Tag Archives: caribbean

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Tributes to Manchester’s Mama Edwards Who Fought Racism With Kindness

Elouise Edwards MBE sadly passed away on Saturday 22nd January 2021

Tributes have been paid to a much loved ‘icon’ in the Manchester UK Afro-Caribbean community.

Elouise Edwards MBE was a community activist and lifelong campaigner for racial equality and justice, involved in over 35 organisations in Greater Manchester.

Lovingly known as ‘Mama Edwards’, she was at the forefront of the push for equality in Manchester for new Windrush arrivals and their children.

She sadly passed away on Saturday 22nd January 2021 aged 88.

Elouise Chandler, the youngest of ten children, was born in Guyana, South America, in 1932.

Her father was a civil engineer who extracted gold from the goldfields of Guyana and her mother was a housewife.

In 1955, she married Beresford Edwards at St George’s Cathedral, Georgetown, Guyana.

Beresford came to England in 1960, and Elouise followed in 1961 with her three year old son.

Elouise grew up and studied in Guyana before moving to England in 1961

They settled in Moss Side and became part of the growing West Indian community that was developing in the area.

Known for her kindness, knowledge and empathy, Elouise was a major influence in the tight knit community forming in Moss Side.

Her family home became a place where black people could meet and talk about the troubles they faced in England such as exclusion and racism, while seeking advice and support.

The same home became the birthplace of the West Indian Organisations Coordinating Committee (WIOCC) which is still active today.

Concerned with the lack of educational resources, jobs and the social well-being of people in their community, Elouise and Beresford made it their mission to improve the lives of their neighbours.

Elouise managed to juggle being a devoted wife, loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother throughout her long and impactful career.

She worked as a neighbourhood social worker, community development officer and in 1994 received an MBE for her incredible work in the community.

Elouise and her husband Beresford Edwards who sadly passed away in 2003

She was also awarded an honorary degree of the Masters of Arts by The University of Manchester, as well as the title of Honorary Chieftain by the Nigerian Community of Manchester for her work with the African community.

Instrumental in celebrating black culture, battling racism and developing integral community services, her influence touches many corners of Greater Manchester.

During her time she was the co-founder of Manchester Sickle Cell & Thalassaemia centre, Awarak Walton Housing Association, Cariocca Enterprises Manchester Limited, NIA Cultural centre, Culture Week, Roots Oral History Project, Roots Festival and much more .

In September 2017 she retired to Guyana and with the help of her family, where she fulfilled her dream of passing away peacefully in her homeland.

Anthony Brown was the director of WIOCC in 1997 and 2004, working directly with Elouise and Beresford.

Elouise receiving her MBE from Prince Charles

He told the Manchester Evening News: “ I learned a lot about how to look after my own children from her.

“She raised the aspirations of people and gave insights to how the younger generation could be developed to reach their full potential.

“A number of people still speak fondly of her as a matriarch of the community, she could come anywhere and talk to anyone about what should be done and what shouldn’t be done.

“She had a presence about her and was held in great esteem by the community, people looked up to her.”

A celebration of life ceremony will take place for Elouise Edwards MBE on Friday 5 March 2021.

As part of the ceremony, her cortege will pause at various places that Elouise took an active role in or helped develop.

The service will start at 11:15 at Manchester Cathedral and can be livestreamed on her website.

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Associated Press World View: Attack on US Base, States Ease Restrictions, Vaccine Race, Deadly Immigrant Crash

March 03, 2021

Alternate text

AP Morning Wire

Ted Anthony

Director of Digital Innovation

The Rundown

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BAGHDAD (AP) — At least 10 rockets targeted an Iraqi military base in western Iraq on Wednesday that hosts U.S.-led coalition troops, a coalition spokesman said. The rockets struck Ain……Read More

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Texas on Tuesday became the biggest state to lift its mask rule, joining a rapidly growing movement by governors and other leaders across the U.S. to loosen COVID-19 restrictions despite …Read More

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said the U.S. expects to take delivery of enough coronavirus vaccine for all adults by the end of May — two months earlier than anticipated — and he …Read More

