Free Republic

Prospective teachers in New York will likely no longer have to pass a basic reading and writing literacy exam, the Associated Press is reporting. The state’s Board of Regents is expected to ditch the Academic Literacy Skills Test in part because black and Hispanic teaching candidates struggled to pass the exam, according to the AP.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — An exclusive new Survey USA poll offered a stunning snapshot of where the Bay Area stands on immigration Monday, with the new numbers revealing that more local residents are backing President Trump’s policies than you might think. The KPIX 5 Survey USA Poll showed more than half of people support a key element of the President’s immigration policy. 53 percent said local law enforcement should always contact federal authorities about illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes. The even bigger surprise was the number of Bay Area Hispanics who supported notifying the feds. While the mayors...

Univision senior anchor Jorge Ramos declared on Friday that the United States belongs to Latino migrants, emphatically stating to a Spanish-speaking audience that “it is our country, not theirs.” Ramos took an unusual tack, pivoting from talk of diversity and togetherness into boasts of conquest. Mass immigration, particularly illegal immigration, was a fait accompli. There is nothing the U.S. can do about it, and they must accept that America is “not their” country and that illegal aliens, particularly Latinos, “are not going to leave,” he said. “I am an immigrant, just like many of you,” Ramos said in Spanish, as...

Lawmakers representing Hispanic communities across the country are demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security following a series of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that led to hundreds of arrests in multiple states last week — so far, the elected officials say, they aren’t getting them. On Tuesday, ICE’s acting director, Thomas Homan, cancelled a meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in which he was to provide details on the more than 680 people arrested across the country last week and explain the guidance given to his agents in conducting the operations. ICE had described the...

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) warn that repealing ObamaCare without an appropriate replacement would disproportionately hurt Latino families. "First and foremost we need to protect and defend healthcare for the American people," Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) told The Hill on Thursday. House Republicans on Friday passed a measure to begin dismantling the Affordable Cart Act (ACA) through a process known as budget reconciliation, which can bypass a Senate filibuster. Democrats are decrying the push to roll back the healthcare law, arguing there could be disastrous consequences for people with serious illnesses. "We want to make sure that people...

Next week, a group of patriots, who happen to be Hispanic, will gather to celebrate the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump. It will be the kind of moment that runs counter to the narratives of the political and the media elite, but to those of us in the room, our celebration makes perfect sense. If news of our inauguration party surprises you, recall that 29 percent of the Hispanic vote went to Trump. Remember, too, that Latinos are feeling the sharp pain of economic adversity that Trump has convincingly promised to change. Remember also that one of the great...

The Ft. Lauderdale Airport shooter is a Muslim convert who years before joining the U.S. Army took on an Islamic name (Aashiq Hammad), downloaded terrorist propaganda and recorded Islamic religious music online, according to public records dug up by the investigative news site of an award-winning, California journalist. This is pertinent information that the Obama administration apparently wants to keep quiet, bringing up memories of the Benghazi cover up, in which the president and his cohorts knowingly lied to conceal that Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. Special Mission in Libya. Information is slowly trickling out that links the Ft. Lauderdale...

The question hangs heavy over our domestic Spanish-language news media: "Why did Hispanics vote for Donald Trump?" As the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States continues to approach, our two leading networks took widely divergent approaches to this question. Univision has chosen to treat the question as if it were an unsolvable enigma- not unlike a 17-sided Rubik's Cube delivered straight from the bowels of hell. Anchors and hosts alike have been utterly confounded as to the reasons why a vast number of Latinos would reject the network's messaging (not to mention the network itself). Anchor Jorge Ramos simply wrote...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The hottest show on Broadway has won praise for its groundbreaking casting of black and Latino performers, but now, “Hamilton” may have run afoul of the strict New York City Human Rights Law. As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, the controversy was sparked by a casting notice posted by the producers of “Hamilton,” which specifically seeks “non-white” performers. One critic said “Hamilton” takes a story that “valorizes dead white guys” and replaces it with black, Latino and multi-ethnic performers playing America’s founding fathers. But as the blockbuster musical looks to expand to other cities, the casting notice...

(Snip) The Latino vote in Florida upended the Clinton campaign’s strategy, and what we thought we knew about where politics is headed. Chalk it up to a kind of cynical Latina wariness, but I never felt convinced that Hillary Clinton would win the general election. Yet as reports poured in about the historic number of Latinos lining up to vote early in Miami, I felt 100 percent certain that the state would remain blue. After all, Cuban-American members of Congress like Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had refused to endorse Trump. In October, following the “Access Hollywood” scandal, Ros-Lehtinen called...

