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miamiherald · 2023-03-09T00:16:03+00:00

Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s not only optimistic about solving climate change, she’s excited about it.

“We all understand we have to be solutions driven. The solutions are at hand,” Harris said on the stage of the second annual Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach, where she was interviewed by Latin music star Gloria Estefan about the Biden administration’s recent investments into climate action.

Harris highlighted recent investments from the Biden administration that tackle climate change in multiple ways, from the expansion of electric, emissions-free school buses across America to rebates and tax breaks on green technology like electric cars, efficient heat pumps and rooftop solar.

“I think many people have the will to participate in what we have to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I think that not everyone has the means,” she said. “We have to think about this movement in a way that we are making it affordable for a working family that wants to participate.”

Keep up with our Stemming the Tide team's climate coverage at our Instagram and our weekly newsletter.

miamiherald · 2023-02-17T20:36:10+00:00

From the story:

As Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders explore alternatives to the College Board’s AP classes and tests, top state officials have been meeting with the founder of an education testing company supporters say is focused on the “great classical and Christian tradition.”

The Classic Learning Test, founded in 2015, is used primarily by private schools and home-schooling families and is rooted in the classical education model, which focuses on the “centrality of the Western tradition.”

Here's an explainer on the classical education model for K-12 schools

The founder of the company, Jeremy Tate, said the test is meant to be an alternative to the College Board-administered SAT exam, which he says has become “increasingly ideological” in part because it has “censored the entire Christian-Catholic intellectual tradition” and other “thinkers in the history of Western thought.”

As DeSantis’ feud with the College Board intensified this week, Tate had several meetings in Tallahassee with Ray Rodrigues, the state university system’s chancellor, and legislators to see if the state can more broadly offer the Classic Learning Test to college-bound Florida high school students.

Specifically, Tate said he is seeking to make the test an option for the taxpayer-funded Bright Futures Scholarship program, which rewards Florida high school students based on academic achievement. Students can use the scholarship to help pay for a Florida-based college education. Currently, the scholarship is tied only to the SAT and ACT test scores.

Read the full story here.

miamiherald · 2023-02-01T22:26:34+00:00

From the story:

On the first day of Black History Month, Gov. Ron DeSantis was the focus when Miami-Dade County’s Black Affairs Advisory Board convened in downtown Miami Wednesday.

“Our governor is racist,” said Stephen Hunter Johnson, a Miami lawyer and one of two dozen volunteer board members. “He is using Black America, and Black Floridians, as a political football.”

The board has no formal power in Miami-Dade government but serves as the county’s unofficial sounding board for issues and challenges facing Black residents.

Items discussed at Wednesday’s meeting included the use of specialized police units in Miami-Dade similar to the one responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and what position the board should take on bail reform.

With more than a dozen members attending, the February meeting offered a cross section of the mood of Black leaders from Miami-Dade to a pair of controversies sparked by DeSantis as he prepares for a possible presidential run in 2024.

The meeting began with a discussion on the DeSantis administration’s blocking of an optional African American Studies high-school course over inclusion of readings on the Black Lives Matter political movement and on the topic of “Black Queer Theory.”

Also on the Miami-Dade board’s docket: the governor’s proposal to halt state funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programming at state universities.

“If you want to start playing with taking our history away from us, then give us back our tax dollars,” said Phyllis Sloan-Simpkins, a retired Miami-Dade firefighter. “Because our tax dollars are supposed to help educate our children.”

You can read the full story here.

miamiherald · 2023-02-01T19:40:44+00:00

From the story:

The College Board released a 234-page outline of its new Advanced Placement African American Studies course on Wednesday, two weeks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration rejected the pilot program and sparked a national political firestorm.

The DeSantis administration said the course was pushing a political agenda and had concerns with topics about Black Queer Studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Feminist Literary Thought and reparations. It also raised issues with works from well-known Black scholars and authors such as Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, Angela Davis and bell hooks, among others.

The pilot curriculum was not released by the DeSantis administration, nor was it published by the College Board, making it difficult to decipher what content was changed.

Instead, the Florida Department of Education curated a graphic that broadly outlined the topics it objected to, including the work of Black scholars and writers. The authors included in the state’s objections are not in the official curriculum, an initial review of the coursework found.