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BERLIN (AP) — Slow off the blocks in the race to immunize its citizens against COVID-19, Germany faces an unfamiliar problem: a glut of vaccines and not enough arms to inject them into. L…Read More

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HOLTVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Barely a mile from where an SUV packed with 25 people struck a tractor-trailer — killing 13 inside — a cemetery with unmarked bricks is a burial ground for migran…Read More

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YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Authorities in Myanmar have charged Associated Press journalist Thein Zaw and five other members of the media with violating a public order law that c…Read More

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden doesn’t just have to manage the coronavirus pandemic, he also has to manage people’s expectations for how soon the country will come ou…Read More

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Talk about your yard sale finds. A small porcelain bowl bought for $35 at a Connecticut yard sale turned out to be a rare, 15th century Chinese artifa…Read More

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California driver who said he had used a mannequin as his passenger for at least a year and a half in order to access carpool lanes has been cited and f…Read More

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Largest Dinosaur Found in Argentina

Scientists have unearthed fossils of what may be the oldest-known member of the dinosaur group known as titanosaurs that includes the largest land animals in Earth’s history.

Researchers said on Monday the fossils represent a dinosaur species named Ninjatitan zapatai that lived 140 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. They identified Ninjatitan as a titanosaur, a group of long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on four pillar-like legs.

 

The dinosaur’s incomplete skeletal remains were discovered in Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness, south of the city of Neuquen. The researchers said Ninjatitan demonstrated that the titanosaurs as a group first appeared longer ago than previously known.

“It is the oldest record known, not only from Argentina but worldwide,” study lead author Pablo Gallina, a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET), told Reuters.

“Titanosaurs are recorded on various sides of the world, but the oldest-known records were more modern than this find.”

 

At a length of about 65 feet (20 meters), Ninjatitan was a large dinosaur, but much smaller than later titanosaurs such as Argentinosaurus that reached a length of around 115 feet (35 meters). The researchers also said the presence of such an early titanosaur in Patagonia supports the idea that titanosaurs originated in the Southern Hemisphere.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Ameghiniana.

Titanosaurs are part of a larger dinosaur group called sauropods that includes others with similar body designs such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus that lived in North America during the Jurassic Period, which preceded the Cretaceous Period.

A number of the titanosaurs that inhabited Patagonia achieved gigantic proportions such as Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus.

José Luis Carbadillo, another CONICET researcher, told a local university publication that the age of Ninjatitan’s remains could have led people to assume that the bones belonged to a dinosaur group that pre-dated titanosaurs.

“In Patagonia, titanosaurs are only known about from less than 120 million years ago,” he said.

 

 

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Biden Predicts Vaccines for Entire US Pop. by June, Brazil Record Death Toll,World Stats

President Biden said that the United States will have enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all American adults for the coronavirus by the end of May, crediting a “stepped-up process” under his administration.

Biden made the announcement while outlining a partnership between Merck and Johnson & Johnson to produce the latter’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine.

“We’re now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May,” Biden said in remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House. “When we came into office, the prior administration had contracted for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America. We rectified that.”

The new timeline is more condensed than Biden’s previous prediction that the U.S. would have enough vaccines for all American adults — 600 million doses — by the end of July.

Biden stressed that Tuesday’s developments marked a significant milestone in the fight against the virus, but he cautioned that more work needs to be done in order to distribute the vaccine and inoculate much of the U.S. population.

He highlighted his administration’s efforts to boost the number of vaccinators and locations where Americans can receive doses.

“That is progress, important progress,” Biden said. “But it’s not enough to have the vaccine supply.”

It could take much longer for the country to vaccinate the adult population, given the logistical hurdles of distributing and administering vaccines. Americans in states and cities, including Washington, D.C., have encountered challenges in signing up for appointments online. The Biden administration is also trying to address vaccine hesitancy by communicating that the vaccines are safe and effective in order to ensure that as much of the population as possible gets vaccinated.

He also reiterated calls for Congress to swiftly pass his $1.9 trillion relief proposal.

