International
Record registration of Latino voters after Harris’ arrival in the presidential race
A record number of eligible Latinos have registered to vote after the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris to the race for the White House, especially young and female voters, in states considered key to winning the November election, which may tip the balance towards the Democratic candidate.
The organization Voto Latino announced at a press conference that it has exceeded the voter registration goal in five key states: Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina by registering 112,035 Latino voters so far this year.
María Teresa Kumar, director of Voto Latino, said that the voter registration of her organization increased by 200% and attributed the unusual increase to the arrival of Harris in the race for the Presidency in the United States.
“All this enthusiasm began to gather and accumulate around July 21, when President Joe Biden decided to step aside and nominate and support Vice President Kamala Harris,” the activist said.
Of the total (112,035) registered this year by the organization, 67,092 voters registered after July 21, an unprecedented figure in the 20 years in which the organization has promoted voter participation.
Kumar also highlighted the increase achieved with respect to previous elections. And it is that, for the 2016 election, the Latino Vote campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton managed to register 2,252 Hispanic voters in July of that year.
In the same month, but in 2020, 25,156 Latino voters were registered in favor of President Joe Biden, almost half of the 50,111 who registered between July 21 and July 31 of this year, supported by Harris.
Even the mood of voters since Harris entered has exceeded that awakened by the candidacy of former President Barack Obama (2009-2017).
Ameer Patel, a researcher at Voto Latino, said that since the vice president landed in the presidential race, there has been a “disproportionate amount” of young voters and especially young Latinas who registered to vote.
Of the 67,092 voters registered after July 21, 55% are voters between 18 and 29 years old and 86% are between 18 and 39 years old. Of the total, 69.7% are women.
The enthusiasm of the new voters is not only motivated by the fight for women’s reproductive rights. In fact, the first issue that concerns the voters consulted by Voto Latino is the economy, better wages and income control.
The second issue is the rights to abortion, followed by gun control and security in educational institutions.
In that sense, Kumar highlighted the campaigns advanced by women in South Texas in favor of Harris and his formula, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, with a wake-up call about school shootings, something that was not seen in 2020.
It is precisely in Texas where the most new Latino voters have registered Voto after the arrival of Harris with 17,000 registered voters, followed by Florida with 13,600, Georgia (11,500), North Carolina (7,500) and Arizona (4,500).
Kumar stressed the importance of these votes especially in states where President Joe Biden won by just over 10,000 votes, such as Georgia and Arizona.
“Harris has been stealing votes from Donald Trump in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, key states in this battlefield,” the activist said.
He added that the vice president is not only attractive to independent voters but also to Republicans, a clear disadvantage for former President Trump.
More than 36 million eligible Latinos will be able to vote this year. But of them, only 26 million are registered to vote, and only 16 million voted in the last presidential elections.
Activists’ efforts have focused on encouraging 20 million Latinos who could pay, but they don’t.
Kumar insisted that there is an incredible opportunity to strengthen the political voice of the Hispanic community, which although it is not monolithic has mostly opted for the Democrats.
The message was delivered right in celebration of National Voter Registration Day.
International
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
The American press agency Associated Press (AP) announced this Friday that it has sued three members of the Donald Trump Administration after being banned from the Oval Office and the presidential plane Air Force One for not complying with the directive of calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not to be retaliated for it by the Government. The Constitution does not allow the Government to control freedom of expression,” the media maintains.
In its style guide, AP decided to continue calling the Gulf of Mexico “by its original name”, still mentioning the new name chosen by Trump, since it is a body of water that shares a border with Mexico and Cuba.
The White House formally blocked AP’s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One on February 14. “We are very proud of this country and we want it to be the Gulf of America,” Trump said on Tuesday.
The agency’s lawsuit, of 18 pages and filed before a federal court in Washington DC, alleges that they have decided to take this step to claim their right to editorial independence and prevent the Executive from coercing journalists to use only a language approved by it.
Trump signed the executive order to change the name to Gulf of America on January 20, the first day of his return to power. He later named February 9 as ‘ Gulf of America Day’.
The AP complaint is specifically directed against the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his number two, Taylor Budowich, and the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt.
This Thursday, more than thirty US media asked the Government to restore AP’s participation in presidential events and not to take into account “the editorial point of view” when limiting access to the White House.
Among the signatories are the television networks Fox News and Newsmax, with a conservative tinge, in addition to other large newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal or The Atlantic.
AP highlighted when reporting on his complaint that this Friday Trump referred to that agency as “radical left-wing lunatics”: It is “a third-rate company with a first name,” he said about it, the main one in the country and founded in 1846.
International
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
The Legislature of the city of Buenos Aires approved this Friday the suspension of the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), a measure that, according to the deputy head of government, Clara Muzzio, “allows to save 20 billion pesos (about 18,894 million dollars)”, and advanced the legislative elections for May 18.
