President Donald Trump has effectively deputized Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to lead the administration’s regime-change efforts in Venezuela. Despite the involvement of warmongering National Security Advisor John Bolton and genocide abetter Elliott Abrams, even most mainstream Democrats are praising Rubio’s push to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
In theory, Florida’s Constitutional Revision Commission is a useful body: The group convenes every 20 years and considers amendments to the state constitution. But in practice, the CRC lately has been gamed by lawmakers. It’s bundled disparate concepts to produce absolutely weird results: an amendment put up for public vote…
Earlier this year, the federal government announced it was closing a massive camp full of immigrant kids in Tornillo, Texas. Immigrant-rights activists say the camp was a humanitarian nightmare — most of the kids had been sent there after U.S. immigration officials ripped them from their parents in contravention of…
Sure, the National Enquirer of old might have been a ruthless publication that had mafia and CIA ties and occasionally “caught-and-killed” stories about famous people. But Paul David Pope, the son of Enquirer founder Generoso “Gene” Pope Jr., claims that the paper’s latest attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO (and Miami native)…
Just yesterday, alt-right hero and white-supremacist-adjacent Florida congressman Matt Gaetz tried to kick parents of Parkland shooting victims out of a federal gun-violence hearing. The video footage of the event, captured by CSPAN, is insane for a number of reasons: For one, Gaetz conducts himself like a petulant child. Moreover:…
A group of female workers has been fighting for nearly two decades to force Walmart, America’s largest employer, to recognize what workers say is clearly a gender-based pay gap. In 2001, Betty Dukes spearheaded a class-action lawsuit alleging she and other women had been regularly passed up for raises and promotions…
Yesterday, the United Way released an utterly bleak dataset showing that, in both Miami-Dade County and Florida overall, most residents struggle to afford basic goods and services, like rent, groceries, and childcare. According to the United Way, nearly 60 percent of Miamians are either living underneath the federal poverty line…
The nation’s unemployment rate is low and the stock market is high. Considering only those simple benchmarks, you’d think life was pretty great in America in 2019. Miami, where unemployment is at a near-record low, should also be living well. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find tons of data explaining why…
Westernbank used to be one of the largest financial institutions in Puerto Rico. At its peak, it employed 1,500 people. But it took just one man to take down the San Juan-based bank. In 2010, a Key Biscayne resident named Jack Kachkar brought its operation to an end with a $142 million…
The Florida Everglades sure seem like a place where oil rigs don’t belong. The unique habitat contains tons of endangered species — and humans have demonstrably corrupted it enough already. But today, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee ruled that an investment company in Broward County…
Last Friday, the McClatchy Newspaper Company — which owns the Sacramento Bee, Kansas City Star, Bradenton Herald, Charlotte Observer, the flagship Miami Herald, and other major dailies — announced plans to gut its reporting staff. In an internal email from CEO Craig Forman, the company announced a whopping 450 employees…
If you steal anything worth $300 or more in Florida, that counts as a felony. That is, to be blunt, an absurdly low number in 2019: It’s the second-lowest felony theft threshold in America (behind New Jersey), and Florida has not updated that number since 1987. Adjusted for inflation, $300…
Former governor, now-senator, and future Demon-King Paimon does not like democracy. Sure, he says he does: He’s been talking tough for years about the transgressions of various “dictators” in Latin America — but at the same time, he sure seems to hate the concept of democracy in his own home…
At least one Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee in the “Miami field area” — which includes Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands — is on a hunger strike to protest detainment, ICE officials have confirmed to New Times. The exact location is unclear. The ICE spokespeople declined to say where the person is located or how he or she wound up in custody.
Where does Donald Trump get his ideas for the crackdown on Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro? From this group of unfeeling toad-people hell-bent on nothing except using the political process to accumulate power, money, and prestige: Iran-Contra veteran and war hawk John Bolton, death-squad backer Elliott Abrams, Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State…
Senator and flesh-hungry Nordic draugr Rick Scott has spent a lot of time lately attacking Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. He is, in Scott’s estimation, a “dictator.” Scott’s tough talk, though, would be a lot less hypocritical if Florida’s newly minted U.S. senator weren’t also begging President Donald Trump to do some very dictator-like things of his own.
Sen. Marco Rubio’s career has improbably rebounded since Donald Trump humiliated him during the 2016 election season. It didn’t seem to matter that Rubio used an LGBTQ mass murder as an excuse to break his own promise and run for Senate again. Now Trump has basically deputized Rubio to serve as what some politicians are calling “virtual secretary of state for Latin America”…
In May 2018, a Miami woman named Marlene Garcia filed state paperwork to create Peacock Consultants, Inc. Since then, the company hasn’t produced any sort of website or presence on social media. Garcia did not respond to a message sent on social media, so it’s difficult to determine the firm’s area of expertise.
It’s 2019 and Florida lawmakers still want to debate the existence of evolution and human-caused climate change. For that, you can thank longtime state senator and proud son of the Confederacy, Ocala’s Dennis Baxley, who recently teamed up with a fringe-right, virulently Islamophobic group to push yet another anti-science bill.
Last year, a group of progressive activists convinced the Florida Democratic Party to stop accepting campaign donations from private, for-profit prison companies. The industry, which makes billions by keeping other human beings behind bars, immorally incentivizes cities to needlessly lock people up, many activists agree. One of America’s two largest…
In fall 2018, a 14-year-old girl fled Mexico after a violent group of men killed three of her uncles, broke into her home, and threatened her at gunpoint. She arrived in the United States November 6 and was briefly taken to what she called a “jail-like” holding facility in San Diego. Named “M.C.L.” in court filings…
One of the less reported aspects of the United States deportation system is its profitability. Private, for-profit companies and contractors are paid billions of dollars to carry out the Trump administration’s will. In short: People are getting rich by keeping immigrant kids behind bars.
