The working class roots of the breakfast taco, the SNAP gap, and the latest twist on the oil bust are some of the issues covered in our Border News Clips for Friday, March 4, 2016.
State Health Services Ramps Up Zika Fight; Keeping An Eye On The Valley
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: The Texas Department of State Health Services has ramped up efforts to protect Texans from the Zika virus. As of Thursday there are 18 Zika Virus cases in Texas, up four from Wednesday. All the cases are associated with travel with the exception of one in Dallas County which is thought to have been transmitted through sexual contact by someone who had acquired it while traveling. Texas Department of Health Services spokeswoman Carrie Williams says so far, Texas mosquitoes are not to blame.
How Will the Supreme Court’s ‘Swing Vote’ Judge Rule in Texas’ Abortion Case?
TEXAS OBSERVER: All eyes were on Justice Anthony Kennedy going into Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing over the constitutionality of Texas’ omnibus anti-abortion law, House Bill 2. And based on a few key points he raised during the 75-minute hearing, he knew it.
Austin, Home Of The Breakfast Taco? Not So Fast, Says Texas’ Taco Journalist
TEXAS STANDARD: There are few things that Texans are as passionate about as their history or their music but this one might top it: their food. Though Texas might be best known for its barbecue, one could easily make the case that there is a food more ubiquitous that might even serve as an edible metaphor for what Texas is today. We are, of course, talking about the taco.
The SNAP Gap: Benefits Aren’t Enough To Keep Many Recipients Fed
NPR: Nearly one-third of households on SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, still have to visit a food pantry to keep themselves fed, according to data highlighted this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2014, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program supported 23 million American households. The same year, 32 percent of all households who received SNAP in the previous 30 days reported they had visited a food pantry, the USDA says. And 23 percent of households using the Women, Infants and Children program visited a pantry that year, as had 23 percent of households receiving free or reduced-price school lunch.
The Clinton-Backed Honduran Regime Is Picking Off Indigenous Leaders
THE NATION: Hillary Clinton will be good for women. Ask Berta Cáceres. But you can’t. She’s dead. Gunned down yesterday, March 2, at midnight, in her hometown of La Esperanza, Intibuca, in Honduras. Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot, and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.
Six Years After Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico is Finally Recovering
TEXAS STANDARD: Next month will mark six years since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The message up until now from environmentalists and other experts has been that the damage is still visible. While that’s still true today, scientists are also now ready to say that damage is “dramatically diminished.” That was the word this past week at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans.
Veteranas and Rucas: Documenting 1990s Chicano Youth Culture
KCET: Guadalupe Rosales uses nostalgia as the creative engine driving the Instagram feed she manages, Veteranas and Rucas. It’s a digital archive on Instagram that “flashbacks” to photos from the Chicano underground of the 1990s, with a reach beyond Southern California. Sacramento, San Diego and Orange County all had elements of a residential underground during this period too.
Robinson: Trump’s dangerous dance with bigotry
WASHINGTON POST: Donald Trump plays on racial fears and animosities in an ugly, deliberate and dangerous way. This dance with bigotry goes far beyond his temporary amnesia about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. Trump speaks as if he considers whiteness the norm and sees people of color as somehow alien and suspect. He is the only major American political figure in many decades to display such an antediluvian worldview so openly. Trump doesn’t tweet dog whistles, he blasts foghorns.
Trump kills GOP autopsy
POLITICO: Reeling from a second straight loss to Barack Obama, a flailing Republican Party in 2013 found its culprit: Mitt Romney’s callous tone toward minorities. Instead of being doomed to irrelevance in a changing America, the party would rebrand as a kinder, more inclusive GOP. They called their findings an “autopsy,” and party leaders from Paul Ryan to Newt Gingrich welcomed it with fanfare.
5 takeaways from the GOP debate
POLITICO: It might be too late to beat Donald Trump, but it wasn’t too late to give Trump a beating. Two days after Super Tuesday put the billionaire frontrunner on a nearly unstoppable path to his party’s nomination, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz – now on a dual mission to deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to win – went after Trump with a vengeance that owed more to the wrestling ring than elective democracy.
Mexicans Are Disappearing From Texas in Latest Twist on Oil Bust
BLOOMBERG NEWS: The plunge in the peso has throttled the purchasing power of Silvia Guerra’s most important customers: shoppers from south-of-the-border cities like Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Saltillo who walk over the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge a few blocks down Convent Street. “We are dead over here, business is dead,” Guerra says from her store in Laredo, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, surrounded by racks of dresses and colorful rolls of fabric as people stroll in and out, without purchasing.
Denied Sleep in Mexican Jails, Now El Chapo Wants To Snooze in the US
TEXAS STANDARD: The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has long fought extradition to face drug charges in the U.S. but that’s changed. Now he wants to be extradited to the States. His lawyers told Mexican media outlets this week that the drug lord is willing to make a deal with U.S. authorities.
Mexico: No, we’re not going to pay for the wall
POLITICO: The Mexican government has formally responded to Donald Trump’s demand that it pay for his proposed wall, and the answer is an emphatic “No.” “Mexico will under no circumstance pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing,” Mexican Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray said Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
