Why Cruz and Rubio can’t count on the Latino vote, the concentration of poverty in American schools, and will the push for coding lead to technical ghettos are some of the issues covered in our Border News Clips for Tuesday, March 1, 2016.
LEAD STORIES
Why Cruz And Rubio Can’t Count On The Latino Vote
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: If Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz makes it to the White House, it will be historic — it would mean this country had its first ever Latino president. Both have a Cuban background, but neither candidate can necessarily count on the support of Latino voters to win. That’s because most Latinos in this country lean Democratic, even with no Latino candidate represented in the Democratic field.
Cuban Immigrants are Crossing the Texas-Mexico Border by the Thousands
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: Cold War animosity has thawed between the United States and Cuba, and President Barack Obama has planned a March 21 trip to the Havana to further positive ties between the two countries. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently went to Cuba to try and drum up some business, but the move isn’t exactly reciprocal. For the past few years, Cubans have been coming to Texas.
Insiders: Trump, Clinton to run riot on Super Tuesday
POLITICO: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are already beating their rivals. On Super Tuesday, insiders predict they’ll all-but bury them. Members of The POLITICO Caucus – a panel of strategists, party leaders, activists and elected officials in four key March-voting states – expect both Clinton and Trump to romp through the majority of Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses. And a number even suggested that running the table on Super Tuesday, or something close to it, could make both front-runners nearly impossible to catch in the race for their parties’ nomination.
The Concentration of Poverty in American Schools
THE ATLANTIC: In almost all major American cities, most African American and Hispanic students attend public schools where a majority of their classmates qualify as poor or low-income, a new analysis of federal data shows. This systemic economic and racial isolation looms as a huge obstacle for efforts to make a quality education available to all American students. Researchers have found that the single-most powerful predictor of racial gaps in educational achievement is the extent to which students attend schools surrounded by other low-income students.
Trump: My immigration plans aren’t set in stone
POLITICO: Donald Trump says parts of his immigration proposals are “negotiable,” but only minor details about his border wall. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday night, Trump responded to a question about a recent claim, first introduced by Buzzfeed earlier in the day, that he told The New York Times’ editorial board in an off-the-record tape-recorded meeting that he may not follow through with his proposed immigration measures if elected president.
BORDER STORIES
Brownsville’s first ‘30 Under 30’ targets high achievers
BROWNSVILLE HERALD: Nominations for the first “30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Brownsville” are being accepted as of today. The competition aims to recognize millennials under 30 years old who are outstanding in their respective fields. The deadline for nominations is March 31.
Cause of landfill explosion ‘undetermined’
BROWNSVILLE HERALD: The cause of the Brownsville landfill explosion that occurred in early February has been classified as “undetermined,” according to city officials. Nobody was harmed by the explosion or the large fire that followed, officials said.
Harlingen mayor supporting healthy living challenge
VALLEY MORNING STAR: Mayor Chris Boswell doesn’t back down from a challenge, especially one involving the city he leads. But he’s going to need the help of the city to win.
Author encourages Edinburg third-graders as FESTIBA kicks off
THE MONITOR: Dancing, clapping and tapping their knees to the beat of the drums was part of how a group of third-graders at Betts Elementary School learned about slavery Monday afternoon during a book reading by author Lorenzo Pace. The reading of “Jalani and the Lock” served several purposes, from commemorating the Read Across America week to kicking off the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Festival of International Books and Arts known as FESTIBA.
Tamaulipas official accused of aggravated kidnapping
THE MONITOR: Mexican state police arrested a police official Sunday in connection with aggravated kidnapping charge. Hermilio Cruz Caraza, an attorney and juez calificador, or qualifying judge, was arrested by a Tamaulipas state police anti-kidnapping team at about 1 p.m. in the capital city. The charges against him stem from a 2013 investigation, according to a news release from the state government office.
US, Mexico officials discuss Zika
THE MONITOR: Spring break could be a critical time for public health officials, as the migration of people from one country to the other could potentially spread the Zika virus. Public health experts from the United States and Mexico convened Monday at the McAllen Convention Center to exchange information regarding mosquito-borne illnesses and other public health issues of mutual interest along the border.
Doctor’s Hospital celebrates 100 surgeries
KGNS-TV: A hospital recognizes it’s staff for achieving over 100 heart surgeries. This weekend the Heart and Vascular Center of Doctor’s Hospital held a special event, to honor and celebrate heart surgery patients and families as well as recognizing the incredible staff involved in achieving 100 plus heart surgeries at Doctor’s Hospital.
