GDA via AP Images Hooked on Drugmakers: For decades, tax favoritism—now withdrawn—brought pharmaceutical companies to the island and provided manufacturing jobs at well below mainland wages. This article appears in the Summer 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . I n keeping with the anti-Latino posture of the Trump administration, Puerto Rico has been subjected to a double policy assault on top of the natural disaster of Hurricane Maria. First, FEMA has failed dismally to respond to the human suffering and nearly $100 billion in damage from the hurricane, a display of both low priority and sheer incompetence that never would have been tolerated in a mainland state such as Florida where citizens can vote. Recent research suggests that the actual death toll caused by the hurricane could be more than 70 times the figure put out by the Puerto Rican government. And now, in the 2017 Republican Tax Act, the Republican Congress has added to Puerto Rico’s misery. It...

Charles Russo Frank Mills in 2026, the propaganda bar for the No campaign trickle-downers_54.jpg T he “2026” pop-up bar occupies the basement of a two-story building in Washington’s trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood, where young professionals observe the tradition of the weekly happy hour with near-religious fervor. Upstairs, the parent bar, Rebellion, brims with the usual sounds of glasses clinking and laughter. Head to lower level, though, and you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting, reimagined for a new age. The dimly lit and almost-empty bar stretches to the end of the room. Two servers sit idle on their smartphones while the bartender finds ways to keep busy. This not-so-happy hour is dolorous by design, part of a campaign by restaurant owners to depict a ballot measure, known as Initiative 77 , as a threat to their workers. The measure will come before voters in the city’s primary elections on June 19. The initiative would gradually phase out the...