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Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz Split Anti-Donald Trump Vote In Florida A Florida Atlantic University public opinion poll released Saturday showed Donald Trump with 44 percent of the vote and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz with 21 percent each. With the primary just days away, 5 percent of Florida Republicans still hadn't made up their minds. If the numbers hold through Tuesday's primary, the billionaire businessman and part-time Palm Beach resident would win all of Florida's 99 nominating delegates in the winner-take-all primary. If Rubio, Florida's junior U.S. senator, fares as poorly in actual votes in his home state as the...

Rafael Rivera left Puerto Rico for central Florida late last year, fed up with the island's escalating debt crisis and dwindling sales at his cellphone shop. Five months later, Rivera, 36, has a nice apartment in the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee and a job at a nearby Hyundai dealership. He's also registered to vote. Because Puerto Ricans are the fastest-growing group of voters in a contested corridor of a battleground state, "you could make the case that they're the most important voters in the United States," said Fernand Amandi, a Florida pollster. "Puerto Rican voters have completely upended the understanding...

Those Republicans who don’t want Donald Trump need a better alternative candidate than either member of the Cuban junior varsity. Neither Senator Ted Cruz nor Senator Marco Rubio can win in November.

Jeb! is no more. Of course, Jeb Bush the man lingers on, even after he put his massively disappointing and weirdly punctuated presidential campaign out of its misery after finishing sixth in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire, and fourth in South Carolina. But after his shellacking in the 2016 race, few will care about Jeb -- or the Bushes. Politically, he is a spent force. Through his fruitlessly awkward and then vindictively prideful thrashing, his campaign, and the Right to Rise spending operation associated with it, managed to wipe out Jeb's considerable influence within Republican circles and beyond. The damage...

Now Donald Trump is questioning Marco Rubio' eligibility for the presidency. In a tweet Saturday, Trump shared a video of what appears to be an attorney making a bizarre case that not only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, but Rubio, whose parents immigranted from Cuba, is not eligible to become president. In the tweet to his 6.3 million followers, Trump quoted a message sent to him by another Twitter user, who at the time appeared to have five followers: "@realDonaldTrump Mr. Trump...BOTH Cruz AND Rubio are ineligible to be POTUS! It's a SLAM DUNK CASE!! Check...

Demands return of dummy Hellfire missile Congress may consider blocking the United States and Cuba from conducting joint security exercises until the Obama administration can prove the communist regime has dialed back its anti-American efforts, according to a letter sent to the Pentagon and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a leading critic of the administration's detente with Cuba, petitioned Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on Wednesday, demanding that he disinvite Cuba from the upcoming Caribbean Nations Security Conference, which will be held later this month in Jamaica. Cruz is concerned about recent reports that Cuba...

First of 8,000 stranded Cuban migrants cross into US By Associated Press Published: 17:27 EST, 15 January 2016 | Updated: 17:27 EST, 15 January 2016 MEXICO CITY (AP) — The first of 8,000 Cuban migrants recently stranded in Central America have crossed the Mexican border into the United States. Some 180 migrants flew from Costa Rica to El Salvador, and have been making their way to the U.S. All are given permission to cross Mexico for humanitarian reasons. The groups travelled separately across Mexico and the organization sponsoring their trip says the first arrived late Thursday in Laredo, Texas.

The Miami-Dade County School Board is asking for federal support to educate the thousands of Cuban refugee students expected to arrive in South Florida. About 8,000 Cuban refugees have made it to Costa Rica and are on their way to the U.S., and many of their kids will end up in Miami-Dade public schools. "the time is now for the federal government to take action," Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Albert Carvalho said Wednesday. Already this school year, more than 13,000 immigrant children have enrolled and Carvalho is expecting up to 20,000 before the school year is over. Each one of those...

More Cubans are coming to Florida in their golden years to retire, able to tap U.S. government assistance even though they never lived or worked here. The number of Cubans arriving over the age of 60 grew fivefold since 2010, according to state refugee data. At least 185 made the crossing in their 80s or 90s. Unlike most other immigrants, Cubans qualify immediately for food stamps and Medicaid. If they are over 65 with little or no income, they also can collect a monthly check of up to $733 in Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Golden years: Cubans retire to Florida...

Pobody's Nerfect. On Monday afternoon, Bloomberg Politics editor and MSNBC senior burrito correspondent Mark Halperin apologized for an interview two weeks ago in which he ham-handedly quizzed Senator and 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-TX) on his Cuban heritage. In the interview Halperin questioned Cruz on his Hispanic appeal, even his consumption of Cuban dishes, and offered to let Cruz welcome Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders to the race en Español. The interview flew under the radar until it was torn to shreds by San Jose Mercury-News columnist Ruben Navarrette this weekend. “As a Hispanic, I felt like I was watching...

