Hurricane Maria's devastating impact on Puerto Rico [1] is almost beyond words. The island of 3.4 million people was hit by the Category 4 storm on Sept. 20, but it still has almost no power and no way to communicate [2] — and it might remain that way for months. President Trump maintains that his administration is doing a "really good job" responding to requests from the US territory [3], but celebrities like singer Marc Anthony [4] have called him out for being fixated on NFL players taking a knee to protest racial injustice [5] in the US and spending far too little time on the devastation in Puerto Rico. In his tweet, Anthony reminded Trump that Puerto Ricans are US citizens [6] — a fact that is apparently lost on many Americans.
According to a poll by Morning Consult, of 2,200 American adults surveyed, only 54 percent knew that people born in Puerto Rico are US citizens [7]. And it's not just Puerto Rico [8]; anyone born in Guam [9], the Northern Mariana Islands [10], or the US Virgin Islands [11] is also a US citizen. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the US, meaning that while people there are granted US citizenship, they don't get to vote in elections and can only send a nonvoting representative to Congress. In short, any natural disaster or other event that occurs in any of these places should serve as a call to action for the American government to provide assistance.
In that same Morning Consult poll, a group of American adults were told that Puerto Ricans are US citizens, and as a result, 68 percent believed the country needed more aid to rebuild and recover. But when a group wasn't told beforehand, only 64 percent believed in the same sentiment. It might explain Trump's lackluster response to Puerto Rico's situation and why Hillary Clinton said in a Sirius XM interview [13] on Sept. 25, "I'm not sure he knows that Puerto Ricans are American citizens."
Trump has since stated, on Sept. 26, that he will visit Puerto Rico next week [14], and he spoke about what the administration, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will do to help [15] the island.