Free Republic

Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar says Hispanic voters feel betrayed by the president’s policies Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents a red-leaning South Florida district, rolled out a straight-to-camera ad on Thursday breaking with President Trump on his immigration enforcement tactics, a stark warning for her party as it heads to the midterms. The 30-second ad, airing in English and Spanish, is one of the most direct examples of a Republican candidate breaking with the president. It comes as support has frayed for the GOP among Hispanic voters with less than two months until the November election. “Mr. President,...

The woman accused of fatally stabbing an elderly Mount Dora, Florida, couple on New Year’s Eve 2022 has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and her lawyers are arguing the murders were driven by psychosis. Opening statements began this week for the trial in the fatal stabbings of Florida couple Darryl Getman, 83, and Sharon Getman, 80. The Getmans were found stabbed to death in their home after they invited Vickie Lynn Williams into their home to help her out. Williams’ DNA was found on the murder weapons, and her fingerprints and bloody footprints were at the scene. Testimony...

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has taken direct aim at President Donald Trump and his immigration crackdown in a new re-election ad, warning that the Hispanic voters who helped return him to the White House in 2024 now feel “betrayed.” The congresswoman, who endorsed Trump in 2024 and urged Hispanic voters to back him, delivered the unusually direct message to the president as she campaigns for another term in her Miami-area district. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful...

At least five people are dead and five others are injured after an Amazon Prime Air plane, a Boeing 767, crashed at Miami International Airport due to overshooting the runway upon landing. The cargo plane overran Runway 30, struck multiple vehicles, and came to rest at a field next to the airport. “21 Air Flight 7598 overran the runway after landing at Miami International Airport around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, Sept. 6. The Boeing 767-300 cargo aircraft departed from Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The FAA will investigate,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)...

A child was attacked by an alligator while swimming in restricted Florida waters on Labor Day. The victim was swimming in the Weeki Wachee Preserve, about 60 miles northwest of Tampa, according to a statement from the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office. The alligator punctured the swimmer’s arm and leg, and the child was transported to the Bayonet Point Hospital for treatment of the non-fatal injuries. Officials note that the victim and a group of children became isolated on a sandbar and were rescued by Hernando County Fire Rescue. Following the incident, a licensed Florida wildlife trapper placed traps for the...

Yirsi Machado Rivera has been arrested on burglary and battery charges Yirsi Machado Rivera allegedly threw a bucket of poop on her neighbor, whom she believed was sleeping with her husband. She and the victim were neighbors in a split trailer in the Royal Country Mobile Homes in Miami. She has been arrested on burglary and battery charges A Florida woman is accused of throwing poop on her neighbor after suspecting infidelity. On Monday, Sept. 7, Yirsi Machado Rivera allegedly threw a bucket of poop on her neighbor, whom she believed was sleeping with her husband, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office...

Despite the abrupt departure of Joe diGenova as lead prosecutor in the “grand conspiracy” case against Trump lawfare perps, the Justice Department appears to be moving full steam ahead. Well, that didn’t last long. After less than five months on the job, Joe diGenova resigned from the Department of Justice last week; diGenova, a longtime ally of President Trump, took on a senior advisory role at the DOJ in April and was quickly dispatched to southern Florida to take the reins of an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare operation against the president. Todd Blanche, then...

Mosquito bites can be more than a nuisance this summer — they can make you sick. Florida has become a hotbed for mosquito-borne diseases, reporting hundreds of cases of dengue fever, chikungunya fever, and even West Nile virus. The state leads the nation in dengue cases this year with 270 reported. Increasingly, residents aren’t just acquiring the virus while traveling abroad — they are getting bitten right at home. Mosquito control experts note that peak dengue season runs from July through September. As many as 111 people as of early September have contracted locally acquired dengue in six Florida counties...

Vibrio vulnificus, also known as “flesh-eating” bacteria, has now killed four people in Florida this year, according to the state’s Department of Health. The potentially deadly bacterium is frequently linked to eating raw or undercooked shellfish, especially oysters. Swimming in warm, brackish saltwater with open wounds is another way people can contract the infection. While it remains unclear how the latest victim contracted the infection, the most recent death was a resident of Broward County who was between the ages of 75 and 79, according to the most recent Florida Department of Health data. 21 Vibrio vulnificus infections have been...

"Witness list expanding in multi-conspiracy probe out of Fort Pierce. . . ." Paul Sperry, Real Clear investigations. The scene: February of 2027, a federal courtroom in Fort Pierce (St. Lucie County), Florida, the third day of trial in the RussiaGate matter. Defendants seated on the right (from the judge’s vantage) are so numerous they require two tables, including John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Strzok & Page, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Monaco, Mary McCord, Christopher Wray, Marc Elias, and seven other former federal officials. Former President Barack Obama and former Sec’y of State Hillary Clinton, named...

