Crazy Week ending February 6, 2026
An ICE protest, yes, here in Miami, the 27th weekly prayer vigil across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, a wild County Commission Committee Meeting (yes, I said wild regarding a committee meeting that I don't think made any media outlets) and much more this week in Florida--the southern bit.
An ICE protest, yes, here in Miami, the 27th weekly prayer vigil across from the so-called Alligator Alcatraz, a wild County Commission Committee Meeting (yes, I said wild regarding a committee meeting that I don't think made any media outlets) and much more this week in Florida--the southern bit.
A wild and full week so the Florida Gonna Florida and Buy Local! sections are on holiday. They should be back next week.
"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington Dec in February of 1968.
Table of Contents
Finite
Disappointment
Whatever this vomit that was posted on the President's account Thursday night is
While not really a story about Florida I can't not say something about the vile, racist, yet unsurprising barf that the President of the United States' account posted about the Obamas. This should break the back of the entire Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, the party of Thaddeus Stevens–congressman who integrated a cemetery when he died because he wanted to enter eternity the way he lived. But obviously, it won't. It's 2026 and we're still wrestling with America's original sin of racism and that's an indictment of the entire nation, even if, obviously, not every one is responsible for it.
Also, I just can't with the "racist imagery." It was a video that was built on racist (and sexist) tropes with the intent of, at the very least, offending people because it was racist. There's no doubt about what the video itself is. You can question the motives of the person who posted it (in fairness to the man who has been called by many psychiatrists a pathological liar, he claims, ludicrously, that an aide reposted it on his account) but you can't call it "racist imagery" and maintain your own integrity– this is exactly why I hate the notion of press objectivity and neutrality. The headline writer (who may be the same person that wrote the piece below but more likely is not the same person) is deep into the neutral Koolaide and it makes them look complicit rather than objective.
Richard Luscombe
Miami-Dade County Intergovernmental and Economic Impact Committee plays games with people's lives
This week I received an urgent message from a PACT organizer about the status of the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery (MCMHR). I wrote about it in PACT's newsletter this week and this is what I wrote, which was adopted from emails I received from PACT and a briefing document provided to PACT by the project's advocates:
Over the past ten plus years a group of people has worked tirelessly to envision, build and open the Miami Center for Mental Health & Recovery as a way to divert people who are chronically unhoused and suffering from mental health issues out of our jails and into a recovery program. This Center will provide hundreds of beds to house people and provide wrap-around mental health & healthcare services to support the most in need of this care in our community.
Although the center has been built and is ready to be opened, the County Commission has been delaying its opening. As the center sits closed, it is costing tax payers $7 million a year, and we spend $1.1 million per DAY jailing people with mental illness.
This center will:
Improve public safety
Reduce homelessness
Save hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars
Provide life-saving treatment and stability for thousands of Miami-Dade residents
The Center is built, funded for its initial operations, institutionally supported at every level, and validated by decades of data. All that remains is the Commission’s approval to open its doors. The Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery is not only a moral imperative—it is one of the most fiscally responsible and evidence-based public safety initiatives inMiami-Dade County’s history.
Now, we need the County's Intergovernmental and Economic Impact Committee to vote to allow the full County Council to vote on opening the center—which, remember, is already built and ready to accept patients.
While that seems like a simple task, that committee stonewalled the vote this week with almost a dozen PACT members in attendance. The PACT members left disappointed by each of the commissioners on that committee’s apparent efforts to kill the project for unclear reasons.
At the hearing, the Miami Police Commander for Downtown urged the committee to allow the resolution that would open the MCMHR to pass as the police are in favor of the center. The ideas behind the center, which has never been opened, have been replicated around the world in diversion centers like this one.
The project champion, Judge Leifman, has been flown all over the world to advocate for these centers and help implement the opening of centers.
Yet, the county is presently allowing this center to sit empty, never used.
Why? It's unclear. The county commission committee meeting was a master class in obfuscation. One thing was clear, one committee member tried to add an amendment that would force his own company into the MCMHR as a partner.
Historic
Interlude
It's been awhile since I pulled at length from This Day in Florida History, a go to book that inspired this section in some ways. So let's do it as it is very significant and fitting this week (from page 23 of the paperback edition)!
February 6
On February 5, 1895, the last of three significant freezes in the winter of 1894-1895 struck Florida. The freezes had terrible effects on Floirda's citrus industry. Citrus production dropped to almost zero, compared to six million boxes the previous year, and would not reach pre-freeze levels until 1909. Florida's emerging tourist industry also suffered in the freezes. As part of a transcontinental rivalry, California farmers, land speculators, and hoteliers poked fun at Florida, noting that Florida vacationers needed heat in their rooms and Florida citrus was too much risk from cold weather to be a safe investment. The freezes pushed the citrus industry further south in the state and helped city boosters promote newly formed towns along the southern Gulf and Atlantic shores.
