Remember two weeks ago when your friends were all amazed at Sen. Marco Rubio’s gutsy showing at Rex Tillerson’s confirmation hearing? Rubio roasted Tillerson for refusing to call Vladimir Putin a war criminal over his Syria campaign. Maybe, political columnists suggested, Rubio could be a GOP bulwark against Donald Trump’s neglect for basic human rights.
Elections have consequences. Sure, there are some Miami voters who leapt enthusiastically onto the Trump Train and embraced all of the Donald’s plans. But thousands of locals voted for him only because they wanted lower taxes or a wall in Texas or the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Even more in Miami-Dade didn’t bother showing up at the polls.
Donald Trump is officially the president of the United States. Trump promised today to give power in America “back to the people” — people, presumably, like billionaires Besty DeVos, Steve Mnuchin, and Rex Tillerson, who make up his cabinet. If, however, you are interested in protecting your power and rights…
Rubio has thrown deep shade at Chelsea Manning, the transgender former Army private and WikiLeaks leaker whom President Obama pardoned yesterday. See if you can notice what’s off about Rubio’s statement condemning Obama’s move:
Over the past ten years, it’s been difficult to find politicians, be they left-leaning or right-of-center, to defend the U.S. government’s “wet foot, dry foot” Cuban immigration policy. Even during the Bush administration, politicos — such as then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — called the rule an outdated relic of the Cold War. Even Marco Rubio has said it’s time for the law to go.
Barack Obama will be the U.S. president for eight more days. But he’s decided something that will have lasting ramifications for Miami and South Florida: the end of the long-standing and controversial “wet foot, dry foot” Cuban immigration policy, which granted residency to Cuban immigrants who entered the United States without visas, according to the Associated Press.
Before taking the reins as mayor of Miami Beach, Philip Levine made a fortune as a cruise-ship media magnate who spent his spare time hobnobbing with celebrities like Mick Jagger, Annie Liebovitz, and Hillary and Bill Clinton. The minute Levine took office in 2013, he used his experience as a PR king to his advantage, rapidly turning himself into one of the nation’s highest-profile climate-change fighters.
For a few delirious hours yesterday, Florida’s junior senator made his home state proud. Marco Rubio relentlessly grilled Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, on human rights violators such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, demanding to know whether Tillerson believed Trump’s BFF Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal” and whether he’d listen to intelligence agencies about Russia’s hacking.
By now you’ve woken up to the Black Mirror-worthy headlines: President-elect Donald Trump has spent all night angrily denying he paid Russian prostitutes to perform an R. Kelly-approved routine at a Moscow hotel while FSB spies secretly filmed blackmail material.
Just so we’re clear, Marco Rubio is, by his own admission, not a scientist. He might actually be a large, brain-eating amoeba infecting the South Florida water supply. But whether he’s a living human senator or single-celled malignant disease, he sure talks like someone who knows next to nothing about the environment. He once blamed Miami’s flooding on “higher sea levels or whatever may be happening” and has said throughout his career that he doesn’t think human-made climate change is real.
In November, 71 percent of Florida voters backed legal medical marijuana. In Miami Beach, the approval rating was nearly 80 percent. So it’s bizarre that the very next day, the city voted to block dispensaries from the island for at least four months. Commissioner Ricky Arriola, who sponsored the move, says he simply wants to hit pause to allow the city more time to decide where distributors can operate.
Stephen Bittel, a billionaire real-estate developer from Miami Beach, would like to lead the Florida Democratic Party. Most Miami Democrats see no issue with that. Bittel has been donating money to political campaigns for years and has helped prop up politicians such as U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
After yesterday’s tragic mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Florida’s political leaders offered their “thoughts and prayers” while doing absolutely nothing to address the nation’s gun-control issues.
Had there been more guns at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Sarasota state Sen. Greg Steube says, today’s tragic shooting might have been prevented. So he’s sticking by a bill he filed December 9 that would allow Floridians to openly carry guns in Sunshine State airports.
When Stephen Bittel, a wealthy Democratic megadonor from Miami Beach, announced plans to run for the top job at the Florida Democratic Party, pushback was inevitable. Bittel, who made the majority of his fortune selling properties on Lincoln Road, is the public face of Florida Strong, an organization that donates Koch brothers-style “dark money” to Democratic candidates. Many progressive Florida Democrats disliked Bittel’s modus operandi.
South Florida is full of drivers who treat stop lights like vague suggestions. So the area is also full of red-light cameras, which ticket motorists who plow through intersections with reckless abandon. Those cameras can be annoying — who wants to dish out $150 every time they run a yellow? — but there’s some evidence to suggest they can cut down on deadly crashes.
Miami Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo love to position themselves among the most center-leaning GOP members in Congress. Ros-Lehtinen is passionately pro-LGBT rights. Curbelo ran for reelection as a hard #NeverTrump Republican. But both Miamians voted yesterday to all but eradicate the Office of Congressional Ethics, which was formed to police government corruption.
Florida state Sen. Travis Hutson, a Republican representing St. Johns, Flagler, and parts of Volusia Counties, wants to set up two entirely different punishments for people accused of identical crimes. The difference? Whether you’re a U.S. citizen or not when you are arrested. Under Huston’s proposal, anyone committing simple battery or assault in Florida as a U.S. citizen would be charged with a misdemeanor. Commit that identical crime as an undocumented immigrant, and Hutson’s bill would make that crime a felony.
Donald Trump owes so much of his ascendency — and his continued commitment to sowing world chaos — to Twitter that it’s appropriate the first big black eye of his White House came via some tweets. And Miami’s own A.J. Delgado, an attorney and Trump campaign advisor, appears to have…
Some Miami politicians sucked this year because they were incompetent. A whole lot of people thought longtime Miami businessman Jeb Bush, history’s least exciting royal prince, would be in line to lead the free world by this time in 2016. Instead, he blew his shot big-time, squandered hundreds of millions of dollars, and cemented his place in history books as one of the clearest cases of white-bread upper-crust mediocrity in American history. Let’s hope some rich jokester capitalist gifted Bush a coal mine this Christmas.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law has led to a massive, demonstrable increase in statewide homicides since 2005. JAMA’s November study framed the law as a clear threat to public health: Homicides were actually decreasing, on average, until the law — which lets Floridians kill in self-defense even if they themselves started the fight — took effect.
Throughout his rise to fame, sold-out arenas, and cheesy Bud Light ads, Pitbull has refused to throw his “dales” behind either political party. Even as many Latin celebs backed Hillary because of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant xenophobia, Pitbull refused to wade in, suggesting instead that both parties are equally mierda. (And…