To increase the number of vaccinations in circulation, Biden detailed Merck’s collaboration to expand production of the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration over the weekend. Biden said he has invoked the Defense Production Act to equip Merck facilities to safely manufacture the vaccine, and Johnson & Johnson plans to operate its facilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to increase supply.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the third to be authorized for emergency use in the U.S.; vaccines produced by Pfizer and BioNTech and by Moderna were approved during the Trump administration. Biden and other officials have repeatedly accused the Trump administration of not having a sufficient plan for distributing vaccines across the country.

The announcement Tuesday of the new timeline is a bright spot in the country’s yearlong fight against the virus. While cases and deaths remain high, they have come down from their peaks following the 2020 holiday season.

Last week, Biden marked the milestone of the 50 millionth dose of coronavirus vaccine being administered. The White House said earlier Tuesday that the weekly supply of doses to states would increase to 18 million this week.

Still, new variants of the coronavirus remain a cause for concern, and more than 500,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus.

Biden urged Americans to remain vigilant by continuing to wash their hands, keep their distance from others and wear masks. His remarks came as governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted mask mandates and other restrictions, allowing businesses to fully reopen. Biden did not mention those states on Tuesday but emphasized his call for Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency.

“Things may get worse again as new variants spread and as we face setbacks like recent winter storms in the Midwest and South. But our administration will never take this public health threat lightly,” Biden said. “Now is not the time to let our guard down. People’s lives are at stake.”

Asked at the conclusion of the event when the U.S. would get back to normal, Biden told reporters he had been cautioned not to give an answer due to uncertainty but said he hoped it would be within a year.

“My hope is by this time next year we are going to be back to normal or before that,” Biden said.

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Biden: He called on all states to vaccinate teachers by the end of March

President Biden said he is calling on all states to prioritize teachers for COVID-19 vaccinations so that all teachers and school staff will have received at least one dose by the end of March.

“My challenge to all states, territories, and the District of Columbia is this: We want every educator, school staff member, child care worker to receive at least one shot by the end of the month of March,” Biden said.

He noted that more than 30 states have already prioritized teachers for vaccinations, but said he is using the “full authority of the federal government” in “directing every state to do the same.”

The politics: Biden has been under intense criticism from Republicans for not doing enough to urge schools to reopen, given evidence that they can do so safely with precautions like mask-wearing and distancing.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in guidance last month that teacher vaccinations “should not be considered a condition” for reopening schools.

Biden acknowledged this, but pointed to “anxieties” among teachers and parents.

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Brazil on Tuesday registered the highest daily number of Covid deaths since the pandemic started.

The health ministry said 1,641 people had died with Covid in the previous 24 hours.

The record was reached as scientists said that a new variant first found in Brazil appears more contagious.

Brazil, where more than a quarter of a million people have died with Covid, has the second highest coronavirus death toll after the United States.

What’s the situation in Brazil?

Across the country, there have been more than 10.5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus. Only the US and India have registered more.

The pandemic spread quickly after first arriving in Brazil and reached a first peak at the end of July, when daily new cases were above 70,000 and daily deaths above 1,500.

Cases and deaths across Brazil fell until early November before a second wave saw cases rise again, a rise which appears to have further accelerated since January.

Chart showing daily confirmed deaths
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Chart showing cumulative deaths

What’s behind the new spike?

Researchers from the University of São Paulo working with their colleagues at Imperial College London and Oxford University think that the second wave may be linked to the emergence of a new variant of coronavirus which has been traced to the city of Manaus.

Manaus, in the Amazon region, was one of the hardest hit cities in the first wave of the pandemic.

One study of blood donors suggested that three quarters of the city’s population had been infected with Covid by October.

It was expected that the people infected in the first wave would have acquired some degree of protection or immunity. And yet, the city has seen a second wave of infections.

The researchers think this may be because a new variant has emerged which may be evading immunity provided by past infections.

What’s known about the new variant?

The new variant, named P.1, was first detected in people who had travelled from Manaus to Japan in January.

The researchers studying it think it first emerged in Manaus in early November and has been spreading there quickly since.

They say that that genomic sequencing found that this second wave in Manaus “was associated with the emergence and rapid spread” of the P.1 variant.

Their data – which is still preliminary – suggests that the P.1 variant could be up to twice as transmittable as the original version of the virus.

It also suggests that the new variant could evade immunity built up by having had the original version of Covid.