Good morning Austin: I had a story in Saturday’s paper on the startling fact that, with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, two of the first three announced candidates for the Republican presidential nomination for president are Hispanic. In other words, if America elects its first Latino president in 2016, that president would almost certainly be a Republican. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, at best there could be a Hispanic candidate for vice president, with most of the speculation concentrated on Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor who is now serving as President Obama’s secretary of housing and urban development....

MIAMI — When Sen. Marco ­Rubio stands before Miami’s historic Freedom Tower on Monday and announces that he is the second Cuban American to join the 2016 race for president of the United States, Gabriel Perez, Emilio Izquierdo and Mike Valdes will share a powerful sense of pride. This is the big sign that Cuban Americans have finally made it, they all say — accepted not only as refugees from communism or as successful businesspeople but as serious contenders for the most American job in the land. But let the wave of pride surrounding the candidacies of Florida’s Rubio and...

U.S. policy created for humanitarian reasons 50 years ago has fueled a criminal pipeline from Cuba to Florida, enabling crooks from the island to rob American businesses and taxpayers of more than $2 billion over two decades. A yearlong Sun Sentinel investigation found money stolen in the United States streaming back to Cuba, and a revolving door that allows thieves to come here, make a quick buck and return.

Cuban Wave Arrives by Land Migrants Take Circuitous Routes to Reach the Border, Where They Gain Entry By MIRIAM JORDAN and ARIAN CAMPO-FLORES In June, Luis Alberto Cuan Lio and his pregnant wife, Yordana Bravo Perez, flew from Cuba to Ecuador as tourists. It was the first leg in a circuitous journey that ended when they crossed the border from Mexico into the U.S., where they are building a new life. An influx of illegal immigrants from Central America drew wide attention recently, but more than 22,000 Cubans entered the U.S. over land in the year that ended Sept. 30,...

A Pembroke Pines man is facing hate-crime charges for allegedly punching two men and kicking their dog while shouting obscenities about their Cuban nationality, officials said. During a bizarre bond court appearance Monday, Alexander Gomez-Jimenez, 30, claimed he could not have acted as charged because of physical limitations. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report shows that Gomez-Jimenez has numerous aliases, including Steven Gluck, and has been arrested more than two dozen times since 1999, including once for impersonating someone else and for brawling in public.

MIAMI — A claim that nearly half of Cuban-American voters favored President Barack Obama continued under dispute Monday, with one side claiming it had new evidence that it was true and the other insisting it was false. Florida International University professors Dario Moreno and Kevin Hill reported Monday their analysis of tallies from selected precincts in Miami-Dade County, Fla., indicated GOP candidate Mitt Romney won up to 59 percent of the Cuban vote.

NEW YORK — Former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouse workers of Cuban origin may pursue a lawsuit accusing the world's largest retailer of discrimination, and of firing them when they complained about their treatment. Rolando Padron, Bobirt Miranda and Eusebio Calzada accused Wal-Mart in October of paying them less and giving them different work schedules than non-Cuban workers, and denying them "make-up" days.

Like thousands of other Cubans, Leticia's worries began in October when President Raul Castro announced a series of economic reforms to bring the communist regime up to date. Pivotal to the changes is cutting more than a million government jobs, or 20 percent of Cuba's entire work force, over the next three years -- including 22,000 jobs in the health sector. Castro said 500,000 jobs would have to go by March 31 of this year. The first culling of so-called "bloated payrolls" dragging down the Cuban economy began Tuesday in the sugar, farming, construction, health and tourism sectors, as announced...

At least 16 migrants, including a woman, were being held for ransom by human smugglers in Tijuana, Mexico, according to a migrant who was freed, authorities said late Wednesday. "With respect to the man, we are not releasing his name but he is between 20 and 25-years-old. We can tell you that his family paid a ransom for his liberty and it was after that he came to us and told us there were others that were being held in Tijuana," Municipal Police Officer Jose Varela told CNN by phone. It was unclear how much the family paid, but reports...

The just passed Arizona immigration act has increased the racial tensions in America to new heights and further widened the already widening racial divide in America. A vast majority of the white people support the act whereas almost all the minorities oppose the act. This is why the opinion polls show that about 60% favor the act and about 40% oppose it; these numbers are close to the percentage of the white and the minority people in the country. The republicans are claiming that about 70% of the population is on the center right and about 20% population is on...