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puerto rico
Esencia No Va: Protesting Neocolonial Capitalist Development in Puerto Rico
A movement is forming to defend the community and island against a project that would turn over a significant piece of Puerto Rico’s land to foreign billionaires, to serve their needs, not the needs of the Puerto Rican people.
Apr 08, 2026
On Saturday, March 28—No Kings Day in the US—an estimated 50,000 people marched in the streets of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico to protest plans for “Esencia,” a proposed huge, gated, luxury ocean-side development in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. The protest was spear-headed by Defiende a Cabo Rojo, a coalition of community, scientific, and cultural organizations, and was joined by 66 co-sponsoring groups from all over the island. A retired US professor of (radical) economics, I attended the protest with my friend Dimaris Acosta-Mercado, an activist in the anti-Esencia movement and professor of ecology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez.
The $2.5 billion Esencia project, first proposed in May 2024, is a quintessential example of neocolonial capitalist development. It would create a tropical enclave for super-rich foreigners on 2,000 acres of land along a 3-mile stretch of beach in the southwest of the island, including 1,200 homes, 500 hotel accommodations, two golf courses, its own school, and an airport. Although it does not yet have building permits, the proposed project has already received generous tax credits and exemptions.
The Movement to Stop Esencia
The movement to stop Esencia views this issue in both class and territorial terms. Its goal is to defend the community and island against a project that would turn over a significant piece of Puerto Rico’s land to foreign billionaires, to serve their needs, not the needs of the Puerto Rican people. It builds on a history of successful struggles against previous development projects such as the Northern Corridor, mining in Adjuntas, and beachside construction in Rincon.
One of the movement’s core critiques of Esencia is the loss of public access to the beaches, which has happened with previous developments such as Dorado Beach and Palmas del Mar. Bad Bunny’s song, “What Happened to Hawaii,” has become a theme song for the movement, with its powerful chorus:
Thеy want to take my river and my beach too
They want my neighborhood and grandma to leave
No, don't let go of the flag nor forget the lelolai
'Cause I don't want them to do to you what happened to Hawaii
A second set of criticisms of the project focus on its negative ecological and environmental impact. As part of a team of academic researchers involved in the movement, my friend Dimaris’ critique focuses on the harm Esencia will do to endangered species, including birds, reptiles, snails, and plants that exist only in Puerto Rico, and to the critical habitat system that supports them. Other movement researchers predict that Esencia will cause shortages in the region’s water, already in short supply. A third critique emphasizes the area’s importance as an archaeological site.
The March Against Esencia: A Celebration of Life and Love
The march began at El Escambron, another public beach threatened with privatization. From there we marched along the coast of Old San Juan, stopping to rally at the Capitol Building, where the Puerto Rican Senate and House of Representatives meet, and then marched to the Governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, for more protesting.
It is hard to capture in words the powerful anti-Esencia presence and statement that the march created. At the front of the protest were huge flags of Puerto Rico and Cabo Rojo. Soon after came a large paper mache model of a guabairo, a rare bird endangered by the project, carried overhead for the length of the protest, wings flapping. Marchers carried and wore a variety of printed and homemade posters denouncing the proposed project. Percussion—including drums, folding fans, kitchen pots, guiros—was omnipresent. The call and response chant of “Esencia No Va… Que No Va, Que No Va” (Esencia is a no-go, it shouldn’t go, it shouldn’t go) echoed throughout the march. Continual rhythmic chanting, drumming, singing, and dancing made the protest come alive as a potent force opposing the project. As a North American, I was touched to join in the familiar “El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido” chant and to sing “No Nos Pararon” (“they won’t stop us”) to the tune of “We shall not be moved.”
If we in the US and elsewhere are to use social strikes to retake control of our governments... we have much to learn from the joyful, creative protests of our Puerto Rican comrades.
Puerto Rican peoples are a mixture of African, Indigenous, and European heritage, and, as Dimaris put it, “It’s as if all our ancestry (was) coming alive and making peace in this land to protect it.” Indigenous heritage took center stage when the march stopped in front of the Capitol building, with the blowing of conch shells, chanting, calling in the directions, and leading an areito dance. And Afro-Puerto Rican ancestry was omni-present in the bombas and drumming.
One group wore purple T-shirts announcing “anti-patriarchal, feminista, lesbiana, trans, Caribena, Latinoamericana.” Another T-shirt depicted a plant and the words “sembrando rebeldias” (planting rebellions). Gay protesters snapped fans for percussion (one of their signature acts). The Puerto Rico Sierra Club was there, along with Para la Naturaleza, and AFSCME, and many other groups.
The protest had something I hadn’t experienced in the many many US demonstrations I have participated in since the 1960s: It was fun! It was actually a party, with masses of people dancing, drumming, chanting, singing, and reveling in the streets. It was a celebration of life—not only of Puerto Rico and being Puerto Rican, but also of standing up for Mother Earth, an affirmation of love, cooperation, art, and beauty by a diverse community organizing in self-defense and defense of nature, against the greed, displacement, ecological destruction, and extreme wealth inequality that Esencia embodies. Dimaris later told me that the protest resembled the spirit of Verano 2019, the 15-day protest strike which used creativity, art, and fun to topple Gov. “Ricky” Rosello, including evening dance parties in front of the governor’s mansion. If we in the US and elsewhere are to use social strikes to retake control of our governments, as Jeremy Brecher suggests, we have much to learn from the joyful, creative protests of our Puerto Rican comrades.
A final note. The Solidarity Economy movement uses the motto, “Resist and Build.” Movements such as the one opposing Esencia, which resist the take-over of our lands and lives, are key. Equally important are a growing number of efforts to build non-capitalist, community-based alternatives, which are sprouting up all around the world, such as Casa Pueblo and Plenitud in Puerto Rico, or, in the US, land development projects such as those of the Peoples’ Network for Land and Liberation.
In these dark times, here’s to inspiring one another as we resist and build, and to having fun as we do so! Esencia No Va!!!!!!
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Bad Bunny Turned the Super Bowl Into a Call for Land Sovereignty
Bad Bunny didn’t just choose a lush set design. He intentionally made history visible, reminding millions of viewers that colonial power doesn’t only claim territory, it reorganizes our whole environment.
Mar 09, 2026
On the world’s biggest stage, amid fireworks and spectacle, there stood the crop that enriched empires while eroding Puerto Rico’s land, labor, and sovereignty.
When Bad Bunny opened his halftime performance walking through what looked like a living sugarcane field, millions simply saw a striking stage design. But those of us involved in agricultural communities saw a protest.