They put the chance of reinfection at between 25% and 60%.

What about vaccines?

Brazil, the worst-affected country by Covid in Latin America, has lagged behind in its roll-out of Covid vaccines.

A nurse in São Paulo became the first person to be vaccinated on 17 January, three weeks after Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica had already started their vaccination campaigns.

Vaccinating its population of 211 million living across a huge territory was always going to be a challenge, but delays in the delivery of the vaccine and the lack of a co-ordinated nationwide approach produced further slowdowns.

A health worker of the Indigenous Special Sanitary District of Manaus administers Sinovac"s CoronaVac coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine to an Indigenous person at Sao Jose Village in the Indigenous land Rio Urubu from the ethnicity Mura in the Urubu river banks in Itacoatiara, Amazonas state, Brazil, February 13, 2021.image copyrightReuters
image captionThe vaccine rollout started later than in other countries in the region

Frustrated state governors announced on Tuesday that they would join forces to buy vaccines directly from manufacturers rather than wait for the federal government to deliver them.

They have criticised President Jair Bolsonaro, who has belittled the risks posed by the virus from the start of the pandemic, for not securing adequate vaccine supplies.

The governor of São Paulo state, João Doria, has been particularly scathing of President Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic.

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World Stats

Coronavirus Cases:

115,383,217

Deaths:

2,562,457

Recovered:

91,182,956
ACTIVE CASES
21,637,804
Currently Infected Patients

21,547,008 (99.6%)

in Mild Condition
Highlighted in green
= all cases have recovered from the infection
Highlighted in grey
= all cases have had an outcome (there are no active cases)

[back to top ↑]

Latest News

March 3 (GMT)

Updates

  • 15,698 new cases and 309 new deaths in Poland [source]
  • 10,535 new cases and 452 new deaths in Russia [source]
  • 7,913 new cases and 1,035 new deaths in Mexico [source]

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Caribbean Hunting for Vaccines, Tourists to Restart Economies

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The Caribbean is hunting for visitors and vaccines to jump-start the stalled economy in one of the world’s most tourism-dependent regions.

Clear waters and warm sand attracted a record 31.5 million tourists to the Caribbean in 2019, but visits plummeted by an estimated 60% to 80% as the pandemic hit last year. That’s devastating for a region whose countries depend heavily on visitors for income.

“Many countries prefer hurricanes compared to what has happened with the pandemic,” said Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, a former Bahamian tourism minister who also led the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

Tens of thousands of tourism-related jobs were lost, including those held by Nadia Kidd and her mother in Jamaica. Kidd, 31, was a waitress at a resort and her mother worked at a guest house. Kidd, like many other workers, has yet to receive her severance pay and now runs a tiny grocery store out of her home to support her mother and daughter.

“Everything is all on me,” said Kidd, who worked at the Meliá Braco Village resort in Trelawny. “I have loans to pay, light bill and internet (that I) have to pay because my daughter has to go to school online.”

Desperate to create safe conditions for tourism, the Caribbean is turning to India and China for vaccines at a time when global supplies are strained and richer nations are ahead of them in line for shots from other sources. A few have been fortunate to get quick shipments, while others could wait weeks, if not months.

The Caribbean saw COVID-19 levels rising in November, along with variants feared to be more contagious. More than 522,000 cases and more than 7,500 deaths have been reported in 35 of the region’s countries and territories.

“The rate of increase has been alarming,” said Dr. Joy St. John, executive director of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency.

The small nations adopted a variety of anti-virus measures, nearly all requiring visitors at a minimum to show recent negative tests upon arrival.

Cuba — the largest Caribbean nation and the only one working on its own vaccines — choked off arrivals after seeing infections surge. It requires visitors to stay in designated hotels and to take new tests upon landing.

International travelers to St. Kitts and Nevis must stay at certain hotels, and St. Eustatius requires visitors to register their reason for traveling before giving approval.

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Last Wailer Dies at 73 in Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Bunny Wailer, a reggae luminary who was the last surviving founding member of the legendary group The Wailers, died on Tuesday in his native Jamaica. He was 73.

