Politics & Government

Nearly 48 hours after New Times first reported that the federal government had quietly reopened a child-migrant compound outside Miami and placed an estimated 1,000 kids there, the U.S. representative from the district where the facility stands says he is “troubled” by the fact that other sitting lawmakers were rejected from entering the facility.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has responded to news of a child-migrant camp opening in his state by, in part, throwing a bunch of other politicians under the bus. In a two-page letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday, Scott disclosed that “Florida’s congressional delegation” and “state and local officials” were told…

In recent years, the Miami Design Preservation League has become one of the loudest voices against harmful development across the county. It has battled gentrification in Little Havana, the trend of McMansions replacing historic homes, and a plan to turn the Miami Beach Community Church courtyard into a retail store. In many cases, the scrappy nonprofit has challenged the county’s biggest developers and lobbyists.

After New Times yesterday broke the news that President Trump’s Office of Refugee Resettlement had quietly reopened a heavily guarded compound outside Miami and placed an estimated 1,000 children there, reporters descended. Security guards at the facility first threatened a New Times journalist with arrest and later did the same to reporters for the Miami Herald and WPLG, who stuck around to photograph the site near Homestead Air Reserve Base.

Carlos Curbelo, the allegedly moderate Republican U.S. representative who represents South Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys, is staking his reelection effort on passing a bill protecting “Dreamers,” a class of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Curbelo’s 26th congressional district is a Democrat-heavy swing area that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the congressman seems terrified he might lose his seat this November.

Thanks to the incredible work of the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold, Americans learned in September 2016 — two months before the presidential election — that Donald Trump’s web of personal charities seemed about as legitimate as vending machine companies run by the Genovese crime family. Fahrenthold won a Pulitzer Prize for doggedly tracking how Trump, among other things, used a quarter-million dollars from his charity to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit corporations.

Carlos Curbelo, the congressman for South Miami-Dade and the Florida Keys who voted in 2017 for a failed Obamacare-repeal package and successful tax cut for the wealthy, appears to be trying to pin his 2018 reelection bid on a last-ditch effort to reinstate the DREAM Act. Curbelo’s district voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016…

The GEO Group, the second-largest private-prison operator in America, is headquartered in Boca Raton and loves greasing the Florida political system. GEO is one of the most powerful political donors in the state. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican politician who hasn’t accepted a few thousand dollars in campaign bucks from the giant, and more than a fair share of local Democrats have done the same.

North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo pleaded guilty in April to a raft of campaign-finance violations, including diverting at least $5,000 in campaign money to shell corporations he and his family used to pay off personal expenses. Vallejo, age 51, stepped down as mayor and received three months of house arrest plus probation.

This past May 11, county commission candidate and longtime GOP insider Alex Diaz de la Portilla glad-handed seniors at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Center. Slinging heaping plates of paella right alongside him was Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, a fellow Trump-backing MAGA warrior who was among Diaz de la Portilla’s biggest backers in his failed bid for office.

In 2016, after years of financial mismanagement left Opa-locka nearly $8 million in debt, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency and placed city officials on a restrictive spending diet. A state oversight board tasked with keeping the city on track warned that the belt-tightening might take some getting used to…

When gun store owner Ted Budd successfully ran for Congress in North Carolina in 2016, he recorded an ad about how much he loves weapons. The ad included shots of him selling guns, cocking a rifle outdoors, and loading an assault-style rifle. In 2012, Budd speculated that the Sandy Hook massacre likely led to increased sales at his shop.

At 10 a.m. Monday, the students of March for Our Lives gathered at Pine Trails Park in Parkland to announce the latest phase of their gun-control movement: a national tour to register young voters. Focusing on cities where the debate over gun control is particularly charged, the 60-day campaign will…

Susan Goldstein previously served as a Florida state representative for western Broward County from 2004 to 2006. She’s now a prominent figure in Tallahassee and serves on the board of the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists. In 2016, she was Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign chair in Broward.

Mary Caceres fled Colombia’s brutal civil war in 2005 with her then-9-year-old daughter Daniela Gaona after Caceres’ brother was killed by guerrillas. Daniela was eventually awarded status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and spared from possible deportation. But Caceres’ repeated attempts to obtain asylum in the United States have so far…

Florida gubernatorial candidate, Rick Scott ally, and self-proclaimed “Proud NRA sellout” Adam Putnam will pretty much take campaign money from anyone. Case in point: He scheduled a fundraiser last week with a man who was previously videotaped repeatedly shooting two dogs. Putnam responded by saying that the donation from said dog-shooter was…

Early this morning, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors and #NeverAgain activists gathered in the dark parking lot of a Coral Springs Publix and began tracing bodies on the asphalt in chalk. When they were finished well before dawn, they’d drawn the outlines of 17 victims and an ominous twist on Publix’s famous slogan: “Where shooting is a pleasure.”

Since revelations surfaced last year of a blackmail plot against a commissioner with an undisclosed arrest for cocaine in his past, scandal after scandal has rocked tiny North Bay Village, a two-island town on the 79th Street Causeway. Now Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola is proposing a dramatic fix: He wants his city to take over the troubled village.