Puerto Rico’s roughly 3 million residents can not vote for the U.S. president. However practically twice as many Puerto Ricans stay in states like Pennsylvania, New York and Florida, and so they can.
El Nuevo Día, the island’s newspaper of report, on Tuesday known as on members of the Puerto Rican diaspora to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
“Trump has for years maintained a discourse of contempt and misinformation against the island that reveals an obsession and disdain for a people who do not have the power of the vote to defend themselves, since the three million American citizens who live in Puerto Rico cannot vote in the presidential elections,” María Luisa Ferré Rangel, the pinnacle of the media group that owns the each day newspaper, wrote in an editorial. “However, the other five million who live in the United States, whom they also labeled as trash, can vote.”
Nearly all of Puerto Ricans residing within the U.S. reside in electorally uncompetitive states reminiscent of New York and Florida. However as many as 500,000 stay in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested state the place President Joe Biden received by simply 80,000 votes in 2020.
The endorsement got here two days after comic Tony Hinchcliffe carried out a set at a Trump rally in Manhattan’s Madison Sq. Backyard.
“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe stated at Sunday’s occasion, to muted applause and jeers.
The comment reignited many Puerto Ricans’ longstanding anger at Trump for his mishandling of the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, the Class 5 storm from which the island’s infrastructure has but to completely recuperate. In a single notorious televised second, Trump confirmed up at an emergency reduction middle to chuck rolls of paper towels at a crowd ready to assemble provides.
His administration then restricted reduction funds to the U.S. territory, stymying reconstruction and permitting Puerto Rico to languish with out electrical energy for 11 months, the second-longest blackout in world historical past. Trump went on to ask his secretary of homeland safety on the time whether or not the U.S. may promote Puerto Rico, which the U.S. has thought of a “possession” of the American authorities since seizing the island as a colony and navy outpost following the Spanish-American Struggle of 1898.
“Let’s not forget the paper towels he threw at us while we suffered without electricity for months, and let’s not forget that the funds did not arrive because Trump ― through the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development ― told them to stop because he considered Puerto Ricans ‘bums who live begging,’” learn the editorial in El Nuevo Día. “It is cowardly to insult those who cannot defend themselves.”
Harris drew criticism throughout her first go to to Puerto Rico in March, when she attended a fundraiser held by English-speaking Individuals who relocated to the island to reap the benefits of a controversial tax haven scheme that frees new residents from paying any levy on earnings. In a second that appeared to point out the vp as out of contact, she was filmed clapping alongside to a tune protesting towards her.
Harris, Tuesday’s editorial concluded, “is not perfect.” However amid weekly if not each day energy outages in some areas, the Biden administration has established key process forces within the federal authorities to hurry up the reconstruction of a important electrical grid. And Biden’s secretary of vitality, Jennifer Granholm, has made repeated visits to the island to supervise these efforts.
DREW ANGERER by way of Getty Photos
Through the Trump rally on Sunday, the Harris marketing campaign put out a video of the Democratic nominee pledging to create one other process pressure to advertise financial alternative on the island.
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“It’s about giving people access to opportunity, knowing that the people in all communities — in all communities — they want, yes, a job, but they want to be able to build wealth,” Harris stated, in response to a White Home press pool report. “They want to be able to build intergenerational wealth, home ownership, small business growth, right? So I call it an opportunity economy. The thing I mentioned this morning is I’m going to create basically an opportunity economy Task Force for Puerto Rico.”
Noting that “we may not fully know all aspects of the candidate due to the fact that she entered the race three months before the election,” El Nuevo Día however applauded Harris for being “courageous enough to step forward and accept the challenge.”
“Today we urge all those who love our beautiful island, the land of the sea and the sun, not to lend their vote to Donald Trump,” the editorial concluded. “To all Puerto Ricans who can vote in this upcoming United States election and represent those of us who cannot: Vote for Kamala Harris.”