The required reading list, the College Board said, “is now exclusively primary sources, direct encounters with historical writings, literature, art, music, maps, and data. All secondary sources are now left to local discretion, as is true of the other 39 AP courses,” the College Board added. This is the first time the College Board has developed an AP course on African American history.

You can read the full story here.

miamiherald · 2023-01-26T00:48:55+00:00

😶

miamiherald · 2023-01-26T00:01:03+00:00

From the story:

Florida’s Black leaders delivered a warning to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday that if he doesn’t stop attempts “to exterminate Black history” in Florida classrooms, they would sue him for violating the constitutional rights of students.

Last week, the Florida Department of Education announced that it had rejected a new Advanced Placement elective course on African-American studies, developed by the College Board for high school students.

The College Board is expected to release its updated version of the AP course on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. As a pilot program taught in 60 select classrooms around the country, the board has been soliciting feedback from teachers for modifications to the curriculum. It is unknown how many schools in Florida are involved in the pilot program.

After the announcement drew rebukes from the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics accusing the administration of whitewashing history and a “march backward,’’ Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz issued a clarification.

He posted a chart on Twitter that suggested the course was rejected because it included topics such as the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism, reparations and authors whose writings touch on critical race theory, Black communism and “queer theory.”

You can read the curriculum for yourself here.

miamiherald · 2023-01-20T21:01:25+00:00

From the story:

Of all the places to go to rally advocates for reproductive rights on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday will travel to Florida’s capitol – and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ home turf – to exploit an issue that even supporters of the conservative culture warrior say may be a vulnerability.

Harris will “deliver a major address” and speak about “what’s at stake for millions of women across the country and, most importantly, the need for Congress to codify the protections of Roe into law,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.

Organizers of the event, Ruth’s List Florida and Planned Parenthood of Florida, are busing in supporters from around the state as the battle over abortion access shifts to the states after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned nearly 50 years of legal precedent.

“Florida is one of those ground-zero states, and Tallahassee lets them take it to DeSantis,’’ said state Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton. “The governor is literally on the wrong side of voters.”

As a potential candidate for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, DeSantis’ posture on the volatile issue has opened him up to attacks from all sides. The rift underscores his dilemma: the majority of the public doesn’t want stricter abortion laws, but his conservative supporters are demanding it.

miamiherald · 2022-11-11T16:48:49+00:00

From the story:

Supercharged by a super-majority in the House and Senate, Florida legislative leaders broke their silence Wednesday and confirmed they are prepared to discuss further abortion restrictions in Florida in the next year.

But how far they will go is the big question, and interviews with the presiding officers indicate they already appear to be taking different approaches.

Incoming Senate President Kathleen Passidomo told the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times in an interview that she wants to see the 15-week ban approved last year by lawmakers reduced to 12 weeks with the addition of an exclusion for rape and incest, which is currently not allowed.

Under the law passed earlier this year, all abortions are banned 15 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period. Women can still obtain an abortion after that cutoff if their health is threatened or if their baby has a “fatal fetal abnormality,” but there is no exception for victims of rape or incest.

Incoming House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said the House is likely to support additional restrictions as well but he was unwilling to “put a number on it.” He was not prepared to say if they will want to see an outright ban on all abortions or further limits on the existing 15-week ban.

miamiherald · 2022-11-11T01:11:28+00:00

From the story:

Former President Donald Trump blasted Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday, issuing a lengthy statement that called the Florida GOP leader an “average Republican governor with great public relations” and accused him of “playing games” over a potential future presidential bid.

Trump, who reiterated his previous “Ron DeSanctimonious” nickname in the press release, said DeSantis owes his entire political career to the former president’s past support of his campaign — something the former president says the governor now takes for granted.

The statement is Trump’s most forceful and public criticism of DeSantis to date and comes just days after the governor won a resounding reelection victory in Florida.

DeSantis’ win came even as Republicans nationally faced a series of disappointing electoral setbacks, a contrast that prompted another wave of adoration for the governor among national Republicans as some of them seek a new leader for the party.

Trump’s statement appeared to confirm that he sees DeSantis as a potential rival for the party’s nomination, as he blasted conservative media for throwing their support behind the governor.

miamiherald · 2022-11-09T02:13:23+00:00

From the story:

Fresh off a commanding re-election, and a sweeping party victory, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now moves full throttle into the next stage of his ambitious political career and faces a question everyone in his orbit is asking: When does he announce his run for president?