“The City Legislature suspended the PASO, a measure that saves $20 billion for neighbors,” Muzzio announced on Friday.
For his part, the mayor of the City, Jorge Macri, maintained that the PASO “were an expensive mechanism that only solved the problems of politicians, not of the people.”
The May 18 elections, which were originally scheduled for July, will be held through the Single Electronic Ballot system.
In that instance, the inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires will elect their local legislators and, in October, they will have to return to the polls to define, together with the rest of the country, the composition of the chambers of Deputies and Senators.
“The fact that the elections are in May allows each Buenos Aires to decide on their own city, without being tied to national discussions,” said the mayor.
The project was approved in the Buenos Aires legislature with 55 votes in favor, 3 against and one abstention, after an agreement between the main political forces.
The suspension of the primaries in the City of Buenos Aires occurs one day after the Argentine Parliament approved the same measure at the national level.
The original project sent by the national government sought the elimination of the primary system but finally, given the lack of support for that objective, the government chose to promote an initiative that suspends them for this year.
The primary election system was first implemented in Argentina to define the candidates for the 2011 general elections, based on a political reform approved by Parliament at the end of 2009, with the aim of democratizing political representation, transparency and electoral equity.
According to the PASO system, to be qualified to compete in the general elections, candidates or lists of candidates must achieve at least 1.5% of the total votes in the primaries.
All parties are obliged to participate in the primaries, although they do not necessarily have to present more than one list of candidates to decide which one will lead to the general elections, an option for which the majority of the forces have opted in the last elections.
That is one of the reasons why the system has been questioned, among which are also its costs and the cumbersomeness of the organization.
International
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Friday that threatens to impose tariffs on foreign governments that apply digital fees to US companies, including Spain, the United Kingdom and France.
The order states that “foreign governments have exercised a growing extraterritorial authority over US companies, particularly in the technology sector,” and directly cites the taxes on digital services that “several business partners” apply since 2019.
According to the text, the Trump Administration will impose tariffs on those governments that use taxes or regulations that are “discriminatory, disproportionate or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property from US companies to that government or its chosen domestic entities.”
Trump delegates to the US Trade Representative the possibility of “renewing investigations” on the so-called technology fees of Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Austria and Turkey, imposed in the first term of the Republican, and if so, “take all appropriate actions”, which would include the imposition of tariffs.
“US companies will no longer sustain failed foreign economies through fines and extortionational taxes,” says the White House document, which provides for a “process” for them to “report” these “disproportionate” measures to the Commercial Representative.
He also instructs him to investigate together with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Commerce whether in the European Union or the United Kingdom the use of products or services of US companies is “required or encouraged” to “undermine freedom of expression”, political activity or, “otherwise, moderate content”.
It also suggests to the Representative, among other things, to hold “a panel” with its partners of the T-MEC (Canada and Mexico) on the tax on digital services in Canada, and identify ways to achieve a “permanent moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions”.
The order does not mention any specific company, but mainly affects large technology companies such as Apple, Google (subsidiary of Alphabet), Meta and Amazon, which have precisely starred in a resounded approach to President Trump since he won the elections in November.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump ordered to investigate the digital fees to his companies abroad and threatened to apply tariffs to the six countries indicated today; taxes were imposed in the government of his successor, the Democrat Joe Biden, and subsequently suspended.
Trump signed another executive order aimed at restricting access to US technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, what he calls “foreign adversaries”, including Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
The executive order does not specify in detail what measures will be taken to restrict the access of these “foreign adversaries” to US technology.
Under the label of “foreign adversaries”, the order identifies China, Hong Kong, Macau, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and the “regime of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro”, according to the text.
Trump justifies his decision with the argument that “economic security is national security” and maintains that the country must protect its sensitive infrastructures and technologies, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors and advances in biotechnology.
The executive order focuses especially on China, pointing out that companies linked to Beijing have used investments in the US to access key technologies and that the Chinese government is taking advantage of US technology to modernize its military apparatus.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, Trump has announced several restrictions on trade with the aim of balancing the trade balance and pressuring countries such as Mexico and Canada to make concessions on immigration and efforts against drug trafficking.
It has imposed a 10% tariff on China, which is in addition to the rates already applied during its first term (2017-2021).
Trump’s new restrictions come after his predecessor, Joe Biden, took steps to limit exports of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technology to China, which led Beijing to respond with export controls on graphite, a key material for electric vehicle batteries.
The AP agency sues the Trump Government after being banned for writing Gulf of Mexico
Buenos Aires advances legislative elections to May 18 and suspends the primaries
Trump threatens to impose tariffs on governments that apply digital fees to US companies
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