Straight out of Texas, here’s the kind of story that helps Donald Trump, even with some Hispanics— despite his many, many differences with them and other average Texans: 

Since Alejandro Obregón moved to a colonia along the Texas-Mexico border 20 years ago, he has fought for basic necessities like clean water and paved roads. Now a private developer wants to build a landfill just a few miles from his backyard, and Obregón is fighting again for the interests of his family and hundreds of colonia residents.

Local ranch owner Carlos “C.Y.” Benavides III and his family’s company have asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for permission to build a 660-acre landfill about four miles south of the colonias and 20 miles east of Laredo. It would become one of the seven largest capacity landfills in the state, accepting trash and some toxic refuse from across Texas, other states and Mexico.

Obregón fears winds will blow toxic waste from the landfill into his neighborhood’s homes, and he worries about residents, many impoverished and lacking regular access to medical care, getting respiratory illnesses.

He will fight “because it’s my life. It’s my kids’ lives. It’s my wife’s life,” Obregón said, and is even considering a hunger strike to protest.

To summarize: Texas authorities are potentially going to sign off on a landfill, that will house toxic waste imported from Mexico— a landfill that is the pet project of a guy who just so happens to be a politically well-connected guy, and which less well-off people in the Laredo area fear is going to adversely impact them while it makes said politically well-connected guy money.

Not that Donald Trump will make any of this better, of course (and not that Hillary Clinton would, either; the politically well-connected guy has donated a lot to Democrats— just run his name through Open Secrets). 

People ask how Trump rose to the nomination? It’s complicated. It involves lots of people enabling it to happen. But as I’ve said before, it involves outrage. And channeling that outrage into something destructive. Because it gets to a point where destruction seems like the only option left.

Now look at the families affected by this story. What options do you think they will feel they have?