Wailer, a baritone singer whose birth name is Neville Livingston, formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh when they lived in a slum in the capital of Kingston. They catapulted to international fame with the album, “Catch a Fire” and also helped popularize Rastafarian culture among better-off Jamaicans starting in the 1970s.

“Jah-B was a vanguard, always pushing the boundaries of expression, whether in song, in style or in spoken word,” said Brian Paul Welsh, a local reggae musician known as Blvk H3ro. “There was and can only ever be one Neville Livingston.”

Wailer died at Andrews Memorial Hospital in the Jamaican parish of St. Andrew of complications from a stroke in July, manager Maxine Stowe told The Associated Press.

His death was mourned worldwide as people shared music, memories and pictures of the renowned artist.

“The passing of Bunny Wailer, the last of the original Wailers, brings to a close the most vibrant period of Jamaica’s musical experience,” wrote Jamaica politician Peter Phillips in a Facebook post. “Bunny was a good, conscious Jamaican brethren.”

Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, also paid tribute to Wailer, calling him “a respected elder statesman of the Jamaican music scene,” in a series of tweets.

“This is a great loss for Jamaica and for Reggae, undoubtedly Bunny Wailer will always be remembered for his sterling contribution to the music industry and Jamaica’s culture,” he wrote.

While Wailer toured the world, he was more at home in Jamaica’s mountains and he enjoyed farming while writing and recording songs on his label, Solomonic.

″I think I love the country actually a little bit more than the city,″ Wailer told The Associated Press in 1989. ″It has more to do with life, health and strength. The city takes that away sometimes. The country is good for meditation. It has fresh food and fresh atmosphere – that keeps you going.″

A year before, in 1988, he had chartered a jet and flew to Jamaica with food to help those affected by Hurricane Gilbert.

″Sometimes people pay less attention to those things (food), but they turn out to be the most important things. I am a farmer,″ he told the AP.

He was the third and last original Wailer. Marley died in 1981 of a brain tumor at 36 years old and Tosh was fatally shot in Jamaica in 1987 at 42 years old.

AP writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed.

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Nicaragua: 6 Migrant Bodies Found in Small Boat

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaraguan authorities said Tuesday the bodies of six people, apparently migrants, have been found in a small boat drifting off the Caribbean coast.

The Interior Ministry said a Republic of Guinea passport belonging to a 31-year-old man was found on one of the bodies. The passport had no Nicaraguan entry stamp in it.

The boat was found drifting about a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) out to sea Monday near Cayo Las Palomas.

The corpses were all too badly decomposed for immediate identification. The ministry said an initial examination indicates all those aboard apparently died of dehydration or heatstroke, and that they probably died about a month ago.

Migrants seeking to reach the United States have been trapped at Nicaragua’s southern border with Costa Rica, because the Nicaraguan government won’t allow them to cross Nicaragua. That led some to choose more dangerous water routes.

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US Capitol Attack Classed as ‘Domestic Terrorism’

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that officials have classified the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Trump‘s supporters as domestic terrorism.

“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism,” Wray told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Wray said the FBI has received more than 270,000 tips from Americans that have helped the bureau identify the numerous people who allegedly participated in the attack.

“Citizens from around the country have sent us more than 270,000 digital media tips. Some have even taken the painful step of turning in their friends or their family members,” he said.

But under questioning from lawmakers, Wray resisted pinning the Capitol breach on a single extremist ideology, saying the group of attackers “included a variety of backgrounds.”

“The attackers on Jan. 6 included a number — and the number keeps growing as we build out our investigations — of what we would call militia violent extremism. And we have had some already arrested who we would put in the category of racially motivated violent extremism, white as well. Those would be the categories so far that we’re seeing as far as Jan. 6.”

The FBI has arrested at least 280 people allegedly involved in the Capitol attack and have charged more than 300.

Wray also said the number of domestic terrorism cases investigated by the FBI has doubled during his tenure as FBI director, from about 1,000 cases in 2017 to 2,000 by the end of 2020.

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Donald Trump, Gone, But Not Forgotten

Former President Trump‘s reentry into public life at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday exacerbates challenges for political leaders in both parties, as well as the media.

Washington has been a relatively Trump-free zone for the first 40 days of President Biden‘s administration, particularly with Trump banned from Twitter, the megaphone that allowed him to gin up news cycle after news cycle. 