Nixon laments the injustice of having to pay her own fair share as she campaigns on raising taxes on the wealthyFlorida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon, an avowed Democratic Socialist who owns two homes and raked in at least $270,000 from her jobs and investments last year—in addition to her husband's unpublished income—is lamenting the injustice of having to pay taxes on her outsized income. Nixon's income, which she detailed in financial disclosures, includes rent from one of her properties, her income as a state representative, her earnings from a Miami consulting firm, and her salary as the director of...

Tony Lee "TJ" Wiggins Jr., 32, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder, tampering with physical evidence and possessing a weapon as a felon. Prosecutors said Wiggins was the gunman who killed Damion Tillman, Brandon Rollins and Keven Springfield outside a Dollar General in 2020. In his opening statement to the jury on Monday, Assistant State Attorney Ralph Guerra said Tillman went into the discount store on July 17, 2020, to buy a few items before heading out with his friends to go fishing. Guerra said surveillance video showed the defendant inside the store at the same time...

The campaign to name and shame the holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is just 50 shades of disgusting and, frankly, un-American. As we reported, it started with some of the 11 other jurors, some of whom ran to the mainstream media at the first chance they got to complain about the fact that the holdout juror, who we were informed is a man, didn't see eye to eye with them "on acquitting Clancy (finding her not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility [i.e., insanity])." One of them was admittedly miffed over the fact that, in her...

A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a three-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least six people over a three-year span....

Lindsey Brooke Isaacs was asleep at home when police arrived and told the 23-year-old that her car had been involved in a crash that killed three people. She knew they had the wrong person. Her black Dodge Durango showed no obvious collision damage, and she had a receipt showing where she had been. Still, the investigation eventually led to her being arrested and 13 days in jail. "My heart was in my stomach," Lindsey told me on The CyberGuy Report Podcast at Cyberguy.com/podcast/. "I didn't know what was going on." Months later, prosecutors dropped all eight felony charges against her...

PORT ORANGE, Florida (WESH) -- Video released by the Port Orange Police Department shows officers firing more than a dozen times at a 71-year-old woman who showed up armed with a gun. Surveillance video shows the woman, Linda Jean Croteau, walking into the lobby of the station holding the gun and firing it one time. She then exited the front lobby and was confronted by officers who were responding to the scene. She is told to drop the weapon but does not comply. An officer fires three times, and Croteau falls to the ground. She sits up, appears to reach...

Pardon a bit of self-indulgence, I wanted to brag about my Alma Mater, The University of Florida, who back in 2020 at the height of the BLM hysteria was led by a DEI President who banned the "Gator Bait" cheer that had been a part of UF Sporting Events for at least since the 1990s. Now at the beginning of a new football season, with a new Head Coach and new President who appreciates college football traditions decided to allow the cheer to come back. Saturday night in the first quarter the cheer returned to an overwhelmingly positive response hopefully...

Sanity returned to the University of Florida Saturday when the Gators took on the Florida Atlantic Owls at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida. During the neo-Marxist cultural revolution that was the summer of 2020, everything deemed "racist" had to be purged, regardless of context or logic dictating otherwise. ESPN reported that this included the popular "gator bait" chant, in which fans would extend their arms in front of them and clap their hands together like an alligator seizing its prey. What exactly does that have to do with race? The university's president that year, Kent Fuchs, announced racial...

FL Senate Candidate Klayman Calls for US Intervention in Venezuelan Recall Elections; Chavez Venezuelan Recall Vote a Likely Fraud MIAMI, Aug. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Larry Klayman, Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Florida, today called for U.S. intervention to determine whether or not the recall vote, which affirmed Communist dictator and terrorist Hugo Chavez's hold on the Venezuelan people, was honest and fair. All indications are that the vote was fraudulent, despite claims by former President Jimmy Carter that the vote was honest. Whatever Jimmy Carter's good intentions, he has proven himself to be one of the most naive government...

The Atlantic hurricane season reaches its climatological peak this week, and AccuWeather meteorologist are monitoring just one area for potential development. VIDEO AT LINK.......... As the climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season arrives this week, tropical activity remains largely suppressed due to an unusually strong El Niño. The one exception is off the southeastern coast of the United States, where AccuWeather hurricane experts have highlighted an area with a low chance of tropical development into the middle of the month. "A slow-moving front will drift into the southeastern United States, leading to enhanced thunderstorm coverage. An area of tropical...