North Miami state Sen. Daphne Campbell has been ensnared in a remarkable series of corruption scandals throughout her career. But even for Campbell, her response to Hurricane Irma was nothing short of jaw-dropping. This past Saturday night, Campbell held a post-Irma “relaxation” party, complete with pizza, massages, and Scientologists, because of course she did.
Over the past few days, hordes of patrons have flocked to Trump’s resort in Doral to escape from the wrath of Hurricane Irma. Just this morning, the front desk announced to hopeful guests that the hotel is booked. But it doesn’t seem right for a president whose policies intend to cut disaster relief budgets to benefit from the panic of Irma.
Boca Raton’s GEO Group is one of the most powerful private-prison companies in America — and a major player in state and federal politics. GEO throws campaign money at Florida lawmakers from both parties: Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, Gov. Rick Scott, Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart,…
After Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco dropped his bid for mayor following a scathing Miami Herald report on his sketchy campaign finances, Beach residents were left with just four candidates to choose from. Two of them haven’t raised any money, while former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber has pulled in close to a half-million bucks.
There is simply no reason to repeal the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unless brown people bother you. DACA prevents children brought here by their parents from being deported. It’s a program that helps kids who did not choose to grow up in America but did anyway. Even if you think, incorrectly, that immigrants are predisposed to crime, you can’t even apply for DACA if you have a criminal record.
Another year in Florida means another wave of clearly unconstitutional attempts to crack down on brown people. State legislators this month began filing their first bills of the 2018 session, and North Florida state Sen. Greg Steube, a man who simply cannot stop himself from filing insane laws designed to hurt people, has already begun flinging anti-immigrant crackdowns at the wall to see what sticks.
Earlier this year, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran was one of only two state-level politicians who attended the infamous Koch brothers-hosted summit in Colorado. Corcoran promptly flew home and announced a plan to kill Florida’s public-election-financing laws, which help elect candidates who don’t want donations from the corporations, utility companies, real-estate magnates, and billionaires who effectively control state politics.
Poor, poor Philip Levine. The Miami Beach mayor has long been suspected of running a massive social-media-blocking campaign — over the past few years, he’s cut off critics, local activists, and even the main Miami New Times twitter account from reading his tweets. Multiple courts have ruled that politicians are not allowed to block people from viewing their social media accounts because those pages disseminate vital public information.
As Donald Trump has repeatedly praised neo-Nazi and KKK rallies as being full of “fine people” and minimized the deadly domestic terror attack on peaceful counterprotesters in Charlottesville, everyone from Sen. John McCain to Trump’s own economic advisor, Gary Cohn, have spoken out against the president. One voice that has been notably silent, however, is Trump’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, who until recently was dean of Florida International University’s law school.
It should surprise exactly zero people that President Donald Trump’s associates were dumb enough to basically write “let’s all collude with Russia” in emails to one another and that this collection of morons with brain lesions is also deeply tied to South Florida.
Miami and corruption have always gone together like cafecitos and pastelitos. In a state that routinely ranks in the top three in the nation for official financial shenanigans, Miami is the crown jewel of pilfering the taxpayer treasure chest. But even in a town famed for its unscrupulous public servants,…
One of the final questions left unanswered from the 2016 presidential election was resolved today. Thanks to an email hack, Democratic National Committee chair and South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was outed as favoring Hillary Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders during the primary.
Florida marijuana advocate, campaign-donation rainmaker, and possible Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Morgan refuses to drop longtime political shyster Roger Stone from his national marijuana-advocacy team. Morgan has been warned repeatedly that Stone’s presence will end up tanking the entire project (not to mention Morgan political reputation)…
For nearly three years, county officials and police in Miami-Dade failed to respond as a tent city of sex offenders grew along train tracks near Hialeah. The squalid camp is just the latest consequence of a 2005 county law that banned sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of any school, daycare center, or park, effectively banishing them into homelessness.
Tune in to a Donald Trump rally and there’s a decent chance you’ll see Maurice Symonette — better known as Michael the Black Man — standing front and center behind the president while waving his hand-drawn “Blacks for Trump” sign. He was there through much of the presidential campaign and then again last night in Phoenix, wildly cheering during CNN’s live feed as Trump trashed the press and defended his pro-neo-Nazi remarks after Charlottesville.
The 2016 GOP presidential primary proved Sen. Marco Rubio isn’t particularly great at thinking on his feet. He was infamously nicknamed “Robot Rubio” after getting caught repeating the same, scripted anti-Obama talking point four different times during the debates last year. Robot Rubio was then immortalized on The Simpsons, in what we hope will be the only video clip of Lil’ Marco that survives the coming nuclear winter.
On September 7, Frank Meeink, a former skinhead leader and neo-Nazi recruiter, will “speak out against hate” at Eckerd College, sponsored by the Florida Holocaust Museum. After serving time in prison, where he befriended fellow inmates of other races, he became an activist, denouncing white supremacy and right-wing extremism. Weeks after the August 12 terror attack in Charlottesville, the reformed skinhead will comment on the escalating violence in America.
Planning on getting a marriage license, paying a traffic ticket in person, or filing a motion for the eviction of your tenants? That’s about to become much more difficult in Miami-Dade County.
When Broward County state Rep. Shevrin Jones protested in Hollywood, Florida, to demand the city rename streets honoring former Confederate generals and a Ku Klux Klan leader, a group of counterprotesters shouted racial slurs at him, calling him a “nigger” and a “monkey” and telling him to “go back where [he] came from.”
On September 7, the Miami-Dade Commission will convene to review the mayor’s proposed budget, which includes cuts to transit funding. Protesting the cuts are members of the Transit Alliance, who believe the new budget will cripple Miami’s public transit system.
Yesterday, in the wake of the Charlottesville violence, Tallahassee mayor and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum begged Gov. Rick Scott to take down a Confederate memorial in Tallahassee’s Old Capitol. Scott’s spokesperson sheepishly told reporters the governor had “received” Gillum’s statement. Nothing else.
Confederate monuments are falling across the United States, torn down by angry mobs in North Carolina and removed in the dead of night by Baltimore officials. The movement is a long-overdue reckoning with racist symbols that were often installed decades after the Civil War simply to intimidate black people.