The Link Between Land, Culture, and Self-Determination
Sugarcane once powered Puerto Rico’s economy. Under Spanish rule and later as a territory of the United States, vast plantations consumed the island’s most fertile lands. Once diverse farming systems created by Taíno Indigenous communities gave way to monocultures designed for export. As with all colonial systems, wealth made in Puerto Rico has long flowed outward while the ecological and social costs remain for local people to have to bear.
Across colonized lands, colonial agriculture prioritized single crops for distant markets at the expense of ecological and social prosperity and resilience—a historical legacy that today ripples through communities and commodity markets. In Puerto Rico, as in other Latin American and Caribbean countries—including my own home country, Mexico—forests were cleared and watersheds were destabilized to power the colonial economic machine. Soil health declined. Local communities' cultural ties to land were fractured, and, without power over local resources anymore, they could no longer steward landscapes as they once did. In Puerto Rico, US policies favoring industrialization over agriculture from the early 20th century onward were the final straw. Although Puerto Rico once produced most of its own food on the island, it now imports over 80%.
The image of sugarcane at the Super Bowl reminds us that land is political. It carries memories of exploitation, resilience, and identity.
What appear today as “degraded land” and disempowered communities are the ecological and social residue of economic models designed for extraction. So, in a very real sense, Bad Bunny didn’t just choose a lush set design. He intentionally made history visible, reminding millions of viewers that colonial power doesn’t only claim territory, it reorganizes our whole environment and, in doing so, reshapes culture, labor, and identity itself.
For many Puerto Ricans, the performance summoned the figure of the jíbaro—the smallholder farmer of the island’s mountainous interior, living from and with the land during colonial rule. More than a rural archetype, the jíbaro is a cultural touchstone, carried through generations in music, poetry, and oral tradition. They represent resilience and dignity, and an enduring bond between people and place—a vision of land not as commodity, but as home, heritage, and self-determination. Framed within Bad Bunny’s creative vision, land is not an asset class: It is identity and community.
Restoring Nature-Positive Farming Traditions Isn’t a Luxury—It’s Basic Risk-Management
Modern agricultural practices, many rooted in colonialism, have long degraded land by plundering natural ecosystems and extracting their value, often concentrating ownership in a few powerful hands. This has left us in a dire situation: At least 40% of the world’s land is now degraded, driving increasing food and water insecurity, contributing to climate change, and fueling climate migration.
To ensure our future on the planet, we must urgently prioritize land restoration and transitioning to regenerative agricultural practices. But for restoration to work, the governance model colonialism installed must be inverted. Landscapes cannot be regenerated without local decision-making power. Ecological repair and political agency go hand in hand.
As climate pressures intensify and public budgets shrink, we are seeing governments and businesses alike continue to act like ecological and social resilience is a luxury, an add-on after economic profit has been achieved. But safeguarding agricultural and ecological heritage, and placing power in the hands of local communities to be able to do this on their own terms, is a scientifically sound investment in economic resilience.
If we are serious about healing degraded landscapes—in Puerto Rico, in Mexico, across Latin America and the Caribbean, and beyond—we must ensure that the finance being used to restore does not become a new form of enclosure.
Research shows us that when communities have ownership and governance over local resources, restoration lasts. Yes, this demands real upfront investment—in soil, water, agroforestry, local enterprise, and strong community institutions. But the returns are massive: Every dollar invested in restoration can generate up to $30 in benefits.
If finance continues to channel value outward while communities carry the risk, we simply repackage (neo)colonialism in a greener language. Restoration funding must, therefore, anchor ownership and governance locally, positioning communities as architects of change, not passive recipients. And there are models already demonstrating what this can look like.
In Mexico’s Sierra Gorda, the Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda (GESG) has built a system where conservation and livelihoods are inseparable. Working alongside the state government, GESG has designed and implemented a public policy within the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve where "forest owners" are compensated to steward forests, manage grazing responsibly, and protect biodiversity.
In simple terms, communities receive compensation for maintaining ecosystems that provide measurable public benefits—carbon sequestration, clean water, biodiversity conservation. Instead of extracting value from the land, value is generated by caring for it.
In the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, more than 300 people directly benefit from a PES (payment for ecosystem services) program covering over 14,000 hectares. GESG operates through a co-management model between civil society and the federal government, grounded in strong local participation and recognition. The goal is not short-term subsidy, but long-term institutional self-sufficiency through sub-national public policy—creating funding streams that sustain conservation while advancing community-led development.
It is a powerful example of conservation that reinforces, rather than erodes, local sovereignty. But PES alone cannot finance restoration at landscape scale; this requires a different kind of financial architecture. Regenerative blended finance offers one pathway. By combining public funds, philanthropic capital, and private investment, it can reduce risk and unlock larger flows of capital for landscape recovery. When designed well, blended finance mechanisms can accelerate ecological restoration while (and by) giving communities control.
A regeneratively-designed blended finance model treats communities as owners and co-investors, not beneficiaries. It embeds social and ecological returns alongside financial ones. It builds local financial capacity, enabling communities to negotiate, manage, and reinvest capital themselves, and strengthens local institutions so landscapes can ultimately generate their own sustainable revenue.
The image of sugarcane at the Super Bowl reminds us that land is political. It carries memories of exploitation, resilience, and identity. If we are serious about healing degraded landscapes—in Puerto Rico, in Mexico, across Latin America and the Caribbean, and beyond—we must ensure that the finance being used to restore does not become a new form of enclosure. Only then will restoration break from the patterns of the past.Keep ReadingShow Less
An Invitation to Dance: How Bad Bunny Builds a Movement
Most of us don’t reason our way into a larger sense of “us.” We feel our way there. Bad Bunny understands that.
Feb 27, 2026
When Bad Bunny was announced as the Super Bowl halftime performer, critics predicted backlash. He’d be too Spanish. Too political. Not “American” enough. The assumption was that in a country this polarized, cultural borders were fixed—and he stood on the wrong side of them.
Instead, one of the largest audiences in National Football League history tuned in. Streams surged. Album sales climbed. Millions of viewers who didn’t understand every lyric found themselves moving anyway.
Maybe nothing flipped overnight. Maybe hardened partisans didn’t suddenly renounce their politics. What happened was subtler—and more powerful. The borders didn’t collapse. They became more permeable. How did Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio pull that off?
His Music Is a Joyful Invitation, Not a Grievance
Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico has endured over 400 years of exploitation. And yet his music is uplifting; his community feels resilient, not defeated. Political messaging, especially among progressives, often starts with what communications strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio describes as, “Boy, have I got a problem for you.” Bad Bunny flips the sequence. He invites us to dance first. To celebrate music and food and love and family. It feels like the greatest party on Earth.
