The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on Tuesday to consider “the states of the territories.” Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi was one of the expert witnesses. His testimony began on a positive note. “Puerto Rico is emerging from a challenging period with strength and optimism,” the governor said, “But much… Read more »
Natalie Jaresko, the executive director of the Financial Oversight Management Board (FOMB) in Puerto Rico, and David Skeel, the Board’s chairman, defended the Puerto Rico debt restructuring process in a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. Puerto Rico has been laboring under a debt load that a previous governor described as “unpayable” for… Read more »
The Biden-Harris administration has released a Fact Sheet outlining their actions in support of Puerto Rico during their first year in office. Getting disaster recovery funds to Puerto Rico Congress had approved disaster recovery funding for Puerto Rico following the 2017 Hurricane Maria landfall and the earthquakes the following year, but most of the funds… Read more »
In 1976, then-President Gerald Ford responded to recommendations made to him by an ad hoc advisory group on Puerto Rico with a statement favoring statehood. The advisory group had been put together jointly by the Federal government and Puerto Rico’s local government and had come up with a new idea for Puerto Rico’s status. Then… Read more »
House Resolution 279 asks Congress to repudiate the Insular Cases, a series of Supreme Court decisions which are still used in legal decisions affecting U.S. territories like Puerto Rico. The resolution, introduced in Congress last spring, would acknowledge “that the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in the Insular Cases and the ‘territorial incorporation doctrine’ are… Read more »
Voting rights have been top of mind in Washington, where the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. have been combined into one big voting rights act, called “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.” HR 5476, currently under debate in the Senate, focuses on four categories of voting rights… Read more »
A recent report in El Nuevo Dia offers evidence of a positive outlook for manufacturing in Puerto Rico. In separate interviews with Secretary of Economic Development and Commerce, Manuel Cidre; the executive vice president of the Association of Industrialists (AIPR), Yandia Pérez; and Invest Puerto Rico’s chief executive, Rodrick Miller, El Nuevo Dia received information about… Read more »
Both the CDC and World Health Organization say that Puerto Rico’s drinking water is generally safe to drink. Travel advisors expand on that, pointing out that as a territory of the United States Puerto Rico must meet the same standards for drinking water as the States do. When we examined Puerto Rico’s water situation in… Read more »
Florida has the largest Puerto Rican population in the 50 States. The Sunshine State recently supplanted New York in this position. But political leaders of Puerto Rican heritage are increasingly showing up in New England, where sheer numbers of Puerto Ricans may be smaller, but the proportion of the population is significant. Joshua Garcia is… Read more »
In 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested for breaking a Louisiana law requiring Black and white passengers to ride in separate, segregated train cars. The arrest led to the Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court presented the doctrine of “separate but equal,” saying that the law Plessy protested was constitutional…. Read more »
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