The House Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration held a hearing on “Voting Rights and Election Administration in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Other Territories” on July 28th. Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, spoke on behalf of Puerto Rico. Gonzalez-Colon began by reminding her listeners that “The rights to vote… Read more »
Puerto Rico’s pro-“commonwealth” political party is pushing to include a “commonwealth” option on the ballot of a plebiscite scheduled for November 3, 2020. The United States government has repeatedly rejected many reiterations of “commonwealth” over the years, and some elements of rejected “commonwealth” – such as ongoing U.S. citizenship while achieving separate sovereignty – are… Read more »
Former President Barack Obama highlighted Puerto Rico’s lack of voting rights in a eulogy delivered at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on Thursday. Lewis, often called “the conscience of Congress,” represented Atlanta, Georgia in Congress since 1987 after establishing himself as a national leader for civil rights. He died on July 17 of… Read more »
Pennsylvania Democrats recently passed a resolution supporting statehood for Puerto Rico. They were not the first State Democratic organization to do so. Florida’s Democratic Party passed their own resolution including Puerto Rico statehood last October. The resolution, titled “Supporting the Admission of Puerto Rico as a state of the United States,” begins with a statement… Read more »
The Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, the governing body of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, unanimously passed a resolution last week calling on all Democratic federal legislators to support statehood for Puerto Rico. The Latino Caucus of the Committee took this action after the U.S. House of Representatives passed an admissions bill for Washington, D.C. without… Read more »
Michelle de la Isla, mayor of Topeka, Kansas, is running for Congress, hoping to represent District 2 in her Midwestern state. If she wins, she’ll be the first member of Congress of Puerto Rican descent from her state. De la Isla has lived in Kansas since 2000, when she became a student at Wichita State… Read more »
New York Councilman Ritchie Torres is the Democratic nominee for the 15th District in the South Bronx, the congressional seat Rep. Jose Serrano has held since 1990. The 15th District is a consistently Democratic-voting district, so it is expected that Torres will replace Serrano in the November election. Torres has indicated that he will be… Read more »
Puerto Rico has three viable status options: statehood independence (with or without a Compact of Free Association) current territory status Federal law, official documents and members of U.S. Congress have been explicit that Puerto Rico is a “possession” of the United States. This ownership implies some responsibility on the part of the United States, but… Read more »
The New York Times published a claim last weekend that has resurfaced with some frequency over the years, drawing outrage each time: the notion that the U.S. has the power to sell Puerto Rico or otherwise “divest” its most populous territory, home to over three million U.S. citizens. New York Councilman and congressional candidate Ritchie… Read more »
Elaine Duke, former acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), revealed in a New York Times interview over the weekend that President Trump asked whether the United States could “divest itself” of Puerto Rico. Duke, who served in the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Defense for 30 years, claimed that the president… Read more »
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