Without lecturing, Bad Bunny’s show gave us a history lesson on over 125 years of US colonization.
When I told my husband to check out Debi Tirar Más Photos, Bad Bunny’s Grammy Album of the Year (the first Spanish language winner ever), he was reluctant. The next day, though, the album was blasting through the house. The music is so accessible because there’s something for everyone. Even within a single song, he moves across genres and generations. Having grown up in the Bronx, I was drawn to the salsa rhythms of “Baile Inolvidable.” But then the dembow pulse of “Tití Me Preguntó” had me moving too—despite years of thinking that I didn’t like reggaeton because it all sounded the same. Bad Bunny’s music loosened assumptions I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying.
He Uses Curiosity as a Teacher
Viewers who tuned in for the spectacle of the halftime show noticed people dressed as sugar cane plants, workers climbing electrical poles, empty white plastic chairs scattered across the stage. What did it mean? I know I wasn't the only one burning a hole on the internet that evening. People don’t resist information they discover themselves, especially if they’re being entertained.
Without lecturing, Bad Bunny’s show gave us a history lesson on over 125 years of US colonization: the dismantling of Puerto Rico’s agricultural economy; environmental catastrophes; and gentrification driven by tax breaks for wealthy developers. The result: a diaspora in which 2 out of 3 Puerto Ricans now live off the island.
That’s not persuasion through argument. It’s softening through exposure.
His Call to Connect Counters the Us-Versus-Them Narrative Used to Divide Us
Bad Bunny’s music is more than about Puerto Rico. It’s about countering the fear and anger-mongering being used to pit us against each other. The deliberate cultivation of suspicion that someone else is taking what’s yours—when the real plundering is happening from the top.
His approach isn’t just entertainment. It’s strategy. Not a bid to crush opponents overnight, but a patient expansion of belonging—joyful, magnetic—until the line between “us” and “them” begins to dissolve.
Instead, Bad Bunny’s jumbotron message called on people to view each other through a loving lens instead of a hateful one. Former President Barack Obama praised the performance for conveying a simple message: There is room for everyone here. Contrast that to Turning Point’s All-American Halftime Show, the alternative created for those who preferred a narrower definition of who is an American.
Some observers have compared Bad Bunny to John Lennon who also insisted that love could be politically disruptive. Lennon’s “Imagine” wasn’t about changing policy; it was a call to picture the world differently. That imaginative shift is what unsettles power. Fear-based politics relies on narrowing who counts, on who gets to define the nation. Benito is all about expansion.
He Doesn’t Shrink to Widen His Audience
The NFL executives may have worried that Americans wouldn’t understand Bad Bunny if he didn’t sing in English, but he refused to change himself to accommodate a fractured country. He made the audience stretch instead. (Duolingo reported a 35% surge in Spanish learners following his show.) Understanding doesn’t always begin with translation. It can begin with proximity.
The anger directed at Bad Bunny, writes journalist Jim Heath, is about losing control over identity. “Latino culture is framed as divisive,” writes Heath, “only because its permanence challenges an older mythology about who America is.”
Changing Heart and Minds
We often assume persuasion begins with argument—that we must win debates before we can win anyone over. But most of us don’t reason our way into a larger sense of “us.” We feel our way there. Bad Bunny understands that. His work is an invitation: to learn about his culture, to experience joy together, to recognize how much we share. Not to contort ourselves to fit in, but to widen the circle without losing who we are. And before long, we’re dancing beside people we were warned to fear.
His approach isn’t just entertainment. It’s strategy. Not a bid to crush opponents overnight, but a patient expansion of belonging—joyful, magnetic—until the line between “us” and “them” begins to dissolve.
That’s how movements grow.
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At the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny's Defiant Joy Beat Trump's Knockoff Eugenics
Understanding America's eugenic history helps us see the present more clearly, and why the vibrant Puerto Rican presence on America's biggest stage was an act of resistance.
Feb 10, 2026
When Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl halftime stage, he performed one of the most beautiful examples of refusal I have witnessed in a long time.
In a moment when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting mass raids in American cities designed as a spectacle for social media, when families are being torn apart and warehoused in cages in hastily constructed concentration camps, when President DonaldTrump calls Somali immigrants “garbage,” Bad Bunny showed up as the embodiment of flourishing. Vibrant. Alive. Unapologetically present, resulting in the most watched Super Bowl halftime in history.
And that presence, those enormous ratings, and that contagious joy was too much for some white supremacists to bear. I do not recommend you waste your time on Trump's knockoff social media to understand his eugenic ideology. You know what he wrote without looking, and Fox News will parrot it for him anyways.
As a psychologist who studies the roots of my discipline in eugenics, I recognized immediately what made this performance so threatening, so necessary, so brilliant. While Bad Bunny was leaving us speechless at America's most-watched sporting event, he was refusing the fundamental premise of a resurgent eugenic ideology that has always been about one question: What should America look like?
Trump Is a Knockoff Eugenicist
The resemblance between our current moment and the height of the eugenics movement is striking, and it is very intentional. Donald Trump is driven by the same goals as those who shaped American policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics was a pseudoscientific movement aimed at "improving" the human population by deciding who was worthy of reproducing and who deserved to live in America. Through forced sterilizations (that famous Buck v Bell case that you may have heard about allowed for this), immigration restrictions, and pseudoscientific classifications, eugenicists worked to eliminate people they deemed genetically inferior, always targeting immigrants, people of color, the disabled, and the poor. The movement operated by equating non-white and certain immigrant groups with violence and insanity.
In the US, the struggle to fuse whiteness and being American has been central to our national politics.
In the 19th century, academic psychiatrists shamefully claimed that Black people were psychologically unfit for freedom. Medical journals described "drapetomania" as an alleged illness that caused enslaved African Americans to run away from their white masters. Another fabricated condition, "dysaesthesia aethiopica," was characterized as a form of madness manifest by "rascality" and "disrespect for the master's property," supposedly cured by "extensive whipping."
Today, we see carbon copies of this dehumanization. Trump shares videos depicting the Obamas as monkeys. His administration unconstitutionally deports our neighbors to Venezuela, treating human beings as disposable contaminants. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stages photo ops at concentration camps, transforming sites of human suffering into backdrops for political theater.
