So as Donald Trump begins his move into the White House, it should be a concern to those well outside of South Florida that many key issues in Miami look likely to go unsolved under his watch. Trump spent the weekend adding an anti-Semitic alt-right leader to his presidential team, so he's not exactly signaling a move toward minority issues.
Here are five other Miami problems you can be sure Trump won't fix in the next four years:
1. America's dealings with Cuba.
According to the latest Florida Atlantic University poll, the vast majority of Cubans in Miami are tired of the embargo between America and the communist nation. Nearly 70 percent support some sort of diplomatic relations with the island, and 63 percent say they'd like to repeal the embargo. Barack Obama did more than any other U.S. president to ease relations between the two nations: In fact, as of this month, you can straight-up buy a plane ticket to Havana if you want. But Trump — bolstered by support from older, more right-wing Cuban-Americans, especially the Veterans of the Bay of Pigs Association — has vowed to bring the embargo back in full force. That's despite the fact that pretty much every economic analyst agrees the embargo makes no sense.
2. Police militarization.
Miami-Dade's police departments sometimes describe themselves as if they're destitute rural sheriffs tasked with using a single pistol to take down a cabal of sophisticated Mafiosi. In reality, Miami-Dade's police forces are on an unmitigated spending spree, regularly asking for six-figure checks to buy all sorts of equipment, including hundreds of extra rifles or sketchy license-plate-reading technology. Critics say the money could go toward zillions of better uses. But Trump, who earned the national Fraternal of Police's endorsement, has pledged to back cops tooth-and-nail as a "law and order" candidate.
3. Money in politics: South Florida's political machine is basically one gigantic orgy of real-estate cash imbued with the power to occasionally write laws and spit out ordinances. Cities such as Opa-locka have been bankrupted by conspiratorial, corrupt leaders. Despite this problem, city leaders fought a common-sense campaign-finance-reform bill over the summer as if citizens were mandating they drink liquid mercury. Trump, despite pledging to drain Washington's corrupt "swamp," has stocked his transition team with a veritable horde of Washington lobbyists.
4. Climate change: Miami is about to get swallowed by water, and Trump has both denied that sea-level rise is even real and might put a full-on climate-change denier in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. He's also pledged to pull America from the Paris Agreement, which exists to cut down greenhouse gas emissions, and threatened to cut the funding America gives the United Nations to fight global warming.
5. Housing affordability: No average person can afford to live in Miami. The city has the highest number of cost-burdened renters in America. But Trump — a man who entered the national consciousness after the federal government sued him for refusing to rent properties to black people — could not be further removed from anyone struggling with housing-affordability issues in America. As a reminder: He's so out of touch he once bragged that the 2008 housing crisis was great for him because it let him buy property on the cheap.
