More than three million Americans are living through an unprecedented disaster in Puerto Rico, yet so far they’ve apparently ranked far below NFL protests and the concerns of the shipping industry on Donald Trump’s priority list. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio subtweeted Trump straight to Hell this morning, demanding the president immediately send more aid to the battered island.
In the middle of a decaying central square of closed junk stores and shuttered barbershops, Opa-locka’s gleaming, $8 million Town Center was eerily empty Wednesday morning. That’s because every elected official in town was huddled in a room with Florida Inspector General Eric Miller, the man tasked with unraveling…
Take a look at Miami Beach Commission candidate Mark Samuelian’s campaign platform and you might assume he’s a longtime progressive. The board director of Miami Beach United and former business consultant emphasizes his support for increasing the minimum wage, fighting climate change, and advocating for the city’s LGBT population.
The Florida Democrats are the Washington Generals. They’re the 1962 Mets. They’re Mike Dukakis, Steve Urkel, and pre-time-travel George McFly rolled into one. Yes, they’ve been steamrolled by gerrymandering and voter suppression, but they also rarely miss a chance to blast off their own feet en route to their latest, all-too-predictable loss.
Omar Rivero is standing cross-armed in his light-filled Los Angeles pool house, urging one of his employees to finish a meme about the “Republican Hypocrites of the Year,” when the news breaks: The president has just signed a memo banning transgender people from the military. “Oh, I hate Donald Trump!”…
Even in Miami Beach’s drunken carnival of a political scene, few elected officials have had quite as colorful a term as Commissioner Michael Grieco. The attorney has brawled with the NAACP over civil rights, sprinted down a drug dealer while out on his morning job, called a former opponent a “fucking scumbag” at a debate, and been embroiled in an unseemly fundraising committee now under state investigation.
Arguably the biggest stain on Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s 24-year record involves the death of a mentally ill man. In 2012, witnesses claimed four prison guards at Dade Correctional Institution scalded schizophrenic inmate Darren Rainey to death inside a jerry-rigged prison shower as punishment for soiling himself.
More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that no other developed nation subjects its citizens to a nightmarishly cruel health-care system that forces people to sell their homes to pay for cancer treatment. Many have realized that, through a combination of strict price controls and/or straight-up nationalized health care…
North Miami state Sen. Daphne Campbell has been ensnared in a remarkable series of corruption scandals throughout her career. But even for Campbell, her response to Hurricane Irma was nothing short of jaw-dropping. This past Saturday night, Campbell held a post-Irma “relaxation” party, complete with pizza, massages, and Scientologists, because of course she did.
Over the past few days, hordes of patrons have flocked to Trump’s resort in Doral to escape from the wrath of Hurricane Irma. Just this morning, the front desk announced to hopeful guests that the hotel is booked. But it doesn’t seem right for a president whose policies intend to cut disaster relief budgets to benefit from the panic of Irma.
Boca Raton’s GEO Group is one of the most powerful private-prison companies in America — and a major player in state and federal politics. GEO throws campaign money at Florida lawmakers from both parties: Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, Gov. Rick Scott, Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart,…
After Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco dropped his bid for mayor following a scathing Miami Herald report on his sketchy campaign finances, Beach residents were left with just four candidates to choose from. Two of them haven’t raised any money, while former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber has pulled in close to a half-million bucks.
There is simply no reason to repeal the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unless brown people bother you. DACA prevents children brought here by their parents from being deported. It’s a program that helps kids who did not choose to grow up in America but did anyway. Even if you think, incorrectly, that immigrants are predisposed to crime, you can’t even apply for DACA if you have a criminal record.
Another year in Florida means another wave of clearly unconstitutional attempts to crack down on brown people. State legislators this month began filing their first bills of the 2018 session, and North Florida state Sen. Greg Steube, a man who simply cannot stop himself from filing insane laws designed to hurt people, has already begun flinging anti-immigrant crackdowns at the wall to see what sticks.
Earlier this year, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran was one of only two state-level politicians who attended the infamous Koch brothers-hosted summit in Colorado. Corcoran promptly flew home and announced a plan to kill Florida’s public-election-financing laws, which help elect candidates who don’t want donations from the corporations, utility companies, real-estate magnates, and billionaires who effectively control state politics.
Poor, poor Philip Levine. The Miami Beach mayor has long been suspected of running a massive social-media-blocking campaign — over the past few years, he’s cut off critics, local activists, and even the main Miami New Times twitter account from reading his tweets. Multiple courts have ruled that politicians are not allowed to block people from viewing their social media accounts because those pages disseminate vital public information.
As Donald Trump has repeatedly praised neo-Nazi and KKK rallies as being full of “fine people” and minimized the deadly domestic terror attack on peaceful counterprotesters in Charlottesville, everyone from Sen. John McCain to Trump’s own economic advisor, Gary Cohn, have spoken out against the president. One voice that has been notably silent, however, is Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, who until recently was dean of Florida International University’s law school.
It should surprise exactly zero people that President Donald Trump’s associates were dumb enough to basically write “let’s all collude with Russia” in emails to one another and that this collection of morons with brain lesions is also deeply tied to South Florida.
Miami and corruption have always gone together like cafecitos and pastelitos. In a state that routinely ranks in the top three in the nation for official financial shenanigans, Miami is the crown jewel of pilfering the taxpayer treasure chest. But even in a town famed for its unscrupulous public servants,…
One of the final questions left unanswered from the 2016 presidential election was resolved today. Thanks to an email hack, Democratic National Committee chair and South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was outed as favoring Hillary Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders during the primary.
Florida marijuana advocate, campaign-donation rainmaker, and possible Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Morgan refuses to drop longtime political shyster Roger Stone from his national marijuana-advocacy team. Morgan has been warned repeatedly that Stone’s presence will end up tanking the entire project (not to mention Morgan political reputation)…
For nearly three years, county officials and police in Miami-Dade failed to respond as a tent city of sex offenders grew along train tracks near Hialeah. The squalid camp is just the latest consequence of a 2005 county law that banned sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center, or park, effectively banishing them into homelessness.
