In the article “The American empire could fall under Trump” May Olvera seeks to draw parallels between the Berlin Wall and Donald Trump’s proposal for building a wall to divide America from Mexico. Her main point is the weakness of this proposal and how it could be detrimental to the United States’ at home and our relations with the rest of the world. Olvera does a feasible job with conveying her own opinion with facts and even remarks the counter side of her argument.  

How the media and public are reiterating the historical context between the Berlin Wall and the current Mexican border wall make the merits for this argument valuable to some degree. Whether or not the comparisons are true is a politically subjective matter. I believe that it doesn’t hurt to bridge the distinctions and similarities to the prevalent controversy that Trump's rise in America draws parallels to Hitler's rise before and after the war. After all, history has a way of repeating itself.  

Olvera expresses her opinion that Trump’s wall could cause the collapse of the American “empire” as other countries form negative opinions of our president’s, thus our countries, politics. She explains how Trump’s plan of action is viewed with “mixed opinions” and compares Trump and his party’s foreign policy decisions to “proto-fascists” ideas. Bias is evident throughout the article although I do believe she makes well thought-out points about how defense isolationism is understandable to a point but could cause serious global tensions. Also that disrespecting fellow Americans and the rest of the world is not an incisive way to solve today’s world problems. Olvera has a big-picture perspective about this issue and articulately conveys reasonable opinions on her viewpoint of the current Mexican wall controversy.

On Thursday, February 9th, 2017, the National Public Radio published the following article which describes how The South Alamo Regional Alliance for the Homeless (SARAH), will conduct its annual head count of the homeless population in San Antonio. Although this is a San Antonio-based survey, it will reflect the homeless population throughout other populous Texas cities. Homeless is a prevalent problem throughout the world and I can attest to the ample homeless population here in Austin. One of local government’s primary purposes is to ensure all locals have access to basic means of life, like having a home. Providing homeless shelters and scrapping our change to the next homeless person is progressive, but not cutting it. Louisa Jones flawlessly states in this article, “humanizing a homeless person can have a bigger impact than giving money.” It is fundamental to the well-being of our society that local government steps in to boost the awareness of the magnitude of adversity that is among the homeless.