mayor Victor Lopez, Co-Chair, Central Valley, City of Orange Cove
Ruben Guerra, Co-Chair, Southern California, Latin Business Association
Tony Estremera, Co-Chair, Director, Santa Clara Valley Water District

Contact information and Burson-Marsteller connections

Website: gotwater.org

Patrick George, cell phone number 310-487-3001, is listed as the CLWC contact on the group's press releases. ^[2] George is a director of Burson-Marsteller's media practice, working out of the public relations firm's Sacramento, California office. ^[3] The same phone number, along with Patrick George's name and sometimes his Burson-Marsteller email address (patrick.george AT bm.com), is listed on press releases for Accenture ^[4], the newsletter of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations ^[5], and announcements for the Friant Water Users Authority. ^[6]

Articles and resources

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 "About CLWC," California Latino Water Coalition website, accessed July 2009.
↑ "News," California Latino Water Coalition website, accessed July 2009.
↑ "Our office key contact: Patrick George," Burson-Marsteller website, accessed July 2009.
," Accenture, January 3, 2008.
," Volume XX, Issue 4, April 2009.
," U.S. Bureau of Reclamation website, September 12, 2006.

External resources...Lloyd G. Carter, "The PR Firm from Hell," as published in the Fresno Community Alliance newspaper, June 30, 2009.- Dan Bacher, "Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmworkers Suffer: CSPA demands investigation into water hoarding by Westlands and others," IndyBay.org, August 19, 2009.

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Mercury, ozone, and Latinos

Personnel

Contact information and Burson-Marsteller connections

Articles and resources

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References