Once the most trusted branch of government, the Supreme Court has been hijacked by the Republican Party for its war on equality and civil liberties. Latinos, who make up nearly 19% of the U.S. population, are seen by many conservatives as a threat. Not surprisingly, the effect of the court’s rulings will fall heavily on Latinos and other people of color.

Its plans to revoke Roe vs. Wade, for example, will disproportionately harm low-income women with limited time and resources to travel across states for abortions. The most affected will be the millions of undocumented women, mostly Latinas, who face Border Patrol checkpoints within the 100-mile border zone. Many won’t travel far for fear of deportation.

Forcing Latinas to carry unwanted pregnancies traps them in poverty, where they lack political strength to resist their exploitation. “It’s about power and it’s about control,” Chio Valerio-Gonzalez, organizing director at Latino advocacy group Mijente, told me. “If you keep people poor, you keep them working, you keep them with their heads down.”

But the attack on Latinas is just the beginning of the GOP dream to create an anti-Latino dystopia. As Nancy Meza, national organizing director at the refugee and immigrant legal services group RAICES, told me: “We’re seeing this attack on reproductive rights as an attack on civil liberties overall.”

The reasoning in Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft of an opinion overturning Roe vs. Wade poses a threat to Obergefell vs. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage. Of all millennials, Latinos are the least likely to identify as heterosexual; they have the most to lose... READ MORE

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Monday that it will expand flights to Cuba, take steps to loosen restrictions on U.S. travelers to the island, and lift Trump-era restrictions on remittances that immigrants can send to people on the island.
The State Department said in a statement that it will remove the current $1,000-per-quarter limit on family remittances and will allow nonfamily remittance, which will support independent Cuban entrepreneurs. The U.S. will also allow scheduled and charter flights to locations beyond Havana, according to the State Department.

The administration said it will also move to reinstate the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which has a backlog of more than 20,000 applications, and increase consular services and visa processing.

“With these actions, we aim to support Cubans’ aspirations for freedom and for greater economic opportunities so that they can lead successful lives at home,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “We continue to call on the Cuban government to immediately release political prisoners, to respect the Cuban people’s fundamental freedoms and to allow the Cuban people to determine their own futures.”

The policy changes come after a review that began soon after a series of widespread protests on the island last July.

The Biden administration is lifting several Trump-era restrictions on Cuba, including on some aspects of travel to the island, caps on family remittances and the issuance of immigration visas.

A State Department statement described the measures as designed “to further support the Cuban people, providing them additional tools to pursue a life free from Cuban government oppression and to seek greater economic opportunities.”

The decision comes after a lengthy internal review, whose implementation was delayed after a Cuban government crackdown on widespread street protests on the island last summer.

The administration has been under pressure to ease the numbers of migrants crossing the southern U.S. border, where tens of thousands of Cubans have become the second-largest group of those seeking unauthorized entry through Mexico. Last month, the administration and Cuba held direct migration talks for the first time in four years.

Under decades-old bilateral accords, the United States had agreed to issue at least 20,000 immigrant visas annually to Cubans in exchange for Cuba’s agreement to accept deportation flights of those who arrived illegally or were deemed otherwise inadmissible.

Those agreements were suspended in 2018 as part of the Trump administration’s reversal of President Barack Obama’s opening to Cubathat had led to a restoration of diplomatic relations in 2015. Visas of all types were further limited by sanctions, and the U.S. Embassy and consulate were reduced to skeleton staffs in 2019.

Under the new measures, the administration will increase capacity at the consulate and reinstate a family reunification parole program... READ MORE

Latin American governments are keen to show Washington it’s a new era. But this is also a tale of democracies in decline, writes AQ’s editor-in-chief.

The upcoming retirements of several U.S. House members from California have made this a year of generational change for the state’s representation in Washington. That’s especially true in the new 42nd Congressional District, which combines areas in southeastern Los Angeles County and Long Beach represented for many years by Democratic Reps. Alan Lowenthal and Lucille Roybal-Allard. Their retirements have created a lively contest among eight candidates in the June 7 primary, two of whom have especially impressive records.

Assembly member Cristina Garcia, a Democrat from Bell Gardens, won office a decade ago by fighting corruption and machine politics. She’s taken on difficult fights in the Legislature, trying to improve the environment in her industry-heavy district and address the financial burden of menstrual products for low-income girls and women — a taboo subject when she first started talking about it in the halls of power. As leader of the women’s caucus, she’s worked to elect more women to the male-dominated Legislature.

Robert Garcia, the Democratic mayor of Long Beach, also has proven to be a trailblazer during his eight years in office. At age 36, he became the city’s youngest and first openly gay mayor. He’s worked with the Biden administration to shelter children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents at the Long Beach Convention Center and helped establish a “guaranteed income” pilot program giving $500 a month to single mothers who earn less than $20,000 a year. His leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic is noteworthy. After losing his mother and step-father to the disease, he spearheaded an aggressive vaccination campaign that was lauded as a model for the state.
 

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