We Have a Fiscal Sponsor

Happy Thursday to the 642 of you who have subscribed to The Latino Newsletter and to all of you finding us via organic search and social media.

Before we share the two stories we have been following today, I wanted to announce some great news in our 10th week of publishing daily posts.

The Latino Newsletter has a fiscal sponsor.

Earlier this week, we signed with the fabulous team at Tiny News Collective (TNC), a great nonprofit media support organization that helps smaller, startup outlets like ours. While The Latino Newsletter seeks its official IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit designation (the process already started), having a fiscal sponsor is huge for us. We can now accept tax-deductible donations and apply for grants for our work through TNC’s sponsorship.

“Tiny News Collective is proud to have The Latino Newsletter as a member of our network and as a fiscal sponsee,” TNC Membership Director Andrea Faye said. “Founders like Julio Ricardo Varela are doing the hard, meaningful work of building news outlets that address longstanding inequity in traditional journalism.”

(Sidenote: Andrea is an amazing ally. She and everyone at TNC have made us feel valued and visible from our very first meeting.)

As interim publisher/executive director, I have told my fellow Board members that we will always want to make The Latino Newsletter’s stories, podcasts and subscriptions free and accessible. Donating to The Latino Newsletter is a choice each of you will make, and while financial support from all current subscribers would be amazing, I feel strongly that people should not pay for subscriptions just to consume premium journalism that covers underrepresented communities.

Still, this work is not free.

Currently, The Latino Newsletter will rely mostly on philanthropic grants, newsletter advertising, podcast sponsorships and contracting out editorial services to media outlets.

But any donation from you would mean a lot.

As of now, our goal is to run this outlet with a monthly budget of $20,000 per month, which comes out to about $240,000 a year. Ideally, we would love a $500,000 yearly operating budget, but for right now, we can deliver with $20,000 per month. Of course, this monthly goal would pay for staff time. At his point, the “staff” is just me in an interim capacity, but the $20,000/month would allow for additional hires to create a tiny but mighty newsroom. Donations would also support the new podcast Joaquin Cotler and I are producing weekly, pay for more contributors and keep the company’s operations running smoothly.

We would be honored to have you or anyone else you know become some of our first donors. The button below will start the online donation process.

The Trump Paradox

The team over at UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (UCLA LPPI) published a new expert issues brief analysis called, “The Trump Paradox: A Focus On Latino and Latina Voters” by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor in the UCLA Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

According to a Thursday UCLA LPPI media release, the analysis “reveals that Donald Trump's strongest voter support came from areas with the least exposure to immigration and international trade.”

“The study challenges the former president's campaign assertions that immigrants and trade are primary threats to the American economy,” it adds.

Here are four key findings from the analysis:

1. The Trump Paradox among white voters strengthened between 2016 and 2020.

2. White males, not females, were the main driver of the Trump Paradox in 2020.

3. Latino voters did not show a strong Trump Paradox in 2020.

4. New Latino female voters —those who voted in 2020 but did not vote in 2016— were more likely to vote for Trump in 2020 than existing ones, and they had lower educational attainment on average.

You can download the complete brief here.

Hurricane Ernesto Causes Power Outages in Puerto Rico

It’s been seven years since Category 5 Hurricane María decimated Puerto Rico, and based on Wednesday reports this week about Category 1 Hurricane Ernesto, the promises to fully modernize the island’s troubled electrical grid are still just that.

Dánica Coto of The Associated Press reported that Ernesto “knocked out power for nearly half of all customers in the U.S. territory Wednesday.”

“More than 640,000 customers lost power in Puerto Rico, and 23 hospitals were operating on generators, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said Wednesday. He added that crews were assessing damage and it was too early to tell when electricity would be restored,” Dánica wrote.

“Luma Energy said earlier Wednesday that its priority was to restore power to hospitals, the island’s water and sewer company and other essential services. More than 300,000 customers were without water as a result of power outages, Pierluisi said,” the story added.

Tweets showing Luma’s dashboard said the number was at around 641,000 ratepayers. It’s safe to assume that the number of people impacted was larger than the ratepayer count.

As of Thursday morning, that number is now at about 450,000 ratepayers.

Puerto Rico-based journalist and The Latino Newsletter contributor Carlos Berríos Polanco took several photos of some of the post-storm damage.

One of Carlos’ photos was featured in a Spanish-language story by DW about Ernesto.

Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder and interim publisher of The Latino Newsletter.