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A Florida federal jury on Thursday found a Miami city commissioner liable for $65.3 million in damages over using his office and government resources to systematically target a pair of business owners after they supported a political opponent during a runoff election in 2017. The jury handed down its verdict in Fort Lauderdale after deliberating since Wednesday afternoon, finding Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo liable for using his office to target businesses associated with Little Havana developers William Fuller and Martin Pinilla II after supporting Carollo's opponent while running for the District 3 position in November 2017. Carollo, who previously...

By now, it’s obvious that the reactionary culture warriors who want to reshape American education are inspiring a serious liberal counter-mobilization in response. Remarkably, this backlash to the backlash is gaining momentum in some of the reddest parts of the country. A raucous school board meeting in Hernando County, Fla., on Tuesday night captured what’s striking about this new phenomenon. The scene featured teachers pointedly declaring that right-wing attacks are driving them to quit, even as parents and students forcefully stood up on their behalf, demanding a halt to the hysteria. “I have never seen such fear from my colleagues...

In honor of PRIDE Month (June 2023), History Fort Lauderdale presents “Take PRIDE! A Retrospective of LGBTQ Life in South Florida.” The multimedia exhibit, located near Swarovski, between Macy’s and Dillard’s, will include over 100 historical photographs plus videos and costumes chronicling the growth, awareness and struggle of the LGBTQ community through the years.

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said Hunter Biden "would have been in jail years ago" if he were a Republican as the federal investigation into the president's son is now in its fifth year. The Florida governor, who recently announced his entrance into the 2024 presidential contest, made the comments during a campaign stop in Iowa when speaking about "weaponized" bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. "We have a bureaucracy that our Founding Fathers would find unrecognizable," DeSantis said on Wednesday. "It is an unaccountable, weaponized, administrative state that unevenly wields authority depending on its targets. "Two different sets of rules depending...

At a recent conference, Disney parks chief Josh D’Amaro reportedly said the company is still looking to expand or enhance existing attractions at Disney World in Orlando to the tune of $17 billion. D’Amaro was speaking last week at the the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston, according to a CNBC report. He told audience members that the $17 billion investment “gives you a sense of how aggressive we’re being in Walt Disney World.”

Here is Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds just savaging the Debt Ceiling Deal agreed to by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden. Donalds lays out why he opposes the deal, calling it a “crap deal” that leaves “all of Joe Biden’s policies, and all of Joe Biden’s spending intact.” He urges all Republicans to vote against the deal.....

6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Virginia, activist with WeCount worker’s center, asked not to use last name: “Now is the moment in which we all must unite in a single force to tell this governor that we are a strong force, that we immigrants are united, are integral for the Florida economy and that we are here and are not leaving.”

Supporters of former President Donald Trump are spreading an altered image that purports to show Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in a room with billionaire George Soros. The image, which was shared to Twitter on Friday, has been seen by more than 219,000 users after being posted by the pro-Trump user @ThroughCheated. "No disrespect to DeSantis supporters but don't u think it's odd that George Soros is right there supporting the meatball?" the user tweeted. An individual that appears to be Soros can be seen sitting at a table in the background as a grinning DeSantis is visible on the...

The Florida Supreme Court will consider a legal challenge issued by state Attorney General Ashley Moody that contends a ballot initiative seeking to legalize recreational marijuana violates the state constitution. According to the Florida Courts’ information system, opponents must file their briefs on or before June 12. Following the deadline, the court will subsequently determine whether to conduct oral arguments on the matter. Earlier this month, Moody formally requested a review of a proposed recreational marijuana initiative by the Florida Supreme Court, signaling her intent to challenge its legal adequacy for the 2024 ballot. The political committee sponsoring the initiative,...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved into a virtual dead heat with former President Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in Florida, according to a new Victory Insights survey. DeSantis earned 38.2% support and Trump earned 38%, with a 3.9% margin of error, in the Victory Insights poll. No other GOP candidate received more than 3.1%. A total of 12% likely GOP voters said they were undecided, and 3.5% said they chose someone other than the candidates presented. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., (3.1%), former Vice President Mike Pence (2.5%), former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (2.5%), and...

