The GEO Group, the second-largest private-prison operator in America, is headquartered in Boca Raton and loves greasing the Florida political system. GEO is one of the most powerful political donors in the state. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican politician who hasn’t accepted a few thousand dollars in campaign bucks from the giant, and more than a fair share of local Democrats have done the same.
The strangest episode yet of The Apprentice aired last night. Dennis Rodman wore a pot-based cryptocurrency T-shirt and a MAGA hat while weeping on-camera. America’s big orange president wandered around a plush Singapore hotel for hours and then waxed eloquent about North Korea’s real-estate potential. Then he glad-handed…
North Miami Beach Mayor George Vallejo pleaded guilty in April to a raft of campaign-finance violations, including diverting at least $5,000 in campaign money to shell corporations he and his family used to pay off personal expenses. Vallejo, age 51, stepped down as mayor and received three months of house arrest plus probation.
This past May 11, county commission candidate and longtime GOP insider Alex Diaz de la Portilla glad-handed seniors at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Center. Slinging heaping plates of paella right alongside him was Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, a fellow Trump-backing MAGA warrior who was among Diaz de la Portilla’s biggest backers in his failed bid for office.
In 2016, after years of financial mismanagement left Opa-locka nearly $8 million in debt, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency and placed city officials on a restrictive spending diet. A state oversight board tasked with keeping the city on track warned that the belt-tightening might take some getting used to…
By the middle of 2016, it seemed like Marco Rubio had become a failed presidential candidate doomed to sit at home on his couch going bald while watching Donald Trump confuse the lyrics of “God Bless America” with the theme song from Growing Pains. Improbably, since he took office, Trump has instead let Senator Rubio influence every major Latin American policy decision…
When gun store owner Ted Budd successfully ran for Congress in North Carolina in 2016, he recorded an ad about how much he loves weapons. The ad included shots of him selling guns, cocking a rifle outdoors, and loading an assault-style rifle. In 2012, Budd speculated that the Sandy Hook massacre likely led to increased sales at his shop.
At 10 a.m. Monday, the students of March for Our Lives gathered at Pine Trails Park in Parkland to announce the latest phase of their gun-control movement: a national tour to register young voters. Focusing on cities where the debate over gun control is particularly charged, the 60-day campaign will…
Susan Goldstein previously served as a Florida state representative for western Broward County from 2004 to 2006. She’s now a prominent figure in Tallahassee and serves on the board of the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists. In 2016, she was Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign chair in Broward.
Mary Caceres fled Colombia’s brutal civil war in 2005 with her then-9-year-old daughter Daniela Gaona after Caceres’ brother was killed by guerrillas. Daniela was eventually awarded status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and spared from possible deportation. But Caceres’ repeated attempts to obtain asylum in the United States have so far…
Florida gubernatorial candidate, Rick Scott ally, and self-proclaimed “Proud NRA sellout” Adam Putnam will pretty much take campaign money from anyone. Case in point: He scheduled a fundraiser last week with a man who was previously videotaped repeatedly shooting two dogs. Putnam responded by saying that the donation from said dog-shooter was…
Early this morning, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors and #NeverAgain activists gathered in the dark parking lot of a Coral Springs Publix and began tracing bodies on the asphalt in chalk. When they were finished well before dawn, they’d drawn the outlines of 17 victims and an ominous twist on Publix’s famous slogan: “Where shooting is a pleasure.”
Since revelations surfaced last year of a blackmail plot against a commissioner with an undisclosed arrest for cocaine in his past, scandal after scandal has rocked tiny North Bay Village, a two-island town on the 79th Street Causeway. Now Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola is proposing a dramatic fix: He wants his city to take over the troubled village.
The Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald’s reporting team in Tallahassee is known for fantastic journalistic scoops but not so much for making moral judgments about certain candidates. As truly, utterly, and monstrously terrible as Gov. Rick Scott is, you’ll never see the Times or Herald refer to him as a canvas sack full…
Michel Martelly’s career has been weird as hell. He went from performing as a misogynistic, rum-drinking singer wearing adult diapers onstage as the pop star “Sweet Micky” to somehow morphing into a repressive and allegedly corrupt Haitian president. In hindsight, his rise has been “proto-Trumpian.” And now he’s out of office and back performing as Sweet Micky.
A brave, free-speech MAGA warrior is under attack, America. Eugenior Joseph, a Miami native and former Westwood Christian School basketball star, says he walked into the Cheesecake Factory at Dadeland Mall with his girlfriend’s family on Mother’s Day wearing a “Make American Great Again” hat, sat down, and was — we can barely muster the strength to utter these words — ridiculed by the staff for supporting President Trump.
Formula One racing is already cruising a fast track to bring a high-octane Grand Prix to downtown Miami by 2019. The city commission voted last week to begin negotiating with the international race organization to hash out the details. Now Miami-Dade County will weigh in on the idea, which has drawn opposition…
The buzzed-on-the-sides, long-on-top haircut is now so ubiquitous among millennials that it has passed the point of even seeming edgy or new at this point. Among hipster-fashion types, the shaggy ’70s look is in vogue, and most rock bands and male models are growing their hair out into mop-tops once more. Buzzing the sides of your head is simply a sign of basic grooming and fashion sense in 2018: It looks clean, tidy, and uncontroversial.
After a huge U.S. Supreme Court decision today, gambling on sports might be legal in some states in time for this fall’s NFL season. But Florida won’t be one of them.
Just as the Miami City Commission was wrapping up a marathon meeting last night, Commissioner Joe Carollo turned to Commissioner Ken Russell and began chuckling.
In a 2016 clip uploaded to YouTube, North Miami’s Democratic state Senator, Daphne Campbell, told an interviewer that her mother and father were dead. She added that her husband’s parents were also dead. In fact, she said basically everyone close to her either was deceased or lived far away.
The fourth edition of Rolling Loud will kick off this Friday, but the scenery won’t be as spectacular as past years for fans forking over $300 to watch Future, Rick Ross, 21 Savage, Migos, J. Cole, and a platoon of other rap stars. The breathtaking view of Biscayne Bay that was the backdrop to last year’s Rolling Loud is being replaced with the hot asphalt of Hard Rock Stadium’s parking lot in Miami Gardens.