The speech to a faithful crowd in Orlando, Fla., won’t bring a return to the last four years, but it did establish that Trump remains the overwhelming leader of the Republican Party and that Republicans in Congress contending with the Biden administration will have to constantly be looking over their shoulder.

It also showed he can still command some media attention, though only Fox News carried his CPAC speech live among the major cable networks.

“It’s still Trump’s party,” said Dan Eberhart, a GOP fundraiser who has been critical of Trump’s post-election rhetoric.

“Whether it remains so is going to be played out live on TV for the next two years because the media is obsessed with the question,” he added.

Trump is expected to form a super PAC and be involved in party primaries. His speech essentially represented a threat to all the Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him.

Trump’s victory in the CPAC straw poll notwithstanding, it’s unclear whether he will run for president again in 2024. But it is clear he wants the GOP to know it’s a possibility.

Trump’s remarks at CPAC resembled his old campaign rallies and included grievances, misleading statements and attacks on his critics, all delivered to a boisterous crowd.

He renewed his false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, saying at one point he could run for a “third” term in 2024.

Such claims led to the Jan. 6 mob of Trump supporters that ransacked the Capitol, an event that led to five deaths, including a Capitol Police officer, and the former president’s second impeachment. 

The divides over the ugly episode in U.S. history continue to eat at the Republican Party, even as it quickly and generally asserts itself under the former president. 

The attack has led to new fears about the role misinformation is playing in American life and directly led social media networks to eject Trump, something he and other Republicans are now roundly criticizing.

Clinton Watts, a distinguished research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that Trump’s lack of presence on social media platforms makes it much harder for false claims about his election loss and other conspiracies to take hold.

“They can’t be hammered into people’s heads because you’re just not seeing him enough and they’re not spreading fast enough,” Watts said. “The conspiracy audience doesn’t know where to go to see the conspiracy and even if they go there, he’s not saying anything.”

That said, CPAC featured a number of speakers who made false claims that the election was stolen from Trump, underscoring how such theories will continue to resurface.

The Biden White House has generally sought to ignore Trump, something that could be challenging if he seeks more attention and tries to make news.

“A central part of the challenge that Biden is going to face is that he needs to position himself at the center of national deliberations about lawmaking,” said William Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “But he needs to capture the narrative and set its terms.”

The Biden White House, by and large, has refused to engage on questions about Trump.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to engage with a question about Trump’s claim that Biden had “sold out” to teachers unions during a briefing on Monday afternoon.

“I think we are going to spend more of our time focused on communicating about our agenda for the American people than responding to criticism from the former president,” Psaki said.

When asked about the impact of Trump’s continued presence on the U.S. relationship with foreign leaders, Psaki answered: “President Biden just decisively beat Donald Trump a few months ago, that’s why we’re all here,” before noting that Biden remains focused on fulfilling his commitments on the campaign trail.

Trump appears poised to remain a shadow in Washington, especially when it comes to the Republican Party. Though one third of those polled said they preferred that Trump not run again for the White House, he still won the straw poll handily.

At the convention, a golden statue of Trump was wheeled around the convention hall, and the event’s agenda reflected many of the former president’s priorities with a focus on election integrity, “cancel culture” and alleged anti-conservative bias in technology companies and the press.

“The CPAC crowd is fully on board the Trump train now. The results of the 2020 elections are not up for discussion — Trump won, and the election was stolen from him,” Eberhart said, noting that narrative made it more difficult for prospective 2024 candidates like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to find an opening.

Trump discussed plans for a potential super PAC during a meeting with several political allies at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday. Corey Lewandowski is expected to play a leading role in the endeavor, and several other former Trump campaign aides, White House officials and other allies are expected to be involved.

The super PAC would work in conjunction with Trump’s already-formed leadership PAC, Save America, which has been raking in millions of dollars since it launched last year. Through the political action committee, Trump has made endorsements for GOP candidates like former aide, Max Miller who is running against one of the Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment earlier this year, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez.

While Trump ruled out forming a new political party during his speech on Sunday, Republicans say that his attacks on other GOP lawmakers are counterproductive and take energy away from more effective criticism of the Democrats’ agenda.