CNN Investigates Why Latinos In Florida Voted For Trump: "Silent Majority Has Won" CNN's Randi Kaye goes to a Cuban diner in Orlando to get the Latino reaction to a Trump victory. CNN found that Latinos in Florida have a problem with people illegally entering the country, one legal immigrant said, "I came through the front door." One person interviewed expressed excitement for a border wall while another and declared "the silent majority" has won. The stunned CNN anchor said Florida Latinos "loved that he isn't politically correct." "The bottom line is that they broke the law. When I came...

Here is the biggest story that the lying mainstream media is not telling you. Trump did better than Romney did among Hispanics in 2012. Exit polls that were reported by the left-wing British Guardian show that Trump received 29 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to 27 percent for Romney. The story among blacks is equally amazing. Clinton is the first Democrat in decades to receive less than 90 percent of the black vote. Blacks voted 93 percent for Obama in 2012, and gave 6 percent of their vote to Romney. But blacks gave 88 percent of their vote to...

Are Hispanic voters trending to Donald Trump? It seems unlikely, but there's at least a little polling evidence that that's been happening over the past week. Now LAT/USC is showing Hispanics voting 47 percent for Clinton and 44 percent for Trump. It's possible that this represents the changed responses of just a few individuals, in a poll which asks the same panel of respondents for their preferences at regular intervals. But the total number of Hispanic respondents is listed at 181 — small but not totally suspect. Does this represent a surge of Hispanics toward Trump or away from Clinton?...

Hispanic voters were largely credited with President Obama’s victory in 2012, but they weren’t as crucial as many believed. Mr. Obama didn’t even need to win the Hispanic vote to put him over the top, thanks to high black turnout and support among white voters in the North. The turnout among Hispanic voters didn’t surge, even though exit polls implied that it had. This year, Hispanic voters, perhaps motivated by Donald J. Trump’s policy proposals (including deportation) and harsh language aimed at undocumented Hispanic immigrants, really might decide this election. Early voting data unequivocally indicates that Hillary Clinton will benefit...

Reading the Early Vote Can Be Screwy, But in Florida the Trump Camp Has Reason to Be Optimistic Compared to 2012, early voting indicates Donald Trump heads into Election Day in far better shape than Mitt Romney, while Hillary Clinton lags Barack Obama. We have cautioned our readers not to read too much into early and absentee ballot returns–the reasons why were laid out by Sean Trende at RCP–but since the media made such a splash about the “surge” in Hispanic voting in Florida on Saturday we feel the need to shine some light during what has become the Dark...

With 10 years remaining in its $12 billion road-building program, the Illinois tollway intends to start training workers to help finish the job. The aim is to increase the number of minorities working on tollway projects through a center teaching construction-related skills, officials said at a meeting Wednesday. The program is in the early stages, with diversity department planners still figuring out logistics, including funding. About $400,000 is allocated for 2017, although several tollway board directors advised staff members to budget for more. A 2015 tollway study concluded that blacks, Hispanics and women are underrepresented compared to whites when it...

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine on Thursday delivered what may be the first presidential campaign speech entirely in Spanish as part of Hillary Clinton’s push into traditionally Republican Arizona. The senator from Virginia spoke entirely in Spanish for about half an hour to a small crowd in a largely Hispanic area of Phoenix. He touched on immigration reform, the economy and the importance of being inclusive. He also criticized Republican Donald Trump’s comments about Latinos and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration raids. “With so much at stake for the Hispanic community, it’s important that our campaign use the...

A new poll shows that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has improved his standings in Florida, now leading his opponent Hillary Clinton by four points. Trump is polling with 46 percent of the vote, while Clinton is trailing with 42 percent, according to the latest New York Times Upshot/Siena poll of the state. Trump has improved his standings among Cuban-Americans by 19 points in just one month. A September poll showed Trump only earning 33 percent of Florida Cubans, with Clinton leading with 41 percent. Today’s poll shows a dramatic shift. Trump now leads Clinton among Cubans by ten points...

Hillary Clinton's campaign just got some very good news from Florida. The Clinton campaign is reporting an "unprecedented" 133,000 Latinos have cast early ballots ahead of the November 8 election - a 99 percent increase in Latino voters compared to 2012, BuzzFeed News reported. The 133,000 votes consist of vote-by-mail and absentee ballots. Early voting in Florida began Monday. The Clinton campaign calls it a promising sign for the Democratic nominee as Latinos comprise 17% of the electorate in the swing state. A survey taken the week of Oct. 17 to Oct. 24 by the National Association of Latino Elected...

While polls show that more Hispanics prefer Hillary over Trump to occupy the White House those Hispanics need to take a close look at what Hillary’s party has done for -- and more importantly, to -- Hispanics in the U.S. The Hispanic population has grown so rapidly that it is difficult to believe that the 1970 Census questionnaire did not include a racial or ethnic category called “Hispanic.” But this was not because Hispanics did not live in the U.S. in significant numbers. The musical West Side Story from the 1950s featured several Puerto Rican main characters, and cities like...