Manufacturing Exclusion Through "Science"
My discipline of psychology, under the guise of rationality and objectivity, has been able to cause tremendous harm. This is the trick of eugenic projects: By cloaking racist ideology under the seemingly objective rubric of biological science, it becomes nearly impossible to discern or critique. Psychology created the institutional infrastructure that made them policy. IQ tests are one of these manufactured tricks. In 1912, immigrants arriving at Ellis Island became the first group to have these tests administered to them. And like today, different classes experienced different encounters with justice, as the Epstein Files make so palpable for us. Back in 1912, only those in steerage were subject to examination; those who could afford more posh accommodations were exempt. According to the supposed "scientific" results produced by psychologist Henry Goddard, over 80% of all Jewish, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and Russian immigrants were "feeble-minded defectives."
Carl Brigham, one of these eugenic psychologists, went on to develop the SAT. The direct line from eugenic IQ tests to college gatekeeping runs straight through to today. Current "merit-based immigration" proposals echo this same logic: using supposedly objective measures to determine who deserves to be American, who gets to stay, whose children get opportunities.
And these psychologists have frequently collaborated with the US government, including in recent decades when they helped the government devise the most effective torture methods, breaking many ethics codes along the way. Lewis Terman, a psychologist who worked on the Army intelligence tests in the early 20th century, bragged that the exam "enabled psychology to become a beacon of light in the eugenics movement" and was especially proud of how these tests could be used to reshape national policy on immigrants. Terman’s wish was unfortunately granted, and these eugenic legacies were braided into the fabric of American policy including immigration law, education, criminal justice, voting rights.
Deportation as Eugenic Self-Defense
Between 1875 and 1924, Congress entertained many immigration bills and if we study them we can see the strategies that are playing out today with more clarity as well. For instance in 1915, Assistant Attorney General LE Cofer was openly advocating deportations on eugenic grounds. Another legislation in 1917 allotted a five-year period for deportation of immigrants who were later found to be in "excludible classes." Deportations were considered by these eugenicists as self-defense. In 1928, Eugenical News listed as a priority "the deportation of all aliens illegally entered." They wrote: "The man whose introduction to American life comes through breaking the quota act is prima facie an undesirable."
The eugenic resurgence fueled by the terror of losing dominance fuels the crises we are living through today.
This is sounding eerily familiar, isn't it? Listen to current administration officials. Trump. Pam Bondi. JD Vance. Karoline Leavitt. This exact rhetoric is being repeated today. Equating people from other countries with criminals is a basic eugenic principle. Today's "border crisis" framing, the claims that undocumented immigrants are inherently criminal, the mass deportation plans, these are old-school eugenic principles with a fresh coat of white paint.
In the US, the struggle to fuse whiteness and being American has been central to our national politics. Immigrants during the height of eugenics were viewed as interlopers; along with Black Americans, they were seen as less pure bodies polluting the well-being of the entire country. Psychologists and other supposed experts made these sentiments appear scientifically valid and politically viable by arming themselves with photographs, charts, statistics, and quantified statements.
The Great Replacement, Then and Now
The goal of these eugenicists was "bettering and protecting the white race," the same obsession we see in the Great Replacement Theory today. This is not fringe conspiracy anymore. In 2022, a white supremacist murdered 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, explicitly motivated by Great Replacement ideology. In 2019, another killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart, targeting Latinx shoppers with the same beliefs. Tucker Carlson promotes this theory every chance he gets. Congressional Republicans now use this language openly, warning about "demographic replacement" and the need to preserve "Western civilization."
History has taught us that progress toward justice can be met with pushback, and the burden of this pushback is often heaviest on those who for various reasons have fewer resources to defend themselves. Eugenics never left us. It transmuted, it became absorbed into insidious institutions, into redlining, into the school system, into the carceral state. But there were also real movements toward justice, civil rights organizers, community activists, families, and advocates who fought for decades to untangle eugenic legacies from our policies and institutions. They won important victories. And it is precisely these gains that white supremacists cannot bear. When the status of their imagined racial hierarchy is questioned, when their power is genuinely threatened, they respond with violence and state power. The eugenic resurgence fueled by the terror of losing dominance fuels the crises we are living through today.
Economic Scapegoating as Eugenic Strategy
Eugenicist Robert Ward, influential in getting the Immigration Act of 1924 passed, said with awful transparency: "We constantly speak of the need of more hands to do our labor. We forget that we are importing not hands alone but bodies also." Eugenicists repeatedly claimed to champion American workers while actually protecting white supremacy. It was never about labor, it was about bodies, about whose body was to be protected and whose body was to be disposable.
Where Trump represents all-consuming exclusion, Bad Bunny embodied refusal, joy, and reunification.
Today's anti-immigrant rhetoric follows the same script. Trump campaigned on protecting working-class jobs from immigrant "invasion," despite no evidence of that happening. But his administration's actual policies tell a different story: Mass deportations intensify the already overwhelming labor shortage in the construction industry, creating labor shortages that hurt local economies as farms and business are forced to close. Meanwhile, the administration busts unions, enriches billionaire donors (under Trump billionaires have gotten $1.5 trillion richer in the past year) and himself, and imposes tariffs that drive up prices for working families.
Many voted for Trump because they desperately wanted someone to address economic inequity. Instead, they got eugenic scapegoating, blaming immigrants for problems caused by the wealthy and powerful. The claim is protecting American workers. The reality is a war on poor and working people of all backgrounds, while the rich face zero accountability for devastating our communities.
Bad Bunny's Counternarrative
Which brings us back to the Super Bowl halftime show. The great American sport. The NFL. And there, at the center of it all, was an unabashed celebration of the Americans who are very much the target of ICE's raids today.
Bad Bunny didn't offer a speech or a slogan. He offered his entire being. The visual references to Hurricane Maria were unmistakable, the storm that killed nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans while Trump threw paper towels and claimed they "want everything done for them." The ongoing refusal of statehood. The deliberate undercount of the death toll. This is eugenic neglect: the decision to let "undesirable" populations suffer and die because their lives are deemed less valuable.
The whole performance was dynamic, alive, vibrating with joy. It refused the fusion of whiteness and American identity that eugenics has always demanded. This is resistance through presence braided with brilliant critical analysis. Resistance through flourishing in his full humanity, in the full humanity of his community, on the biggest stage in America. Where Trump represents all-consuming exclusion, Bad Bunny embodied refusal, joy, and reunification. Not just saying but doing. His presence was an embodiment of flourishing that the eugenic imagination cannot accommodate.
The only thing stronger than hate is love.
What This Moment Demands of Us
Understanding eugenics helps us understand the present. It reveals that what we're witnessing is not an aberration but a recurrence, a resurgence of an ideology with a long life, an ideology that has been picked up by many political agendas over the decades. Trump has never been original once his entire life.
