• In January, Germany began enforcing a tough hate speech law that requires social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to remove illegal content within 24 hours. Among the first people caught up in the new hate speech law was a far-right politician Beatrix von Storch, who objected to an official New Year’s greeting in Arabic. (“Muting hate speech,” Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 2018)
• In the months after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of the island’s residents fled north to Florida, New York and Connecticut. As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans can register to vote once they establish their new residency. Democrats are optimistic that newly arrived Puerto Ricans will vote for their candidates in the 2018 midterm election. But Florida’s Latino and Puerto Rican population are courted by both conservatives and progressives. (“Puerto Rican refugees and the elusive blue wave,” American Prospect, March 20, 2018)
• The U.S. Census Department classifies 353 American counties as “persistently poor,” a designation that’s given if over 20 percent of a county’s population has been mired in poverty for 30 years or more. These counties are primarily located in the rural south and southwest. In the American West, 21 counties have been designated as persistently poor, but there are none classified as such in California, home of nearly half a million farmworkers. (“In the American West, arbitrary poverty designations are shortchanging the rural poor,” In These Times, April 10, 2018)
