This was supposed to be the Florida Democrats’ year. The blue wave was cresting. Andrew Gillum was a strong candidate for governor. Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott were grotesque, cretinous candidates and seemingly awful human beings. Everything looked so easy.
The Florida Democratic Party is, without question, in the running for “most inept” Democratic state-level institution in America. There are currently more registered Democrats than Republicans here, but the GOP has managed to control the governor’s mansion since 2001 and will remain there until at least 2022. There are signs that,…
Florida State Rep. Thad Altman was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1955. He moved to Florida in 1957 and has been basically a carpetbagger delivering Deep South hatred ever since. He’s earned one of those old-white-dude names that is essentially just “Monocle Q. Racism.” In a depressingly on-trend move for…
North Bay Village is made up of three tiny islands in the middle of Biscayne Bay. But it has the best politics. Not long ago, the police chief, city attorney, and several other key officials were fired. Then old pro Manager Frank Rollason, his deputy manager, and a secretary quit. In…
The best news for Democrats from the recent midterm elections was that Florida’s racist and ridiculously difficult road to voting rights restoration for felons was overturned — you know, the one that stopped one in five black voters from casting ballots. Now it looks as if Republicans don’t want to…
In both sad and entirely predictable news, immigration-asylum applications in Miami were denied at rates virtually unseen in two decades, according to data released today by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a group at Syracuse University. Immigration officials denied 86 percent of asylum applications…
A whole host of civil-rights advocates believe that the private, for-profit prison industry should not exist. But former Florida State Senate President Joe Negron appears to, ahem, lean in the opposite direction: Politico Florida first reported yesterday that the outgoing Negron will take a cushy gig as…
Little Havana is an amazing, interesting, beautiful place. Little Havana’s new flag, which debuted yesterday, is none of those things. The flag is hideous. It’s a flag that includes 22 other flags plus one rooster. If you’re staring at the monstrosity above and wondering, “Why does that look like a…
Vice President Mike Pence arrived at Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport just after noon on Friday. He was greeted by a Broward Sheriff’s Office SWAT team that included one cop in a #QAnon conspiracy-theory patch. #QAnon is, of course, the batshit-insane, 4Chan-based conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump is secretly fighting a…
Ron DeSantis’ run for the Florida governorship was based, at times, almost entirely on the issue of immigration. He wants Donald Trump to build a border wall. He threatened to crack down on local mayors who refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He repeatedly said on the campaign…
Almost 40 years ago, a query came into the Action Line, a long-gone Miami Herald column that pretty much played the role Google does today, answering obscure questions and giving out advice. The writer, “M. Weisbaum” of Plantation, had heard that dog-racing tracks once employed monkeys as jockeys. “This is…
When Davie fire Lt. Richard Stroes heard that a Parkland dad was suing a gun manufacturer over his daughter’s death at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, he took to Facebook to vent his rage. The firefighter called Fred Guttenberg a “scumbag,” accusing him of trying to “profit” off the loss of…
At World Patent Marketing, every idea was a winner. The now-defunct Miami Beach-based scam invention company, which employed acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker as a paid advisory board member, greenlighted virtually everything it was pitched. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission found that sales reps were instructed to turn down an…
The Florida 2018 midterm election is finally, mercifully over. Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and longtime Sen. Bill Nelson have conceded their races to Republican challengers who openly stoked racist and anti-immigrant hatred in order to win. Broward’s embattled and bungling supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, has resigned…
After enduring criticism from all sides, including the White House and U.S. Senate, Broward County’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, has resigned, the Sun Sentinel and others reported Sunday.
Rent in Miami is not quite as expensive as New York, San Francisco, and other major metro areas. But compared to those towns, Miami’s median income — around $46,000 — is absurdly tiny. As such, Miamians wind up spending some of the largest portions of…
A series of far-right social media pages and groups have been reported to law enforcement for doxxing Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher, the supervisors of elections in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, respectively. According to redacted screenshots obtained by New Times, at least one of the posts doxxing Snipes…
Most of what President Donald J. Trump says is drivel. He gets mad online to impress what appears to be an army of online Twitter robots. His tweets and public statements are almost never worth writing about. That is, except for today, because Trump’s latest confused, old-guy meltdown is objectively hilarious.
Stephen Bittel, a real-estate billionaire who enjoyed a short reign as head of the Florida Democratic Party before resigning in disgrace last fall, sexually harassed a female employee by describing his sexual partners’ pubic hair, detailing his pornography preferences, offering to take her shopping for lingerie, and touching her toes on his private jet, according to a new complaint filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
David Foster and Wayne Ford are likely victims of the great 2018 recount. Foster is a 62-year-old Coral Springs stage designer who usually votes near Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, but he was visiting Thailand a month before Election Day. He filled out his ballot and sent it via registered mail October 8…
Florida already has a statewide office of counterterrorism. Despite this, an amendment was placed on the November 6 ballot asking voters if they favored the creation of an “office of domestic security and counterterrorism within [the] department of law enforcement.”
Pepe the Frog is an online meme character popular with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and online fascists. Most politicians would either run screaming from anyone wearing a Pepe T-shirt, or, better yet, tell that person to be ashamed. The Proud Boys, meanwhile, are a far-right,…