“If he left and started his own party, the Republican Party would lose. If he runs again it’s going to be challenging for him to win a national election based on the events that unfolded after Nov. 3,” veteran Republican strategist Colin Reed said. “It’s one less lingering issue out there, but as long as he’s taking pot shots at his perceived Republican enemies, that’s where the focus is going to be here in D.C.”

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Puerto Ricans’ Long Fight for Equal Rights

In 2013, Jose Luis Vaello-Madero moved back to Puerto Rico. He had lived and worked in New York since 1985. His wife had already moved back to the island for medical reasons; now he would join her there to help take care of her. By then, he had developed health problems as well. And so, like millions of other Americans, he sought and received benefits under the Supplemental Security Income program that his taxes had helped fund over the years.

If Vaello-Madero had moved to a remote cabin in Alaska or bought a houseboat in Florida, he would have been able to continue collecting SSI without a problem. But Congress had only authorized the SSI program in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

When the Social Security Administration learned three years later that Vaello-Madero was still receiving payments inside Puerto Rico, they stopped disbursing them. Then the agency sued him to recover the $28,081 he had already received.

Now the Supreme Court will decide if he—and the commonwealth in which he now lives—were unjustly denied access to the program by Congress. The justices agreed on Monday to hear the case at the urging of the Justice Department.

If it rules in favor of Vaello-Madero, it could open up multiple nationwide benefits programs to the island’s three million residents, who are U.S. citizens. If the court sides with the Justice Department, however the court could also take the opportunity to further entrench the colonial-era rulings that keep Puerto Ricans in what the commonwealth described to the court as a “second-class citizenship not supported in the Constitution.”

The case, United States v. Vaello-Madero, first made its way to a federal district court in Puerto Rico, where the judge sided with Vaello-Madero. Congress, Judge Gustavo Gelpí wrote in his 2019 ruling, “cannot demean and brand said United States citizen while in Puerto Rico with a stigma of inferior citizenship to that of his brethren nationwide.”

The Justice Department appealed the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel quibbled with Gelpí’s reasoning, but ultimately ruled that Congress had violated the equal-protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by excluding U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico.

“While we respect the legislature’s authority to make even unwise decisions to purportedly protect the fiscal integrity of SSI and the federal government itself, the Fifth Amendment does not permit the arbitrary treatment of individuals who would otherwise qualify for SSI but for their residency in Puerto Rico,” Judge Juan Torruella wrote for the panel in 2020. “Even under rational basis review, the cost of including Puerto Rico’s elderly, disabled, and blind in SSI cannot by itself justify their exclusion.”

In its briefs for the Supreme Court, the Justice Department cited two precedents to support its position. First, in the 1978 case Califano v. Torres, the Supreme Court rejected a SSI claim by a Puerto Rico resident who had argued the denial violated his right to travel.

Then, in the 1980 case Harris v. Rosario, the court overturned a lower-court ruling that held Puerto Rico’s exclusion from the predecessor program to TANF did not violate the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Taken together, the two rulings strongly suggest that Congress could exclude U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico from the SSI program without violating the Constitution.

Vaello-Madero pointed out that those two decisions came without full arguments or briefings, and therefore hold less precedential weight. But he also attacked the deeper line of cases that led to them. “The legal foundation upon which Califano and Harris are built is not good law,” his lawyers told the court.

“Those cases attributed Congress’s power to discriminate against Puerto Rico to the island’s territorial status under the Insular Cases—a much-criticized line of cases that are long overdue to be overruled.” The Insular Cases, in a nutshell, are a series of rulings where the Supreme Court held the Constitution does not fully apply to territories acquired by the United States during the Spanish-American War.

In those rulings, the Supreme Court distinguished Puerto Rico from other then-territories like Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma by saying the latter were on the path to eventual statehood, while territories like Puerto Rico and Guam were not. Racism played an unambiguous factor in the distinction.

In Dawnes v. Bidwell, the first of the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court described Puerto Rico and other newfound colonial possessions as “inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought” where “the administration of government and justice, according to Anglo-Saxon principles, may for a time be impossible.”

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