City council approves point of action plan for city manager, Tommy Gonzalez
KVIA-TV: After meeting for 5 1/2 hours behind closed doors, El Paso’s city council voted unanimously to approve a 13-point plan of action to address actions by City Manager Tommy Gonzalez and his staff and request information from former City Representative Larry Romero and former City Manager Joyce Wilson. “We want to make sure we move forward and all the issues are brought forward, they are addressed and taken care of,” said Mayor Oscar Leeser.
STATE STORIES
Supreme Court Candidate Rick Green Struggling to Repay Government Loan
TEXAS OBSERVER: Republican Texas Supreme Court candidate Rick Green is struggling to pay back a half-million-dollar loan from a South Central Texas town for a hotel renovation project. Green has also received a $25,000 grant to produce a promotional video for the city using clips from his reality TV show.
State of Black Austin Tied to Swiftly Gentrifying East Austin
TEXAS OBSERVER: During Austin’s State of the City address two weeks ago, Mayor Steve Adler outlined his plan to ensure that everyone living in Austin could continue to stay despite rapid growth that’s made the city increasingly unaffordable for low- and middle-income residents. But apart from vague promises to combat “gentrification,” he failed to grapple with the question of what Austin can or should do for communities of color — a failure organizers of the second-annual State of Black Austin program addressed on Friday.
Familiar Foes Face Off in San Antonio Senate Race
TEXAS OBSERVER: There’s no more interesting race for the Democratic Party in Texas this year than the primary election in San Antonio’s Senate District 26, a contest that pits incumbent state Senator José Menéndez, who just served his first term in the chamber, against state Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, party stalwart.
At Last Minute, Presidio GOP Finds Place to Vote
TEXAS TRIBUNE: Todd Beckett, a local insurance agent and Presidio County’s GOP chair, initially planned to offer only early voting to Republicans in the sparsely populated — and largely Democratic — county in Far West Texas. But the party’s headquarters in Austin instructed him otherwise on Monday, prompting him to drive across mountains and desert scrub in search of a polling location for election day.
Texas Sues EPA Over Wilderness Haze Regulations
TEXAS TRIBUNE: In the state’s first lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2016, Texas is suing the agency for rejecting parts of a seven-year-old state proposal to reduce haze in wilderness areas. The EPA rejected portions of the plan in January, citing concerns that it did not adequately address requirements of the agency’s Regional Haze Rule, which regulates the air in natural areas in Texas and Oklahoma.
Across Texas, Bill Clinton Makes Final Pitch for Hillary
TEXAS TRIBUNE: Former President Bill Clinton made the closing pitch to Texans on his wife’s behalf Monday, making stops in Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio to remind voters of Hillary Clinton’s long ties to the state in the hours before Super Tuesday.
Cruz Presses for Release of Tape of Trump Talking Immigration
TEXAS TRIBUNE: Ted Cruz is pressing for the release of a tape that reportedly captures Donald Trump saying he is not as opposed to illegal immigration as he claims to be. Before a rally here Monday afternoon, Cruz called on Trump to ask The New York Times to release the tape, which reportedly stems from an off-the-record exchange the billionaire had with the newspaper’s editorial board. BuzzFeed reported earlier Monday that the tape might reveal “something Trump said about the flexibility of his hard-line anti-immigration stance.”
UT System Drafts Sexual Assault Investigation Training
TEXAS TRIBUNE: Acknowledging that survivors of sexual violence often behave differently than victims of other crimes, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin released an expansive report Monday that the UT System will use to train hundreds of officers who handle campus sexual assaults.
UT Regents Approve Tuition Hikes Across System
TEXAS TRIBUNE: The University of Texas at Austin and all seven other schools in the University of Texas System won approval to increase tuition Monday, a move that will tack on between $148 and $361 to the cost of students’ schooling each semester.
In Texas, Uneven Expansion Of Obamacare Sows Frustration
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: People in Texas are significantly more likely than adults nationwide to report that it has gotten harder to see a doctor in the past two years. The finding comes from polling done by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
What Attorneys in Texas’ Abortion Case Will Argue Before the Supreme Court
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The case is a challenge to a controversial Texas law proponents say makes abortions safer in the state. It could set new limits for what kind of regulations state lawmakers can impose on abortion providers.
NATIONAL STORIES
How targeted GOP senators will try to deal with Trump
THE HILL: Senate Republicans facing tough reelection races are scrambling to come up with new game plans now that Donald Trump is the likely Republican presidential nominee. The Trump phenomenon has stunned GOP insiders, many of who believed the real estate mogul would fade as the race went on. With control of the Senate up for grabs this fall, Democrats are relishing the chance to tie Trump to targeted Republicans.
