While movement this week from the House Committee on Natural Resources is likely focusing on a consensus Puerto Rico Status Act for a hearing before the August recess that could get the draft bill past committee and onto the House floor, Illinois’ two Senators have added their name to a growing list of upper chamber co-sponsors of a current self-determination bill that contains no consensus provisions with the island-colony’s statehood proponents.

Contrary to the arguments of some mainland elected officials of Puerto Rican descent, the Self-Determination Act confuses, complicates and delays approval of an honest self-determination process for Puerto Rico.

“While many may disagree about the future of Puerto Rico’s status, we must recognize that the decision should come from those who will be impacted most: the people of Puerto Rico,” Velázquez said.

The letter was dated the day after Puerto Rico statehood advocates formally introduced a bipartisan Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act of 2021 to the House.

On its surface, the act explains that the United States must recognize the rights of the people of Puerto Rico but does it provide Puerto Ricans the right to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development?”

On Saturday, Rafael “Tatito” Hernández Montañez, speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, sent a letter to Rep. Raúl Grijalva, chair of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, asking him to endorse the self-determination bill currently before the committee.

Organizations supporting the Self-Determination Act of 2021 (H.R. 2070) for Puerto Rico have initiated a series of nationwide actions directed at key House members of the Natural Resources Committee—details of which will be shared at a Wednesday noon press conference outside the White House in Washington, D.C.

With a generational shift against the status quo, a growing reluctance among Puerto Ricans to see their islands become part of an increasingly authoritarian nation, and now a battle between its two leading figures —Gov. Pedro Pierluisi and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, a Trump supporter— the ruling pro-statehood New Progressive Party’s days seem numbered.

With rising temperatures and the increasing threat of tropical storms due to climate change menacing Puerto Rico, many fear the islands’ access to electrical power will only worsen under privatization.

While experts and others do know that it is possible, desirable, and mutually beneficial to maintain U.S. citizenship in any sovereignty option, statehooders keep trying to misinform Puerto Ricans and policymakers in Washington.

Puerto Ricans are pushing for sustained interconnectivity between stakeholders doing the rebuilding in the islands and the diaspora and its allies advocating for long-term investment from the mainland — and these coordination efforts are largely driven by women’s networks.

The Supreme Court now has a historic opportunity to begin taking apart the colonial framework undermining Puerto Rico by turning the page on the century-old Insular Cases and the legal precedent that has perpetuated systemic biases—and it should.

On Sunday, August 28, a coalition of Puerto Rican independence groups and their allies gathered outside a hedge fund’s office building in Midtown Manhattan to protest its predatory lending practices.

The Puerto Rico Status Act is “the product of an our-way-or-the-highway approach from pro-statehood House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer that has backed advocates of a fair and just decolonization process for Puerto Rico into a corner,” the two groups said in a joint statement.

The legislative clock is running out on the Puerto Rico Status Act, and according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), votes have yet to be counted due to what he says are “outside interests” delaying progress on the bill.

Domingo García, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told Latino Rebels that CEO Sindy Benavides has been “temporarily suspended pending an investigation by the personnel committee of LULAC.”

Rep. Grijalva, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee which has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico, says the sudden increase in lobbying against the Puerto Rico Status Act is not about process but instead about maintaining the island’s current colonial status.

Twenty-nine amendments were debated by members of the House Natural Resources Committee who ultimately voted 20-25 to advance the bill, with every Republican voting against the bill except Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, Jenniffer González-Colón.

On Friday, Natural Resources Committee chair Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) introduced a bill that outlines a process for the people of Puerto Rico to decide their political status in a binding resolution that would force Congress to carry out their decision.

Latino Rebels reached out to Peter R. Rosenblatt, who from 1977 to 1981 served as President Carter’s ambassador to the negotiations on the future political status of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which established the Compact of Free Association between the U.S. government and the former UN-controlled, U.S.-administered territories of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Fearing that one of the two other status options may win, specifically the “Free Association” option, members of the Puerto Rican statehood movement plan to pressure House Natural Resources Committee chair Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) to revise the language of a draft bill that looks to resolve Puerto Rico’s 100-plus status issue once and for all, according to a draft letter provided to Latino Rebels by an anonymous source directly familiar with the proceedings.