In my studies, I look at who is considered criminal or immoral. It has always been the immigrant. The disabled. It has always been Black people and people of color. Studying eugenics teaches us that policies presented as common sense, as economic necessity, as protecting American workers, as maintaining order, they are often merely covers for racial elimination.
He showed up and said: This is America too.
Our communities cannot be eliminated. "Seguimos aquí"—we are still here—Bad Bunny ended the performance with those words. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio refused to be erased, refused to shrink, refused to disappear. Showing up with joy is indeed a form of power, and gorgeous, infectious resistance. While the administration builds concentration camps, rips apart families, and unleashes violence against communities exercising their constitutional rights, Bad Bunny danced, swaggered, made us all fall in love with freedom itself. He showed up and said: This is America too.
That kind of presence, that kind of refusal, that kind of joy, it's too much for the eugenicists to bear.
Let's do more of this, America.
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Bad Bunny Is An Environmental Justice Educator: Here’s What His Music Can Teach Us
As a recording artist, the world is his classroom, and his performances function as public pedagogy.
Feb 07, 2026
While the NFL is promising the American public a Super Bowl they can dance to, keep in mind that half-time show headliner Bad Bunny is way more than just the world’s most-played recording artist of 2025 and Latin Grammy and Grammy winner: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is also a bona fide environmental justice educator.
As a former public school educator, a professor, and an author of two books on teaching climate change and environmental justice, I know that climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, which means you can’t teach about the climate crisis without also teaching about equity, race, and justice.
Bad Bunny knows this, too.
Consider that Mr. Ocasio was born in Puerto Rico (where he recently held an extensive concert residency that reportedly boosted the economy of the unincorporated US territory by up to $400 million), where he reportedly has held or holds property, along with Los Angeles, Miami, and San Juan. It is not lost on Bad Bunny that all of these areas face severe climate change impacts, from record-breaking wildfire seasons to rising waters to extreme heat.
His call to action also aligns with the environmentally just future that Puerto Ricans have been envisioning.
Mr. Ocasio frequently incorporates commentary about social and political issues into his music and has spoken out about Immigration and Customs Enforcement Raids, transphobia, and racial justice. As a recording artist, the world is his classroom, and his performances function as public pedagogy. K-12 teachers, college professors, and environmental leaders alike may draw inspiration from his work to develop their own environmental justice curricula, projects, and investigations as they take action in their communities.
Bad Bunny’s music video, El Apagón, embeds an 18-minute documentary featuring investigative journalist Bianca Graulau and provides evidence of unparalleled gentrification driven by outsiders, the widespread displacement of families with decades of roots in their lost communities, and the purposeful and profound persistence of colonialism.
Moreover, the video takes its title from the rolling blackouts that occurred in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Hurricane Maria resulted in the largest blackout in US history and the second-largest in the world.
Puerto Rico’s power grid was devastated by Hurricane Maria, prompting privatization by LUMA Energy, which was met with fierce resistance and protest. However, since privatization, blackouts have persisted, including those caused by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in 2020, Hurricane Fiona in 2022, and a blackout in 2025. Even without natural disasters, Puerto Ricans lose about 27 hours of power per year.
More than just time spent in the dark, blackouts disrupt access to clean water and air conditioning, both of which are essential in tropical climates. In addition, reliance on generators during blackouts has increased respiratory health impacts, such as asthma.
Children are among the most vulnerable, and blackouts have also resulted in mental health impacts for Puerto Rico’s K-12 students, such as a sense of hopelessness and isolation.
Add it all up, and you get systemic environmental racism. And it leads to the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. A concerted push toward environmental justice is the only antidote.
The preparation of students and community members to work toward environmental justice began more than 30 years ago at the First National People of Color Leadership Summit. The 1,100-person delegation drafted 17 Principles of Environmental Justice and the Principles of Working Together. They significantly redefined the meaning of what constitutes the “environment.”
Historically, “environment” referred to pristine natural areas outside cities. At the summit, “environment” was redefined to capture the places where people (particularly those of color) live, work, study, play, and pray. This enabled the inclusion of issues such as toxic pollution, worker safety, transportation, housing, health, and recurring blackouts, such as those in Puerto Rico.
To combat local environmental racism in any community, it is imperative to begin with community-generated solutions and to view residents through a lens of self-determination, as they are the most knowledgeable about the issues that directly affect their communities. This includes K-12 students, who are capable and eager to take action.
Young students can apply an investigative journalism lens to their communities by conducting research to address environmental issues of concern. For example, students can interview residents and conduct community surveys in their neighborhood to identify environmental injustices. Students can also create an oral history project to archive local perspectives of environmental injustices and partner with their local public library to host a showcase or a display of their findings.
Elementary, middle, and high school teachers can also encourage students to develop their historical literacy, social consciousness, and critical thinking skills by comparing the US response time to Hurricane Maria with that of other natural disasters, with particular attention to US states versus US territories.
Again, look no further than Bad Bunny. He is intentionally and powerfully elevating Puerto Rico to the national consciousness while simultaneously using his global platform to highlight environmental racism.
Bad Bunny has turned his global stage into a worldwide classroom.
More pointedly, his call to action also aligns with the environmentally just future that Puerto Ricans have been envisioning. Teachers, students, and environmental leaders are well-positioned to respond to this call. However, we can’t rely on our global pop stars to teach our K-12 students about environmental racism and environmental justice; it must start in public schools.
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Puerto Ricans Continue Protests Against US Militarism and War Threats
“We are against any type of military intervention in the country of Venezuela, and above all we are against the vile and terrible assassinations of our fishermen brothers," said one protester.
Nov 12, 2025
Protests continued Tuesday in Puerto Rico against the US military buildup and attacks on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the Trump administration's warmongering toward Venezuela.
Since September, Puerto Ricans have been protesting the reactivation of former US bases like Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, increased operations at Muñiz Air National Guard Base and other sites, airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, and Trump's deployment of warships and thousands of troops to the region for possible attacks on Venezuela. Trump has also authorized covert CIA action against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“We are against US imperialism, we are against any type of military intervention in the country of Venezuela, and above all we are against the vile and terrible assassinations of our fishermen brothers that have happened with the pretext that they are boats for drug traffickers," explained protester Enrique Rivera Zambrana, a resident of the southeastern town of Arroyo. "We condemn those killings, and terrible actions. We are in favor of peace.”
En Puerto Rico se siguen llevando a cabo protestas contra los entrenamientos militares que el Gobierno de Trump está realizando en las playas de Arroyo, una localidad situada en el sureste de la isla.
