October 18, 2020

Puerto Rico’s Leading Newspaper Just Backed Biden in Historic Endorsement

President Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, in 2017.Evan Vucci/AP

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Puerto Rico’s leading newspaper, El Nuevo Día, has endorsed Joe Biden in what his campaign says is the first presidential endorsement in the paper’s 50-year history.

In an editorial published on Sunday, El Nuevo Día concluded that the Trump administration “has shown an overwhelming amount of inattention, disdain and prejudice against our people.” Along with President Donald Trump’s infamous paper towel throwing, it mentions the president asking about whether the United States could trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. More broadly, the editorial catalogues his disastrous response to Hurricane Maria. (For more on this front, be sure to read Mother Jones reporter AJ Vicens.)

After Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans are the second largest group of Latino voters in Florida, where polls show Biden only slightly ahead of Trump. Compared to Cubans, Puerto Ricans are much more likely to support Biden, but they’ve tended to vote at lower rates. Biden traveled to the Orlando area last month to make his pitch to Puerto Rican voters.

In contrast to Trump’s actions, El Nuevo Día wrote that Biden has promised to create a Puerto Rico working group that would report directly to the president, expand Puerto Ricans’ access to Medicaid and food assistance, and increase federal funding for education on the island.

The editorial concludes by stating that endorsing Biden puts El Nuevo Día on the side of “our most democratic values” and in opposition to the “politics of hate, division and chaos that President Trump and a significant part of the Republican Party have supported.”

“The world is a much more dangerous and unsustainable place, in large measure, because of this President’s domestic and international policies,” the editorial argues. “The votes from our extended homeland in favor of Biden’s Plan for Puerto Rico will make our island and the world safer and more prosperous places for everyone.”

Read the editorial in English and Spanish here.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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