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Man Convicted of Key West Bombing Plot Says He Was Just Trying to Make Cocaine

By Jessica LipscombAugust 31, 2018

According to the feds, Harlem Suarez was a radical, an extremist, and an imminent danger to the public. In the summer of 2015, a confidential informant recorded the 23-year-old plotting to bomb a public beach in the Florida Keys, and investigators found an arsenal of explosive materials inside his apartment. After a three-month investigation, FBI agents swarmed Key West and charged him with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Mother Held by ICE Over Traffic Ticket Freed After Posting $20,000 Bond

By Jerry IannelliAugust 31, 2018

Earlier this year, New Times detailed the horrific case of Maria, a 24-year-old who fled persecution in Guatemala, gave birth to multiple American children, and wound up jailed in an ICE detention facility in South Florida after she was arrested while trying to pay a $150 traffic fine. Speaking from inside the detention center, Maria told New Times in Spanish that she was allowed to see her three young children only an hour or two each week and that her 9-year-old daughter was afraid she’d also be detained if she visited her mom.

Civil Rights Groups Demand South Florida Cities End Bans on Homeless Panhandling

By Jerry IannelliAugust 30, 2018

Americans have a First Amendment right to walk up to other Americans and ask for help, money, or supplies. That’s why cities almost always lose in court when they try to ban what’s pejoratively known as “panhandling” by the homeless. In Florida alone, courts have struck down anti-aid ordinances in Tampa and Miami for violating that basic American right to ask other people in public for a few bucks.

Ron DeSantis Was Reportedly an Admin of Racist Facebook Page

By Tim ElfrinkAugust 30, 2018

Click on a page called “Tea Party,” which boasts 94,000 followers and claims to be “the oldest and largest #TeaParty group on Facebook,” and you’ll find that one of the first posts this morning is a glaringly racist meme showing side-by-side photos of Melania Trump and a heavily Photoshopped Michelle Obama with the headline “Make the White House Beautiful Again.”

More Than 100 Female Candidates Won in Florida’s Primaries

By Brittany ShammasAugust 29, 2018

This year, record numbers of women across Florida are mounting campaigns for office, most of them progressives motivated by anti-Trump fervor and emboldened by the Women’s March. The so-called Pink Wave had its first real test Tuesday, Primary Day. And the early returns suggest the wave is real.

DeSantis Already Compared Gillum to a Monkey on Fox News

By Jerry IannelliAugust 29, 2018

After last night’s primary results made it official, Floridians assumed newly minted GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, a Confederate-flag bumper-sticker come to life, would run a wild, dog-whistling, and entirely Trumpian campaign against Democrat Andrew Gillum. But people perhaps didn’t expect DeSantis to start throwing around racial slurs this early…

D.C. Organization Threatens to Sue if Coral Gables Keeps License-Plate Readers

By Jessica LipscombAugust 29, 2018

If you’ve driven through Coral Gables anytime in the past three years, it’s almost 100 percent certain police have a photo of your license plate and the ability to pinpoint your vehicle as it traveled within city limits. Despite having just 50,000 residents, the Gables is on track to capture 30 million license plates this year — more than 26 other police agencies in South Florida.

The Eight Best Versions of the Miami Dolphins Fight Song on YouTube

By Ryan YousefiAugust 29, 2018

Miami has the Dolphins, the greatest football team. To some, those are the opening lyrics to the best fight song of all time: “Miami Dolphins Number One,” penned by Lee Ofman prior to the Fins’ undefeated 1972 season. To others, that sentence is a good sign someone needs to be Baker Acted or has been in a coma for the past three decades.

Andrew Gillum’s Platform Inspired Florida Democrats for the First Time in Years

By Jerry IannelliAugust 28, 2018

The running joke among Florida political journalists is that the state’s inept Democratic Party runs a centrist from Tampa every single year for governor. The past few decades of Democratic gubernatorial candidates have been milquetoast centrists who love palling around with their Republican colleagues in Tallahassee and sharing stories about staggering home from bars during their time at FSU. Florida, it seems, does not create populist firebrands.

Live-Blog: 2018 Miami Primary Election Results

By Jerry IannelliAugust 28, 2018

By 7 p.m., Floridians will know whether their usually inept state Democratic Party has chosen to anoint a hard-campaigning progressive with popular, grassroots support; a rich dude with a checkered track record as Miami Beach mayor; or a well-connected but boring centrist former congresswoman as the party’s next gubernatorial candidate…

Here Are the Five Big Questions on Miami’s Primary Election Day

By Jerry IannelliAugust 28, 2018

Go vote today in Miami if you can. Please. It’s primary day, and there are many, many awful people in Florida whose goal in life is to set up roadblocks between you and your constitutional right to cast a ballot. Crooks and fools often win elections in South Florida by small handfuls of votes, and old, reactionary nutjobs have been voting early for weeks already…

Miami Cops Needlessly Arrest Thousands of Pot Smokers

By Meg O'ConnorAugust 28, 2018

Two more blocks and Polini Sanon would have made it home. The 31-year-old father of five had just left his job as a Wells Fargo banker on a Friday night in 2017 when his life took an unexpected turn. It was just a few minutes past 6 p.m. but already…

Race-Baiting Strip Club Shooter Regrets Acting as His Own Attorney

By Jessica LipscombAugust 27, 2018

After gunning down two unarmed black men outside a Miami strip club in 2012, security guard Lukace Kendle claimed the shooting was justified under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. During the trial, where Kendle chose to act as his own attorney, he compared himself to George Zimmerman and claimed the evidence was fabricated “because I’m white.”

A Brief History of Miami’s CIA Ties and Propaganda Efforts

By Jerry IannelliAugust 26, 2018

Ex-Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado now runs the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting,  a federal agency that creates pro-American “news” and blasts it in the vague direction of Cuba. It would be perhaps inaccurate to say the OCB’s stations — Radio Martí, TV Martí, and Martí Noticias — “broadcast” in Cuba,…

Miami Judge Reportedly Dead After SWAT Standoff, Weeklong Meltdown

By Jerry IannelliAugust 24, 2018

Miami-Dade County Administrative Law Judge Timothy Maher was arrested last week for reportedly threatening to shoot his family members in his El Portal home. Then, yesterday, Maher allegedly threatened to kill someone at his federal office, which handles disability and Social Security cases. Maher’s threat was serious enough that the Federal Protective Service evacuated the building.

Miami Instagram Prankster Filmed Himself Fleeing Cops for Nearly Two Months

By Jerry IannelliAugust 24, 2018

Social media fame is a race to the bottom. Concepts that seem novel one day get chewed up, memed, and worn out in days in a brutal system that ensures only the most outrageous, shameless people are able to achieve sustained fame. Alex Jones has millions of followers. People think the QAnon conspiracy is real. Teen rapper Tay-K scored a massive hit after writing a song about his capital murder charges.