En las últimas semanas, los residentes de Puerto Rico han revelado haber visto… pic.twitter.com/cT2QMiHNxN
— Democracy Now! en español (@DemocracyNowEs) November 12, 2025
Tuesday's protest was also held in honor of Ángel Rodríguez Cristóbal, a Puerto Rican revolutionary who was found dead in a Florida prison—where he was serving a six-month sentence for opposing the US Navy occupation and bombing of Vieques, Puerto Rico—on November 11, 1979. While US authorities said Rodríguez killed himself, many critics believe he was assassinated.
US Marines began large-scale amphibious warfare exercises involving hundreds of troops at the end of August as part of Trump's remilitarization of the region amid his military buildup against Venezuela. There are currently around 10,000 troops on the island—which was conquered from Spain in 1898—as well as weapons including F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones, surveillance aircraft, and support equipment.
The US buildup has evoked memories of the fight to kick the Navy out of Vieques, a picture-postcard island whose residents lived downwind from a US bombing range for six decades. Tens of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped. Deadly chemical weapons were tested and stored. Toxins polluted the land, air, and sea, including Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and so-called forever chemicals.
There was little that Puerto Ricans—who were denied political representation in Washington, DC—could do about it. When the Navy finally left in 2003, it left behind a legacy of illness including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as an infant mortality rate 55% higher than in the rest of the territory.
Vieques octopus fisher José Silva recently told Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) that the new buildup "is like bringing back the monster of the bombings" of the island.
Another Vieques resident, Yamilette Meléndez, said the renewed US presence brought back childhood memories of hiding under her bed whenever warplanes flew overhead.
“The trauma comes back,” she said. “It comes back because for years we lived with the sound of bombs, planes at all hours, while sleeping, at school."
"I thought of my children, of the anxiety," she added. "It’s something you can’t control, because I grew up with it. And I was just a girl then. Imagine how it feels for the older folks who lived through the real struggle.”
The US military brings other forms of violence to Puerto Rico.
“Some of the soldiers who were recently working at the airport approached local businesses and several people, asking if there were sex workers in Vieques," Judith Conde Pacheco, co-founder of the Vieques Women’s Alliance, told CPI. "It’s one of the most brutal forms of violence… women’s bodies are seen as part of the occupied land."
Some Puerto Ricans dismissed the idea that the buildup on what's often called the US' "unsinkable aircraft carrier" signaled any sort of resurgence in the colonizers' presence.
“The idea that the US military is no longer present in Puerto Rico is a myth," former Puerto Rico Bar Association president Alejandro Torres Rivera told CPI. "They never left, they merely scaled back their presence, or the intensity of it, for a time in their colony."
Condemning the buildup and the acquiescence of the territorial government in a Newsweek opinion piece last month, US Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)—the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress—wrote: "The potential remilitarization of Puerto Rico is not progress; it is regression. It marks a step backwards in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s sovereignty."
"To those who celebrate this militarization, or remain complicit, I say: There is no worse bet than one made against your own people, your own land, your own future," she added. "If only someone would dare to bet on Puerto Ricans, and their right to decide their destiny. After generations of allowing others to exploit Puerto Rico, and abandon it without justice, we have had enough."
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Bad Bunny vs. MAGA’s Bigoted Vision of America
The hatefulness and histrionics of Trump's allies exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves.
Nov 08, 2025
The selection of musical megastar Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl’s halftime show has ignited a storm of controversy among conservative circles. The ostensive reason is that Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is a Puerto Rican who sings in Spanish, and thus according to his MAGA critics, he does not represent “America.”
For the new form of conservativism known as MAGA, the vision of America and Americans is narrow, and does not include the likes of Bad Bunny. Newsmax host Greg Kelly, for instance, claimed Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, [and] hates the English language!” Fox News host Tomi Lahren, meanwhile, claimed Bad Bunny is “Not an American artist.” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson not only mislabeled Bad Bunny as “Bad Bunny Rabbit,” he argued Bad Bunny was not a role model, calling for replacing him with someone with “broader Appeal,” like 82-year-old Lee Greenwood.
The Bad Bunny controversy raises the question: what is America and how should it be represented?
The histrionics of MAGA leaders exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves. For instance, the trope that Bad Bunny is not American demonstrates profound ignorance. Bad Bunny was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. As such, he was a United States citizen at birth. Puerto Rico has been a US possession since its conquest in 1898, and its residents have been US citizens since the passage of the Jones Act in 1917.
As for Bad Bunny hating America, this claim is nothing short of odd. Though Bad Bunny did not support candidate Trump in 2024, and disagrees with ICE roundups, 75 million Americans did not vote for President Trump (something that residents of Puerto Rico cannot do), and we suspect millions of others, including the authors here, do not support mass ICE roundups. Such free speech stances, which are at the core of the First Amendment of the Constitution, in no way reflect any disdain for this country. As James Baldwin poignantly taught decades ago, and is the case for millions of others today, it is our love for this country that leads us to question it in order to push it towards our laudable goals of freedom and equality.
Further, Bad Bunny singing in Spanish in no way means he hates this country or its dominant language, English. Bad Bunny is fluent in English but prefers to sing in his native tongue of Spanish. While Trump proclaimed English as the country’s official language, such a declaration does not carry the weight of law. That edict also appears to run afoul of a host of US Supreme Court decisions embracing our multicultural and multilingual country, including Meyer v. Nebraska, which held invalid efforts to forbid teaching foreign languages, and Lau v. Nichols. holding that failure to provide non-English instruction violated students’ civil rights.
The United States of America is a multicultural, multiracial nation made up of the descendants of immigrants from all over the world, as well as Indigenous nations and other lands that were conquered during a period of US imperial expansion in the 19th century. Puerto Ricans have fought bravely and died valiantly in America’s wars since WWI, and they contribute in numerous ways to make America great. So, why being a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican makes of Bad Bunny less of an American in MAGA cohorts?
For months now, we have been witnessing a whitewashing of the American experience spearheaded by the Trump administration. Museums, colleges and universities, and even our very diverse military have all been forced to scrub references to the valuable contributions made by women, people of color, and immigrants (except for white ones).
Puerto Ricans, a Spanish-speaking, Latin American people of color (who also happen to be US citizens), do not fit the MAGA mold, and Bad Bunny’s fame is a reminder that our nation, based on the principle of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) can be proudly represented by many people in many ways.
Previous Super Bowl halftime performers, many of them foreign-born, have reflected our nation’s best (and diverse) talents, but suddenly, a Puerto Rican is not American enough? Turning Point USA’s “All American” alternative halftime show is quite revealing of MAGA’s cultural whitewashing attempts by promising “Anything in English.”
This piece was first published in the Miami Herald.
