Did a prominent Democratic donor cut a backroom deal in order to gain control of the Florida Democratic Party? An email New Times obtained raises new questions about the ongoing battle over who gets to lead Florida’s Democratic Party during the Donald Trump years. The email’s author, lobbyist Stephanie Grutman, denies…
Last week, Stephen Bittel, a Miami real-estate magnate and major political donor, made the first play in a House of Cards-esque political drama he hopes ends with his running Florida’s Democratic Party. First, though, he needed to secure a humbler role as a Miami-Dade County state committeeman, which he did in a quiet midnight vote.
Natasha Joseph’s almond-shaped eyes brim with tears as she cradles her pregnant belly and recounts the horror of her journey to the United States. There were the dust-choked buses, the corrupt cops, and the thieving coyotes. Some stretches of Central America were so perilous that walking in the dead of night was the only option.
Former South Florida Congressman Allen West is meeting with Donald Trump today, for the second time in seven days. To put things mildly, this is less than ideal. West has a demonstrable hatred of Muslims: He was kicked out of the military a decade ago for psychologically torturing an innocent Iraqi cop, spent his two-year congressional career calling Islam a threat to the West, and Saturday retweeted a meme calling for the “extermination” of Muslims.
The rumors spiked across Twitter on Friday: David Beckham was finally ready to pull the plug on his tortured attempts to bring Major League Soccer back to Miami. Instead, one soccer writer suggested, he was turning his sights to the more pliable city of Las Vegas.
Florida International University is one of the most diverse schools in the nation. Some 81 percent of students are racial or ethnic minorities, and FIU advertises itself as the country’s largest “Hispanic-serving institution.” Some of those students are undocumented “dreamers” who have benefited from President Barack Obama’s DACA plan, which allows them to attend college legally.
Protect Our Elections, a liberal-leaning group based in Washington, D.C., says that more than 160,000 votes in Florida weren’t counted during last month’s presidential election. The group claims each of those votes matters a great deal, since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 112,911 votes in the Sunshine State. Trump…
There are a lot of ways to get back at a horrible ex. The desire for revenge is so primal and prevalent that the internet is practically littered with lists about how to exact vengeance. Most of the suggestions are benign, from donating their stuff to Goodwill to sending over…
A few friends, some oysters, and a lot of Ketel One were Rand Hoch’s day-after-election hangover remedy. But the president and founder of Palm Beach County Human Rights Council was back at work the next day. Aiming to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender, he quickly planned a meeting…
Donald Trump has been the president-elect for exactly three weeks. As he has endlessly Twitter-beefed and mulled over cabinet picks, though, it seems as if he’s been president-elect since Tsar Nicholas II was assassinated. But there’s already been a darker side to Trump’s ascendency than watching the future leader of the free world go on unhinged social-media rants.
Two of Donald Trump’s potential Supreme Court nominees hail from the Sunshine State.
Just after 9 a.m. today, Flavia Marlene Almonte, a Latina Muslim woman who lives in Miami, pulled her car over near a police officer in Fort Lauderdale and broke down in tears. “I just need a place to vent,” she said, speaking into a Facebook Live feed…
Around 4:30 p.m. yesterday, Miami real-estate developer David Sanguesa claims, a Miami Starbucks employee said she would not serve him coffee. The reason: He voted for Donald Trump.
Around 4:30 p.m. today, Jorge de Cárdenas was getting some work done in a Starbucks on South Dixie Highway near the University of Miami. A group of people stood waiting in line at the counter for their coffee and snacks. But one disgruntled white customer got so upset at how long his order was taking that he began screaming “Trump!” at a black employee.
The following sentence represents the lowest threshold for political “success” in U.S. history: Americans should be actively hoping that Donald Trump turns out just like Florida Gov. Rick Scott. For many Floridians, that idea goes down as easily as a milkshake made from cigarettes and cat litter.
Miami-Dade County overwhelmingly rejected Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election. This past Friday, Miami residents reminded the world that the city really doesn’t like the guy: Protesters shut down two highways to make sure the nation knows Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant policies won’t fly here.
Over the weekend, a Columbia University professor from Turkey, N. Turkuler Isiksel, shared his best advice for fighting Donald Trump if his administration turns toward autocracy. “Protest early and often,” wrote Isikel, who lived through the rise of the democratically elected strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Florida Democratic Party hasn’t won a governor’s race in Florida since 1994 but in recent years has been totally unwilling to invent a new strategy to change that streak. For the past four elections, like clockwork, the party has nominated a milquetoast Tampa-area centrist. And for the past four cycles, they’ve all lost.
Miami often acts as a bellwether for the nation’s issues. After all, the Magic City is a majority-minority community with serious affordability, transportation, and climate problems. If Miami finds a way to beat those challenges, that’s a great sign for the rest of the country.
If you want to snap Miami out of its warm, tropical stupor, you shut down its highways. At 6 last night, a few hundred Miamians upset by Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency gathered outside the entrance to the Bayfront Park Amphitheater downtown. The crowd quickly spilled into the…
There are a hell of a lot of Democrats in Florida. In fact, more of them are registered here than Republicans. Obama won the state twice. And the blue party has demographics on its side thanks to a growing, left-leaning Hispanic population.
So much for that whole “Donald Trump deserves a shot” mentality Hillary Clinton was advocating yesterday. Thousands of Trump’s opponents — a multicolored coalition of civil-rights reformers, immigration activists, criminal-justice critics, LGBTQ allies, and others — have already taken to the streets around the nation to protest…
