Santa Rosa, Texas, suffered an unfortunate landmark last year: its last sugar mill shut down after half a century, the victim of an ongoing and severe drought. The parched Rio Grande Valley watched a once-staple industry flicker out. Economists at Texas A&M had already forecast nearly a $1 billion hit to the region's economy from 2023 irrigation shortages; by 2024, the mill’s gates were chained.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump waded into that longstanding frustration with a blunt, and understandable, threat: unless Mexico releases 200,000 acre-feet of Rio Grande water by December 31, the U.S. will impose an extra 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports—"IMMEDIATELY." It’s classic Trump rhetoric, and it landed because the pain in South Texas is real. But here’s the twist: under the very same

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