The Miami-Dade County Commission will hold a special meeting on Monday to start counting 127,000 petitions demanding that the county reform its campaign-finance laws. It only took a week’s worth of protests (including a sit-in at county hall), a national Twitter campaign, and a full-on lawsuit for that meeting to…
We now live in a day and age where a former congressman running for his old job can’t peruse the sex toy aisle at Spencer Gifts in peace. Just ask Joe Garcia, who is leading polls in the Democratic primary for the 26th congressional district currently occupied by Carlos Curbelo,…
In Florida, Sean P. Jackson is about as rare as an August afternoon without a thunderous downpour: He’s a black Republican official who is proudly backing Donald Trump’s bid for the White House. But the head of the Black Republican Caucus of South Florida says Trump’s state campaign doesn’t seem…
Politicians have always found creative ways to deal with bubbling rumors that they’re up to no good. There’s the classic “I am not a crook!” finger wag on television, or the passive aggressive sprint through the hotel kitchen to avoid reporters with tough questions. Last night, North Miami Beach…
Time to play a guessing game: How much would it cost Miami-Dade County officials to search for a week’s worth of emails from commissioners, and then to print those messages out and hand them to someone? Would $21,600 sound reasonable? In what might be the most expensive printing operation ever…
Hop off your starfish-shaped bicycle from Burning Man and take a break from your home-schooling classes: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is coming to Miami tomorrow! Before this year, Johnson had mostly been famous for vetoing hundreds of bills as governor of New Mexico, smoking weed at a regular clip…
It’s not just about Hillary and Dim Donald. Florida’s August 30 primary is just around the corner. Though most local media attention has been focused on the race for Miami-Dade County mayor between incumbent Carlos Gimenez and School Board member Raquel Regalado, there are other local races significant to the…
When an activist group called Accountable Miami-Dade sent the county 127,000 petitions, each demanding the government reform its campaign-finance laws to help stop public corruption, the county — by law — had 30 days to start counting up the signatures. But so far, neither the commission nor the mayor will…
The numbers are starting to look as obvious as a Donald Trump spray tan: To have any realistic shot at the White House, the GOP nominee absolutely has to win Florida in November. But that possibility is looking more and more like a long shot. A new poll out this morning has…
On August 2, a group called Accountable Miami-Dade sent the county two U-Haul trucks packed full of signed petitions demanding a public vote on new campaign finance laws that would make it harder for wealthy contractors and lobbyists to donate wads of money to politicians. Two weeks later, those 127,000 petitions…
A few years back, in preparation for retirement, Illinois OB-GYN Jean Alexandre began looking for an investment property in Florida he could rent out to supplement his monthly income. In October of 2013 he sealed the deal, wiring $68,000 and writing a check for an additional $2,000 to North Miami…
If Marco Rubio wants to deny Zika-infected women the right to abortions, Alan Grayson has a suggestion for him: He should be willing to personally adopt every single baby born with microcephaly. In an interview Wednesday with New Times, the liberal Orlando congressman blasted the Florida Republican senator’s comment to…
Even for a shameless opportunist like Marco Rubio, agreeing to host an event by a virulently anti-gay conservative group in Orlando later this month went beyond the pale. After all, Rubio had used the massacre of gay patrons at Pulse Nightclub as an excuse to get back into his Senate…
Headlines about Donald Trump saying insane things have become as routine as morning weather reports. Yet Trump’s suggestion yesterday that “Second Amendment people” might “do something” if Clinton is elected feels different. The Secret Service is investigating it. Thomas Friedman called Trump “a disgusting human being.” Even his old friend…
To Hillary Clinton supporters, Donald Trump is a boogeyman, a know-nothing Kremlin stooge, and a borderline fascist salivating at the idea of raining nuclear bombs down on anyone who insults him online. To Trump fans, Clinton is an oligarch run wild, a conspiratorial murderer, and a war criminal. Tension between…
When Wikileaks published a trove of hacked Democratic National Committee emails in July, website founder Julian Assange promised the world he’d upend the 2016 presidential election. That hasn’t quite happened, but Assange did get to at least claim one politician as a trophy: The document dump forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman…
By any measure, South Florida’s zika outbreak is far from under control. At least 15 people have now been locally infected in Miami, with the latest reported case transmitted outside the hot zone of Wynwood. Serious questions are being asked about lacking state and local funding for mosquito control. And…
When the Miami Herald asked State Rep. Daphne Campbell in 2012 about $145,000 in tax liens the Internal Revenue Service had placed against her, Campbell denied that the liens even existed. “I don’t have no tax liens,” she told the paper, despite the fact that the Herald had obtained federal documents that said…
Even by Donald Trump’s standards, his war of words with Khizr and Ghazala Khan — the Muslim parents whose son died fighting for the U.S. in Iraq — has been a truly ugly piece of political theater. Trump’s unabashed attacks on the Khans left top Republicans scrambling this weekend, with…
Marco Rubio, Florida’s most brazen political opportunist, used the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando as an excuse to run for Senate reelection, despite having said about a thousand times that his career as a U.S. Senator was over. After the shooting, he told the Advocate, the nation’s largest LGBT magazine, that the…
Moishe Mana loves America, and he certainly isn’t going to let a man like Donald Trump walk all over it. During an interview with New Times yesterday, the Miami super-developer, who owns most of the southern end of Wynwood, sounded choked up talking about his pride for this country. “I came…
Modesto “Mitch” Maidique is so convinced there’s a divide between what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says and what he truly believes, he says he’s “almost at the point of making a Trump dictionary.” “Trump says we have to build a wall because all of these people, some of whom…