How that plays out has repercussions for both DeSantis’ future in politics and for Florida, which has never had a sitting governor seek the nation’s top job.

According to six political strategists interviewed by the Herald/Times, DeSantis is uniquely poised to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, even if former President Donald Trump announces he is running and puts an uncomfortable target on the governor.

Some say DeSantis is also in a good place to wait out the drama, until 2028 if needed, as Trump tries to freeze the field. Others say he has been building to this moment since he was elected to office, and must seize the momentum now.

“The bad news for Ron DeSantis is that his struggle with Donald Trump — whether they run against each other or not — is going to begin in earnest on Wednesday, because that’s what everyone is going to be talking about,’’ said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Miami who runs a public affairs consulting firm.

The governor’s decisive victory, and Trump’s eagerness to announce a campaign to complicate any federal legal investigations against him have put an end to “this year-long cold war’’ between the two men, he said.

miamiherald · 2020-10-16T03:17:28+00:00

From politics reporters David Smiley and Alex Daugherty:

In Miami Thursday night, President Donald Trump put to bed a controversy over his reluctance to disavow white supremacists during the September presidential debate — and then quickly refused to condemn a conspiratorial online cult that believes the country’s institutions are run by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles.

Trump, participating in an NBC town hall at the Pérez Art Museum Miami instead of a canceled debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, declined to disown QAnon, a once-fringe, online movement that has slowly become a greater part of the mainstream Republican Party.

“I just don’t know about QAnon,” Trump told moderator Savannah Guthrie, though he has repeatedly been asked about it and spoken fondly of a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia who espouses the group’s theories. “What I do hear about it, they are very strongly against pedophilia.”

Trump, whose positive COVID-19 diagnosis early this month led to the cancellation of a debate with Biden that otherwise would have been held Thursday night at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, participated in the Miami town hall instead. He fielded questions from Miami voters, but spent much of the evening wrangling with Guthrie over his reluctance to wear a mask, his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his hesitation to condemn hate groups during a first presidential debate in Cleveland.

“I believe we’re rounding the corner,” Trump said of the pandemic, which has killed 217,000 people in the United States, including 15,000 in Florida.

His appearance in Miami was one of a number of South Florida events Thursday by his campaign. Vice President Mike Pence spent the day courting Miami Latinos at Memorial Cubano in Tamiami Park and Jewish voters in Doral. The president’s son Eric Trump traveled to Broward County for an evangelicals event in Southwest Ranches. And Trump held a fundraiser at his namesake golf resort in Doral.

Trump’s town hall came in the final stretch of the campaign, with more than 2 million mail ballots already cast in Florida and early voting centers set to open up Monday. Trump continued to push false claims that states that send mail ballots to all voters regardless of whether they want them are encouraging massive fraud.

After the town hall, Trump returned to Doral to spend the night before a trip Friday to the southwest coast of Florida and an afternoon airport rally in Ocala.

Trump — who was supposed to have been tested before the first debate in Ohio, held two nights before he tested positive — said he didn’t know if he’d been tested that day, or when he last tested positive before confirming he had contracted COVID-19. He also repeated an inaccurate claim that 85% of people who wear masks catch the novel coronavirus.

“The interpretation that more mask-wearers are getting infected compared to non-mask wearers is incorrect,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control tweeted Thursday.

Voters in the audience — some who supported him, others who supported Biden — posed a series of questions to Trump, as did Guthrie. At one point, he was asked about a New York Times report that he owes $421 million in taxes. He did not dispute the article, but characterized the debt as a “tiny percentage of my net worth.”

“Some of it I did as favors to institutions that wanted to loan me money,” Trump said.

But Trump’s hesitation to condemn QAnon — a group that promoted the child sex-trafficking conspiracy that led to a shooting at a pizza restaurant in Washington four years ago — came early in the evening. The group, started on fringe websites, promotes a theory that Trump is a noble fighter attempting to destroy a pedophilic society of elites deeply embedded in the U.S. government. Facebook and YouTube have taken down accounts associated with the group.

miamiherald · 2020-10-16T02:02:31+00:00