María Méndez | The Texas Tribune
María Méndez reports for Texas Public Radio from the border city of Laredo where she covers business issues from an area that is now the nation’s top trade hub. She knows Texas well. Méndez has reported on the state’s diverse communities and tumultuous politics through internships at the Austin American-Statesman, The Texas Tribune and The Dallas Morning News. She also participated in NPR’s Next Generation Radio program while studying at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT, she wrote for The Daily Texan and helped launch diversity initiatives, including two collaborative series on undocumented and first-generation college students. One of her stories for these series won an award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She spent the last year reporting for The Dallas Morning News as a summer breaking news intern and then as a fellow in the paper’s capital bureau in Austin. She is a native of Guanajuato in Central Mexico.
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The Laredo area’s hospitalization rate only trailed behind the 37.7% rate for the Panhandle hospital region and 36.8% rate for the El Paso region on Sunday, according to state data. On Monday, it fell slightly to fourth-highest at 28.1%.
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Refusing to concede to Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar last week, Texas Congressional District 28 Candidate Sandra Whitten has raised concerns about Webb County’s use of pencils in voting booths. But the Texas Secretary of State's office and election security experts say pencils are acceptable for filling out paper ballots.
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Latinos comprise about 40% of the population in Texas, and their votes could be critical to races up and down the ballot. Campaigns are rediscovering the fact that there is no solid “Latino” bloc. Public Radio reporters across Texas are listening to these voters discuss the issues they care about and give their thoughts on where the nation should be heading. This is the second in a series of five stories about Latino voters in the 2020 Election.
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Opponents of President Donald Trump’s border wall received a victory from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The federal court deemed some funding for the wall projects unlawful and blocked their construction, but advocates say their fight isn’t over.
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The City of Laredo has been pushing for an alternative to a wall in the downtown area, but many residents still worry they’ll lose access to the river and parks nearby. And the Trump administration has only ramped up their efforts ahead of the election. It has awarded a little over $1 billion in four contracts for border wall construction, including two more announced at the end of September.
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The U.S. Department of State has downgraded its travel advisory against travel to Mexico due to COVID-19.
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In Boerne, New Braunfels and other parts of Texas, large “Trump Trains” roll through town on a regular basis.
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The Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been on a tour of the Texas-Mexico border. Mark Morgan visited Laredo’s World Trade...
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A quarantine order for Texas A&M International University has tested the limits of local health authorities as Texas universities begin to see...