Inside Bernie’s Wild Ride
POLITICO: The biggest argument was over running as a Democrat. Over and over, Bernie Sanders said he didn’t want to. He’d spent his whole life purposefully outside the Democratic Party. He treasured his status as the longest-serving independent in Congress. Running as a Democrat wasn’t who he was. He didn’t want to do it that way. His longtime consultant Tad Devine and the rest of the group came down hard: this is never going to have a chance of working unless you get over it. Suck it up, they told him.
Warren’s ghost hovers over Massachusetts primary
POLITICO: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are battling it out in Massachusetts ahead of the March 1 primary here — and the state’s most important endorsement, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is still sitting on the sidelines of the debate, watching and waiting for her moment of maximum leverage. Even as Clinton turns Massachusetts — a predominantly white, progressive New England state that should be tailor-made for Sanders — into a battleground Super Tuesday state, the campaign has been quietly respectful of Warren’s desire to remain neutral.
How Trump stole the South from Cruz
POLITICO: He tapped voter anger to emerge from a primary field full of experienced Republican officeholders. A political outsider, he had a name most voters recognized, a business background fused to a populist message and, given that he was funding his own campaign, a self-avowed freedom from lobbyists and special interests. Looking back now, it’s no wonder David Perdue was someone Donald Trump wanted to meet.
Ahead Of Super Tuesday And After A Big Loss, Sanders Lowers Expectations
NPR: To understand how Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is reacting to the candidate’s gigantic loss in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, it’s important to understand how he reacted to another loss just a few weeks ago, in Iowa. The two results couldn’t be more different. Sanders’ performance in Iowa could be considered a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, and he called it just that. Clinton won the Democratic caucuses by less than half a percentage point. That night, on a chartered jet from Des Moines to New Hampshire — just after what felt like a victory speech — campaign staffers popped bottles of champagne during the flight. Sanders, in an extremely good mood, came back and talked with members of the traveling press. Team Bernie was having a great night.
‘Cartel Land’ Follows Vigilantes Fighting Mexican Drug Gangs
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: The documentary Cartel Land looks at Mexico’s drug war from a unique perspective: the people who chose to take up arms against the drug gangs. The film’s director Matthew Heineman embedded himself with two vigilante groups working to combat the drug cartels on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. He took extraordinary risks to film the shootouts, corruption, greed and torture chambers that make up life in the drug fight. The film explores the sometimes convoluted moral ambiguities of vigilante justice.
The Unlikely Optimism of Latin America’s Youth
TEXAS PUBLIC RADIO: Over the roughly 10 years leading up to 2013, at the tail end of the region’s urban explosion, things seemed to be looking up for Latin America. Rising commodity prices and increased demand for raw materials from China catalyzed an economic boom that led to a significant reduction in poverty and, as noted by Moisés Naím in The Atlantic, an unprecedented decline in inequality, creating the largest middle class in Latin American history.
Pinpointing the Health Impacts of Urban Noise
CITY LAB: A taxi honks its horn. A delivery driver guides his noisy two-wheeled cart, stacked high with boxes, across the street. And underground, the subway rumbles. Erica Walker wants to capture it all. For the past year, the Ph.D. candidate at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health has been bicycling between Cambridge, Boston, and Somerville, Massachusetts, with a decibel meter. Her aim is to measure just how loud different neighborhoods, streets, even crosswalks are. At the same time, she asks residents to fill out surveys about the impact city noises have on their lives and sanity.
Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’?
THE ATLANTIC: For its most ardent champions, enthusiasm for coding comes close to evangelism. From Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt—“Let’s get the whole world coding!”—and the actor Ashton Kutcher, to the NBA player Chris Bosh and the rap royalty Snoop Dogg—“support tha american dream n make coding available to EVERYONE!!”—teaching kids to code has gained high-profile support and widespread acclaim.
Inside the ‘pro-life’ answer to abortion clinics
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: For its most ardent champions, enthusiasm for coding comes close to evangelism. From Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt—“Let’s get the whole world coding!”—and the actor Ashton Kutcher, to the NBA player Chris Bosh and the rap royalty Snoop Dogg—“support tha american dream n make coding available to EVERYONE!!”—teaching kids to code has gained high-profile support and widespread acclaim.
Robert Reich explains why he endorses Bernie Sanders despite Clinton ties
YAHOO NEWS: The former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration thinks that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading the movement best suited to address the excesses of income inequality in the United States. Robert Reich, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, spoke to Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric on Monday about his reasons for endorsing Sanders over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
MEXICO STORIES
Mexico Has Yet To Convict ‘El Chapo’ For Drug Trafficking
WORLD POST: More than two decades after first locking up one of the most powerful organized crime bosses in a maximum security prison, Mexican authorities have yet to convict recently recaptured Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera for the crime of drug trafficking, according to a new report that highlights the Mexican government’s difficulties with prosecuting the drug lord.
