Politics & Government

It’s Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative to promote transparency in government, so what better time to run through five bills that could chip away most at Florida’s open-records law?

Eleven times in one year, Miami Police received calls for help at a tree-lined, three-bedroom house in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood. Some came from tenants in distress inside the home. Others were placed by neighbors concerned about loud arguing. All reflect back on White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who rented the house for his most recent ex-wife in 2015 and 2016.

Marco Rubio has been as silent as a Trappist monk lately. He’s refused to hold town-hall meetings, declined to criticize Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, and wouldn’t even join the Republicans calling for Jeff Sessions’ recusal from a Russia probe over his lies about meeting Moscow’s ambassador.

Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine is having a weird month. Last week, he got into an emoji-filled Twitter fight with the Airbnb company account after accusing the home-sharing service of ruining the quality of life on his island. Today, in front of a roomful of Cuban-Americans, Levine suggested invading Havana. The mayor insists he was just kidding, though.

Mexico will never pay for Donald Trump’s proposed wall. The country was never going to pay for a gigantic concrete monument to anti-Latino racism. Donald Trump almost definitely knew that fact from day one of his presidential campaign but just didn’t care about lying to millions of Americans. (The only other option is that Trump is way, way dumber than anyone assumes.)

Beginning in the late 1920s, famed German fashion designer Hugo Boss supplied uniforms for the German Nazi Party. We bring this up not because Donald Trump is the next reincarnation of Adolf Hitler (not yet!), but because the decision has haunted the Boss brand for nearly 100 years. It’s etched into political and fashion history.

Life as a member of Rick Scott’s cabinet isn’t too rough. The jobs are a reliable slingshot to bigger and better gigs, whether its a gubernatorial campaign, which Ag Secretary Adam Putnam looks like set to launch, a Trump appointment in D.C., as AG Pam Bondi still seems to be…

Greg Steube is a nightmare. Steube, a lawyer and military veteran, represented Sarasota in the Florida House of Representatives for six years before earning a promotion to the Florida Senate in 2016. With larger shoes to fill, Steube now appears to be swinging for the fences. He’s chucked a remarkable number of bills against the wall in the hopes that some will stick — and nearly all of them are next-level bananas.

After weeks of fiery protests and a contentious vote of support from the Miami-Dade County Commission, Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s move to back Donald Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary cities has been tossed out in court as unconstitutional. Miami-Dade Judge Milton Hirsch made the ruling Friday morning.

The stereotype of the drugged-out welfare queen is one of Republican legislators’ favorite tropes. There’s nothing a GOP-controlled government body loves more than raging about poor people taking government handouts and then using that cash to get high and avoid work all day. And, understandably, that would be a very bad thing to do.

Any sane person running Miami-Dade County would take a look at downtown’s traffic-clogged streets and crane-packed sky and realize developers are already running roughshod over the town. Such a reasonable leader might understand that failing to regulate sprawling developments had left the city in dire need of more open, green space.

Tamarac, a sprawling South Florida suburb, is not all that special. For starters, the city’s name doesn’t come from a special natural wonder like a lake or, as it was long rumored, a nearby Native American tribe. No, the city was simply named for a local car wash called Caramat. “Tamarac” is just “Caramat” spelled backward. Caramat’s owner, Ken Behring, founded the city.

Does Donald Trump owe billions of dollars to Vladimir Putin-connected Russian oligarchs? Is his personal fortune so tied to loans from corporate fat cats that they’re secretly pulling the strings on all of his policy decisions? Trump swears the answer to both of those questions is no, but he also won’t let…

Recent reports suggest U.S. Customs and Border Protection is giddy about Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency. Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Department of Homeland Security agents have been ready to “take the shackles off” for years and feel “a new freedom to deport” under Trump.

Sen. Marco Rubio did not show up to a citizen-initiated town-hall meeting held in South Miami-Dade County last night. He was replaced by something that many of his constituents believe might be more useful: an empty suit that said and did nothing all night.

Marco Rubio spent the first half of the week in Europe on some sort of mystery tour through Germany and/or France. Details of that trip are remarkably scarce — but in that time, the U.S. senator from Florida used the journey as an excuse to skip out on a citizen-organized town-hall meeting in Tampa.

Marco Rubio has been in Europe all week. Why? No one really knows! Members of Rubio’s staff told the Tampa Bay Times yesterday that the U.S. senator from Florida is meeting with representatives from Germany and France this week to discuss alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. But Rubio’s office declined to say the cities he’s visiting or even the countries in which the meetings are taking place.