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The Oldest Colony, the Newest War: Puerto Rico as a Launchpad for War on Venezuela
The island that has lived under US rule since 1898 is once again being used as a staging ground for US militarism, this time for Washington’s latest “war on drugs” narrative.
Oct 22, 2025
When President Donald Trump announced that the CIA had been authorized to conduct operations inside Venezuela, just as US drones struck another small boat off Venezuela’s coast, few people in the United States realized that much of this militarization begins on the soil of a land denied its own sovereignty: Puerto Rico.
The island that has lived under US rule since 1898 is once again being used as a staging ground for US militarism, this time for Washington’s latest “war on drugs” narrative, masking a campaign of coercion against Latin America’s independent governments.
After invading Puerto Rico in 1898, the United States quickly turned the island into a strategic military outpost: the “Gibraltar of the Caribbean,” with naval bases in Ceiba, Roosevelt Roads, and Vieques designed to dominate the eastern Caribbean and protect the new artery of empire: the Panama Canal.
From World War I onward, Puerto Ricans were drafted into every major US war, fighting and dying for a flag that still denies them full citizenship rights. Meanwhile, the island’s lands and waters were expropriated for bombing ranges, naval training, and intelligence operations.
Puerto Rico’s place in this strategy reveals Washington's core hypocrisy: It wages wars abroad in the name of freedom while denying that freedom to the colony it still holds.
For six decades, the US Navy used Vieques as a live-fire testing ground, dropping millions of pounds of explosives and munitions, including napalm and depleted uranium. The result was environmental devastation and one of the highest cancer rates in the region. It took a mass civil disobedience movement to finally force the Navy out in 2003.
That victory proved Puerto Ricans’ capacity for organized resistance, but the structures of empire never disappeared.
Two decades later, those same bases and runways are being reactivated. In 2025, Washington quietly expanded military operations on the island, deploying F-35 fighter jets, stationing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, and rotating Marine and Special Operations units through Puerto Rican ports and airfields. The official justification is “counter-narcotics operations,” but the timing and scale point to something far larger: a regional military buildup aimed at Venezuela.
The aggression has now extended to Colombia, where Trump has cut off all US aid and accused President Gustavo Petro of being a “drug leader.” The announcement came just days after Colombia’s president denounced the US drone strikes off Venezuela’s coast, one of which, he warned, hit a Colombian vessel and killed Colombian citizens. Instead of accountability, Washington answered with insults and economic blackmail.
The Trump administration’s designation of a “non-international armed conflict with drug cartels” gives legal cover for drone strikes and covert missions far from US territory. Puerto Rico’s colonial status makes it the perfect staging ground: a place the Pentagon can operate freely without congressional debate or local consent.
For Puerto Ricans, this militarization is not an abstract issue. It means more surveillance, more environmental risk, and a deeper entanglement in wars they never chose. It also signals a return to the same imperial logic that made Vieques a bombing range: using occupied territory to project power abroad.
Puerto Rico remains the oldest colony in the modern world, a US “territory” whose people are “citizens” but not sovereign. They cannot vote for president, have no senators, and possess only a symbolic representative in Congress. That absence of sovereignty is what makes it so useful to the empire: a gray zone of legality where wars can be prepared without democratic consent.
This is not the first time Puerto Rico has been used as a military springboard. Its bases have served as logistical hubs for interventions across the hemisphere, from the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, to Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989.
Each of these operations was justified through Cold War rhetoric, the defense of “freedom,” “stability,” and “democracy,” while systematically targeting governments and social movements seeking independence from US control.
Puerto Rican born Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) has warned that history is repeating itself. In a Newsweek op-ed, she reminded Washington of the lesson of Vieques: that the island’s people have already paid the price for US militarism through contamination, displacement, and neglect.
“Our people have already suffered enough from military pollution and colonial exploitation. Puerto Rico deserves peace, not more war,” she said.
Her call aligns with that of Caribbean and Latin American nations in CELAC, which have declared the region a “Zone of Peace.”
The buildup around Venezuela follows a long-standing pattern in US foreign policy: When a nation asserts control over its own resources or refuses to obey Washington’s dictates, it becomes a target. Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua are punished for exactly that. Sanctions, blockades, and covert operations function as mechanisms of domination to keep the hemisphere open to US capital and military reach.
Puerto Rico’s place in this strategy reveals Washington's core hypocrisy: It wages wars abroad in the name of freedom while denying that freedom to the colony it still holds. Its people are governed without full representation, its land is used for war, and its economy remains bound to Washington’s dictates. Puerto Rico’s demand for independence is the same demand made by Venezuela, Cuba, and every nation that refuses to live on its knees: the right to determine its own future.
The struggle for peace, sovereignty, and dignity in Nuestra América runs through Puerto Rico’s shores. When US drones take off from Caribbean airstrips to strike Venezuela, they fly over the ghosts of Vieques, over the land where Puerto Ricans once stood unarmed against an empire.
Puerto Rico deserves a future of peace, environmental healing, and sovereignty, and Venezuela deserves the same: the right to live free from siege, to defend its independence, and to build its own destiny without fear of US bombs or blockades. To defend Puerto Rico’s right to peace is to defend Venezuela’s right to exist.
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Trump Is Trying to Spook States out of Suing Big Oil—Why They Shouldn’t Back Down
Given the shakiness of the administration’s lawsuits, what really matters is whether state and local officials have the courage to stand strong against Trump’s mafia-style threats.
May 14, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to threaten any institutions that could check his administration’s ongoing drive toward authoritarianism, there’s been a stark contrast in responses to his mob boss-style attacks. Some targets—like Harvard, which vowed to fight Trump’s assault on universities, or the law firm Perkins Coie, which recently scored a judicial win holding Trump’s actions against the firm unconstitutional—have seen their stature in their respective fields skyrocket,. Others—like Columbia University or the law firm Paul Weiss, which both immediately folded at the first sign of aggression from Trump—have been publicly, and perhaps permanently, tarred as feckless cowards.
This contrast between courage and gutlessness appeared once again earlier this month in response to Trump’s latest dictatorial salvo: an all-out assault on behalf of the fossil fuel industry against state and local efforts to hold Big Oil companies accountable for deceiving the public about climate change.
Right now, 1 in 4 Americans live in a jurisdiction that is fighting to put Big Oil companies on trial for their climate lies and make them pay for the catastrophic damage they knew decades ago that their products would cause. The fossil fuel industry concedes that it faces “massive monetary liability” in these cases, and has been growing more and more desperate to stop plaintiff communities from having their day in court. In the last few years Big Oil has asked the Supreme Court to block these cases on five separate occasions. Recently, industry front groups tied to Leonard Leo ran a pressure campaign pushing the court to take up the issue.
