Thanks to Donald Trump, the nation is already expected to lose $1.6 billion in tourism from Mexican travelers, who are overwhelmingly skipping the States and flying to Canada. On a local level, economic analysts worry that the so-called Trump effect from his xenophobic rhetoric and attempted Muslim bans is also discouraging Latin American tourists from venturing onto U.S. soil.
In June 2016, the City of Miami Beach voted to eventually raise its minimum wage to $13.31 per hour. The move sounds innocuous enough, but it was a shot across the bow of state legislators: Florida law actually bans local municipalities from setting their own wages higher than the state’s…
Miami-Dade commissioners — particularly Barbara Jordan and Audrey Edmonson — last week let down their constituents. How? They punted for a third straight year on coming up with a system to give $14 million in funding to nonprofit groups.
Miami Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart definitely, totally, absolutely hasn’t been trying to trade his vote for “Trumpcare” for control over the Trump administration’s Cuba policy, the congressman’s spokesperson tells New Times. Just minutes before the scheduled high-stakes vote, such is the surreal world of political intrigue in which Diaz-Balart now finds himself.
Before voting to ban floating billboards in his city, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine told the company behind the concept that it was an “interesting business.” He must have meant it: A month and a half later, he’s now using their services to advertise.
According to Longwood state Rep. Scott Plakon, Florida’s firefighters, cops, and corrections officers are a “special” type of public servants, the sort that are integral to a functioning democracy. The state’s teachers and nurses? Not so much. Earlier this month, Plakon filed a bill that, if enacted, would strip a union of its collective bargaining power…
When a congressional issue unites the following list of subhuman rat-people, you know it’s going to be something awful. One bill this year has brought together U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton (the dude who hates Iran), Jim Inhofe (the idiot who took a snowball inside the Capitol to disprove global warming), Rand Paul, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, the Zodiac Killer Ted Cruz, and Miami’s own Marco Rubio.
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.
Miami State Sen. Frank Artiles is swimming in some boiling-hot water after accepting nearly $2,000 in gifts from Florida Power & Light before rapidly advancing pro-FPL bills in his committee. But don’t criticize Artiles online — he’ll probably just block you.
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…
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine might genuinely be the nation’s closest Democratic relative to Donald Trump. Levine can’t stop himself from tweeting out garbage: He spent last week calling the right-leaning Sunshine State News “#FakeJournalism,” for one. Then he spent Friday on an emoji-laden Twitter tirade against Airbnb, the home-sharing company that Levine is working hard to ban from the city.
This week, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s office will release a report detailing how the county could sell or lease 2.8 million square feet of publicly owned downtown land to developers. The vague plan is already sparking outcry, but it turns out one concrete negotiation in the proposal is already underway: All Aboard Florida, the company behind the Gov. Rick Scott-tied Brightline train system, is already in talks with Dade to bulldoze part of the county hall complex.
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.
The facts, at this point, aren’t in dispute: Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Senate under oath last month that he’d never met any Russian officials during Donald Trump’s campaign. He said the same thing in a questionnaire he filled out for Sen. Patrick Leahy. But Sessions did meet with…