Florida Gov. and GOP presidential nominee Ron DeSantis has successfully sucked the pleasure out of many of life’s little joys, from drag brunches to Disney adult TikTok. And thanks to the passage of SB 1438, or the Protection of Children Act, DeSantis may now be bringing the ax down on furries. On Wednesday, the organizers behind Megaplex, an Orlando-based convention for furries — people who enjoy dressing up as or making art of anthropomorphized creatures — posted a statement on Twitter regarding its policy for admitting minors. The statement was in response to SB 1438, which makes “knowingly admitting a...

In the face of a slowing housing market across the United States, Florida’s housing sector remains buoyant, attracting significant attention from potential buyers and investors. This resilience is, in part, due to the considerable growth in both population and businesses in the state. New data shows a national decline in the prices of existing-home sales, with a sharp annual drop of 1.7 percent in April. Some regions, like Seattle, Austin, and Silicon Valley, have seen a decline in home prices of about 12 percent in the past year. But Florida is bucking the gloomy national trend, with rising prices, even...

MOSCOW -- Russia's government has approved measures aimed at halving the number of abortions carried out in the country before 2025, according to a document published on its website.The plan is part of the government's latest long-term blueprint for improving the demographic situation in the country through 2025, amid a recently resumed decline in population growth after a decade of sluggish but stable increases. The blueprint also sets forward plans for a significant reduction in infant and maternal mortality, and a rise in general reproductive health.

Ron DeSantis’ 2024 campaign launch ran into a few glitches on Wednesday evening, but it wasn’t long before he hit his stride. After spending 75 minutes talking policy with Elon Musk, the Florida man shifted over to do primetime interviews with Mark Levin and Trey Gowdy before holding a tele-town hall with voters. He’s scheduled to cap his roll-out off in Iowa on Tuesday with an in-person rally at a baseball stadium. Still, the headlines from the mainstream press weren’t kind to DeSantis. Many proclaimed his launch to be a “disaster,” with some going so far as to claim his...

You may recall when the NAACP issued a travel advisory, warning Black people to either avoid going to Florida or to “be careful” when traveling there. (Despite the fact that the Chairman of the NAACP lives in Florida and has for decades.) Since that time, I’ve watched numerous commentators, particularly on Fox News, scoffing at the warning. They remind us that Black families have been moving to the Sunshine State in record numbers and availing themselves of the state’s record low unemployment and crime rates, not to mention the weather. So yes, it’s easy to scoff at the NAACP’s highly...

It turns out that when you have an effective executive leader who enforces law and order, it actually works in making sure that rules are followed in society. For example, consider that illegal aliens are already “self-deporting” themselves out of Florida after Governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (R) enacted one of the toughest immigration laws in the entire country. “We’re fleeing the place we fled to,” one illegal alien told Axios. “I remember when my mother sat me down and said, ‘things are bad; we have to leave,’ and I had to tell her that same thing.”

From Burns v. State, decided today by the Florida Court of Appeal, in an opinion by Judge Ed Artau, joined by Judges Cory Ciklin and Burton Conner: That a person's home is his or her "castle" is one of the most basic tenets of our jurisprudence. However, for Richard Burns …, charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for openly carrying and loading his firearm in the yard of his own home, the "castle" our law entitled him to protect was relegated to a defenseless dungeon. We conclude that the trial court erred in denying his motion for immunity...

Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” that voters would reject Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) “far-right fascism.” Frost said, “It’s exactly what Ron DeSantis has been looking to do anyway. It’s really behind the legislation, he’s looking to get rid of black history and black excellence in schools. That’s why he has no problem with this piece of art being taken away from elementary school kids. So, my message to the kids and my message to people in the state is continue to fight for a world we’re not banning books or banning poetry.”

The Durham report refuted the narrative of former President Donald Trump colluding with Russia to win the 2016 Election for good. Now, Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) seeks to charge former House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) a $16 million fine for continuing to propagate the narrative. Why $16 million? Rep. Luna stated this was approximately half the cost of the federal investigation, therefore suggesting Rep. Schiff owes much culpability in pushing the Trump-Russia collusion story. "The GOP Conference agrees that Adam Schiff has betrayed the trust of the American people, purposely abused positions of extreme authority, lied continuously,...

The one parent responsible for getting a series of books banned in one Florida school district, including a poem read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has been accused of being white supremacist-adjacent with far-right political activism.