Gary Acosta’s Weekly Blog

Last week, I was flying to Washington DC on Southwest Airlines with a layover in Dallas. I was en route to the Hispanic Wealth Project Policy Forum at the Urban Institute and looking forward to seeing my friends and colleagues from around the country. While I was boarding in Dallas, my daughter, who was flying…

The 116th Congress will take office on January 3rd. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest and one of the most intriguing members of the new congress. The Bronx native has captured the imagination of millions of young people with her audacity, charm, and transparency. Through social media, she is literally taking 75 million millennials on this…

For all the talk that our political system is broken, I think it’s actually pretty solid. That is not to say it shouldn’t evolve. Along with a few other things, I think there is too much money in politics, gerrymandering should be illegal, and it should be a lot easier for eligible citizens to vote.…

I read a good article in the NY Times about how the Democrats keep underestimating Trump’s political gifts. I won’t comment further except to say that the Dems should be dominating the midterms and the fact that they are not says a lot about Trump and a lot about the lack of real leadership within…

Many people are calling the upcoming midterm elections the most important in recent memory. For nearly two years, the Trump administration has pushed their agenda with the benefit of a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate. This advantage has helped the President get two of his nominees on the Supreme Court, pass…

Last week I was flying back from NY to San Diego. It was the day of the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings and you could watch live television from the Direct TV feed on the plane. An older gentleman sitting across the aisle from me was watching the hearings and literally screaming at the television as senators questioned…

As I am writing this blog, I am watching the memorial service in Washington, DC for Senator John McCain. McCain’s daughter Meghan gave one of the most heartfelt eulogies you’ll ever see punctuating the principles that guided her father’s life. Listening to the speeches, both today and earlier in the week, made me appreciate the…

What does conservative icon, Bill O’Reilly have in common with liberal talking head, Chris Matthews? They both consider former Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy a role model and a hero. I have been reading Matthews’ book Robert Kennedy “A Raging Spirit” and recognized how few politicians do things simply because they are the right things…

This week schools across America staged walkouts to protest gun violence. As with everything these days, people and the media began drawing political lines. Most people support the right of students to express their anger over the proliferation of gun violence in schools. However, others criticized the walkout as nothing more than insubordination and poor…

A constitutional crisis occurs either when the constitution does not provide a clear answer for a specific situation, or when a government official or branch of the government willfully defies adherence to the constitution. A constitutional crisis is a big deal, and can sometimes result in impeachment, civil war or collapse of the government itself.…

While Trump mingles in Davos, the Chinese government released a strongly worded editorial from the state’s news agency, Xinhua. The statement said the world needed to choose between “two fundamentally different outlooks” which included the Chinese President’s shared future and Mr. Trump’s America First policy. Mr. Trump’s “self-centered America First policy has led his country…

Besides being an electrifying leader, I personally believe that if Congressman Tony Cárdenas can work his way into the democratic leadership he will work effectively with Latinos on both sides of the aisle. That would be a game changer. At the risk of sounding cynical, the facts are that republicans continue to drift sharply from…

For the first time, NAHREP will be releasing a narrative review of the new tax legislation recently signed into law. The organization characterizes the law as “disappointing” but with some definite positives for business owners and investors. The new law was passed with zero support or input from democrats. Ironically, the flawed Dodd-Frank bill was…

In these politically polarized times, electing a Democrat for statewide office in Alabama seemed impossible to say the least, but it happened last Tuesday when Democrat Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in a special election to fill the vacancy left by Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate. Moore is a polarizing figure, aggressively supported by…

It’s not a partisan statement to say that the massive tax reform bill – that will soon become the law of the land – is deeply unpopular. Given that tax cuts are generally a pretty easy thing to sell, it’s quite stunning to hear that according to the most recent Quinnipiac University Poll, only 29%…

Very few politicians care about anything more than themselves. There are few exceptions and it seems as though it’s gotten worse over time. Today’s politicians spend most of their time shamelessly grandstanding, claiming to care about people, while in reality all they want is fame, money, and power. It’s just ego and it’s important to…

Speaking of ugly politics. The race for Governor of Virginia between longtime Republican operative Ed Gillespie and the Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam was as hard fought and nasty as everyone anticipated it would be. Gillespie, who for years pressed his Republican colleagues to make the party more welcoming to minorities, took a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook and released an ad linking illegal immigrants and his opponent to the vicious gang MS-13.

President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are close to pushing a tax reform package that would be the legislative victory that his presidency has been seeking. Critics of his tax proposal say it favors the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, and supporters say it will provide an economic stimulus that would benefit everyone.

Mark Cuban has been floating the idea of running for President. Last week, he clarified that if he decided to run, he would do so as a Republican and challenge President Trump in the primary. The fact that Cuban is being taken seriously is an indication of how much things have changed in Presidential politics.…

With 85% of Puerto Rico still without power and the President tweeting that we can’t stay in P.R. forever, here’s a story on how Elon Musk and Tesla have come up with a way to use battery and solar technology to power the island forever. Tesla has already done this for smaller islands in Samoa. “Necessity is…