Making polluters pay for climate damages is widely supported—and far more popular than Trump ever has been.
But the court has denied Big Oil every time, and so fossil fuel companies have had to shift to Plan B: asking the man they spent hundreds of millions of dollars electing to fulfill his end of the quid pro quo. The Wall Street Journal reported that oil executives asked Trump during a White House meeting for legal help against the cases, and their lobbyists are pushing congressional Republicans to include legal protections for the fossil fuel industry “in a coming Trump-endorsed bill.”
In his typical oligarchical style, Trump has gone all in to protect his corporate backers. On April 8 Trump issued an executive order directing the attorney general to “take all appropriate action” to stop states that have “sued energy companies for supposed ‘climate change’ harm.” And this month the Department of Justice filed a series of lawsuits attempting to prevent Hawaii and Michigan from pursuing climate litigation.
We’ve become so inured to the extreme misconduct of this administration that it’s often hard for any new scandal to stand out. But it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the staggering corruption of this new broadside on the rule of law.
Trump is taking unprecedented action on behalf of an industry that understood decades ago that their fossil fuel products would cause, in their own words, “great irreversible harm,” “more violent weather—more storms, more droughts, more deluges,” and “suffering and death due to thermal extremes.” Instead of warning consumers about this existential threat, they waged a massive disinformation campaign to prevent the public from understanding the dangers of climate change. They made trillions of dollars from this deception, leaving regular Americans to pay the price.
And regular Americans certainly have been paying that price. They’ve been paying in higher insurance costs driven by the “violent weather” that Big Oil companies knew their products would cause. They’ve been paying in homes, businesses, and livelihoods lost in climate-driven “deluges.” And in far too many cases they’ve been paying with their own “suffering and death.” That is why many of the communities hit hardest by these disasters have sued—under the same long-established state laws used to hold Big Tobacco and opioid profiteers accountable—to force the companies responsible for global warming to contribute at least something to the often devastating climate costs that right now are falling entirely on the shoulders of regular Americans.
Trump, of course, doesn’t care about regular Americans experiencing, in his words, “supposed ‘climate change’ harm.” His concern is limited entirely to his Big Oil donors, who are terrified of having to defend their climate lies to a jury composed of the people they screwed over.
Unfortunately for Big Oil, we live in a federalist system of government that does not allow a president to unilaterally block a state from pursuing valid state-law claims in state courts. Indeed, legal experts seem to agree the suits filed by the administration against Hawaii and Michigan are “shockingly flimsy.”
That doesn’t mean Trump’s legal maneuvering isn’t a potent weapon, however. As we’ve seen with Trump’s assault on universities and law firms, the goal of these attacks is not winning in the courtroom. It’s all about intimidation—which means that what really matters is whether state and local officials have the courage to stand strong against Trump’s mafia-style threats.
Some leaders are demonstrating that they have that backbone. On May 1, Hawaii ignored the DOJ’s specious lawsuit and became the 10th state to sue Big Oil. As Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said, “The state of Hawaiʻi will not be deterred from moving forward with our climate deception lawsuit. My department will vigorously oppose this gross federal overreach.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had a similar response: “Donald Trump has made clear he will answer any and every beck and call from his Big Oil campaign donors… I remain undeterred in my intention to file this lawsuit the president and his Big Oil donors so fear.”
Sadly, not all local leaders have demonstrated such courage. Shortly after the DOJ announced its suits against Hawaii and Michigan, Puerto Rico voluntarily dropped its 2024 case that sought to make fossil fuel companies pay to help protect the commonwealth’s infrastructure against stronger storms, sea-level rise, and other damages fueled by climate change. The Leonard Leo-linked Alliance for Consumers, which days earlier called on Puerto Rico’s governor to help kill the case, crowed that the dismissal would allow consumers to “take comfort in knowing the things you buy for your family will still be there, at the store, when you need them”—an Orwellian message for the millions of Puerto Ricans who were unable to access basic goods for months following the climate-driven catastrophe of Hurricane Maria.
A spokesperson said the commonwealth dropped its case, which was brought under a previous administration, because Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón wanted to “be aligned with the policies of President Trump,” which is “to support the burning of fossil fuels [and] the protection of oil companies.” As a result, her constituents will be condemned to a future of escalating climate disasters that they—and not the polluters most responsible—will have to pay for.
But maybe the contrast between Puerto Rico’s humiliating supplication and Hawaii and Michigan’s courageous stands can help inspire other local and state jurisdictions to refuse to bend to Trump’s future threats. After all, making polluters pay for climate damages is widely supported—and far more popular than Trump ever has been.
When the history books are written about this lawless moment, the collaborators—the Columbias, the Paul Weisses, the González-Colóns—will not like how posterity remembers their cowardice. But leaders who rise to the occasion, who refuse to surrender to Trump’s protection racket, and who continue fighting to make polluters pay will be able to take pride in their place on the right side of history.
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Yet Another Puerto Rico Blackout Heightens Anger Over Power Grid Privatization
"This is what happens when you let sketchy private companies run public infrastructure into the ground."
Apr 17, 2025
The for-profit operators of Puerto Rico's power grid and the government officials who agreed to the privatization scheme faced fresh backlash Thursday after the U.S. territory was plunged into darkness yet again, leaving 1.4 million people without electricity and hundreds of thousands without water.
The blackout began Wednesday after "energy plants across the island unexpectedly shut down," Reuters reported, citing Genera PR, which in 2023 received a multimillion-dollar contract to run Puerto Rico's power generators.
LUMA Energy, a private Canadian-American firm, oversees the island's power transmission and distribution.
Officials said that crews were still working Thursday to restore power across the island as public frustration mounted. The blackout comes just months after a New Year's Eve outage left more than a million people in the dark.
"This is what happens when you let sketchy private companies run public infrastructure into the ground," said Democratic New York City Councilmember Justin Brannan. "No answers. No accountability. Just another disaster for the Puerto Rican people to suffer through. Now more than ever, LUMA Energy must be removed."
"Let's be clear: New York City has the largest Puerto Rican population outside the island," Brannan added. "The bond between our city and Puerto Rico runs deep. And when your family is hurting, you show up."
NPR reported Thursday that "the roar of generators and smell of fumes filled the air as a growing number of Puerto Ricans renewed calls for the government to cancel the contracts with Luma Energy... and Genera PR."
During a press conference on Thursday, Republican Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González said she "would like to cancel the contract today or tomorrow" but suggested it would take time to implement an alternative.
"It is unacceptable that we have failures of this kind," she added.
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