Mexico just issued the country’s strongest rebuke yet of Donald Trump
BUSINESS INSIDER: The Mexican government issued its most strident official response to Donald Trump’s incendiary comments about immigration and the border, with Mexico’s top diplomat calling his remarks “ignorant and racist” this weekend. “When an apple’s red, it is red. When you say ignorant things, you’re ignorant,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Saturday, according to The Washington Post.
Mexico Will Defer Oil Exploration Projects to Slash Spending
ABC NEWS: The state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, said Monday it will slash spending 22 percent and cut unprofitable production about 100,000 barrels a day as it struggles with liquidity problems and past-due payments to suppliers. The company, known as Pemex, said it will cut $5.5 billion from its 2016 budget, delay deep-water exploration and decrease production of super-heavy crude because of low world oil prices.
Flannery: Will Mexico’s Economy Finally Start To Grow In 2016?
FORBES: A few weeks ago I walked with Carlos Salcido, a 50-year-old executive at luxury retailer Palacio de Hierro through the company’s flagship department store in Polanco, one of Mexico City’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Salcido strolled passed well dressed parents and younger customers in private school uniforms and pointed out the in-store boutiques from brands such as Hermes and Tiffany. “Polanco isn’t just the heart of Mexico City, it’s the heart of Mexico. Many brands will have their flagship Mexico or Latin American store here,” he told me. Palacio de Hierro recently made a $300 million investment in its Polanco store and is betting big on Mexico’s luxury market. “In the last 20 years, we’ve had double digit growth every year. We can see luxury growing and growing,” Salcido told me. Overall, despite concerns about a drop in the peso’s value and rock bottom oil prices, Salcido is optimistic about Mexico’s economy. “The top [income bracket] is growing but you have a middle class that is earning more and starting to come in,” he explained.
Mexico reports fresh theft of radioactive material
REUTERS: Mexican authorities were searching on Monday for a container of radioactive material used for industrial X-rays that was stolen along with a car in central Mexico this weekend, the latest in a series of such case in the country. The small yellow container of Iridium 192 was inside a red Chevrolet pick-up stolen in the municipality of San Juan del Rio on Saturday morning, the ministry said in a statement.
Mexico says 11 pregnant women infected with Zika
REUTERS: Mexico has confirmed 11 pregnant women are infected with the Zika virus, out of a total of 121 cases, the government said on Monday. Most of the cases were identified in the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, according to a health ministry report.
NOTICIAS DE MEXICO
Desastre financiero en Pemex: confirman recorte de 100 mil mdp en su presupuesto
PROCESO: Falta de liquidez, deudas insostenibles, pasivos laborales de escándalo, personal excesivo e improductivo, precios internacionales del crudo hundidos y una producción declinante llevaron a Pemex a recortar su presupuesto para este año en 100 mil millones de pesos, el equivalente al 22% de su gasto programable.
Cae otro policía implicado en la desaparición de 5 jóvenes en Tierra Blanca
PROCESO: Rubén Pérez Andrade, octavo policía estatal involucrado en la desaparición forzada de cinco jóvenes oriundos de Playa Vicente, fue detenido en días pasados y con ello se ha fortalecido la línea de investigación que apunta a que los cuerpos de seguridad reciben órdenes de una célula del Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
Michoacán: 11 ejecutados mientras Aureoles promociona la entidad en EU
PROCESO: En un solo día, ayer domingo, fueron ejecutadas 11 personas en diferentes puntos de la entidad, mientras el gobernador Silvano Aureoles y parte de su gabinete promocionan que la entidad es “un paraíso” para la inversión. Al tiempo que el mandatario visitaba la ciudad de Chicago, los michoacanos padecieron un domingo sangriento en distintos puntos del estado, con saldo de 10 baleados y el hallazgo de un cuerpo en una fosa clandestina.
Despide SEP a 3 mil 360 maestros
LA JORNADA: La Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) informó que a partir de hoy 3 mil 360 maestros con plaza base de 28 entidades serán despedidos por no presentarse a ninguna de las dos oportunidades que tuvieron para ser evaluados en el ciclo escolar 2015-2016, mientras cinco de cada diez profesores y directivos de educación básica y bachillerato, de los 134 mil 140 que participaron en la primera aplicación de la evaluación del desempeño, se ubicaron en los niveles insuficiente y suficiente, los más bajos en la acreditación de competencias y habilidades pedagógicas.