FOR FURTHER READING: Henry Knight, Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013)
Incidentally, Miami was not incorporated in 1895 but Julia Tuttle used the freeze to encourage Henry Flagler to extend his Florida railroad further south to the Miami River. He did, Tuttle and others gathered anyone and everyone they could find, including Black people and Bahamians, to incorporate the City of Miami the next year.
Then they went hard into Jim Crow and used the convict lease system, which men like Flagler preferred to slavery because, as one person put it, "One dies, get another," to build the core of what is now Downtown Miami.
Infinite
Hope
But first...just hope...
Long time readers know how important TWIFL feels Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, which was set to expire this week, is to South Florida. Well, it's too early to fully claim victory, but a Federal judge did say that TPS needs to be extended...for now.
Sergio R. Bustos
From the above article by Sergio R. Bustos:
Reyes, in a 83-page opinion, wrote that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits of the case, and she found it “substantially likely” that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem preordained her termination decision because of “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Liberal click bait site, The Daily Beast, was less nuanced in their take on this:
Tom Latchem
For all the liberal schadenfreude on Kristi Noem's racist tweets being used against her in the ruling against her policy, the reality is that it remains to be seen what actually happens next for Haitian TPS holders.
As Tom Latchem at the Daily Beast revels in the pleasure at Noem's suffering, Sergio Bustos with WLRN (the first piece in this section), who is in the county that will be most impacted by TPS ending for Haitians ends on a more measured note:
"Temporary relief is not enough," added Petit. "Congress must act to provide permanent protections so Haitian families can live with certainty and dignity."
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts, who co-chairs the House Haiti Caucus with U.S.. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Miramar, is urging House members to sign a “discharge petition” that could force the House vote on a bill to require the Administration to extend TPS for Haitians for three years.
The discharge petition will need 218 signatures in the House to move forward. As of Monday night, 81 House lawmakers had signed it, including seven from Florida.
TPS functionally being extended for Haitians is good news for Haitians, South Florida, New York and Ohio–that is, places where Haitians make up a disproportionate percentage of the community. But the battle isn't over and that discharge petition, which is nowhere near passing yet, needs to be passed and that bill sent to the Senate and be signed by the President for this to register as infinite hope.
But, this is a necessary and good first step because...
Now onto the Infinite Hope
You know I love people exercising their rights (not crazy about Second Amendment worship–0r any Amendment, really) so I love to see the protests and prayer vigils and other acts of resistance, like my friend Stephanie Rupp in the story above.
This is a short overview of the protest on Saturday. Jared is in two of the videos I'm going to share but the content is largely different.
Last Saturday, the day the previous letter came out, I attended a small but poignant protest at the Torch of Friendship in Miami. What was really cool about it is that it was organized by a concerned citizen who had never done anything like this before! About 150 people showed up over the course of the event and they were greeted with lots of appreciative horn blasts and cheers.
Jared Sharp organized his first protest! This is a short interview with him. It's actually, technically, my first interview ever for TWIFL
And there was one detractor. This man ran up to my video camera (there were no other video cameras I saw) and started talking. I urged him to wait as it was in standby mode, I turned it on and he and protesters argued for the better part of 30 minutes. Here's the start of it. To be clear, he was passionate, I am baffled by his point of view, but he was respectful and honestly seemed kind of nice. His presence, his willingness to debate, the protesters giving him an earful–all of that is beautiful!
Trump supporter expresses his views during the ICE Out protest on Saturday.
Of course, no newsletter of mine would be complete without my weekly shoutout to the prayer vigils that have been going on for six straight months in front of the very open so-called Alligator Alcatraz detention center along tourist road US 41.
My YouTube channel has more videos of the protest and the prayer vigil. You can find it at https://www.youtube.com/@TWIFL25
And I keep an updated set of photos and videos or protests, prayer vigils, etc on this website.
Philip Cardella
Bear
The History Hound Finds
If you read one thing Bear found for you...
There are several authors who post by email that I read consistently. Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman, media analyst Parker Malloy, Throughline by Jill Filipovic, International Relations professor Daniel Drezner, stat bro G. Elliot Morris, civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, legal scholar Jay Kuo, legendary reporter Dan Rather, historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky, and historian Kevin Kruse, who has the distinction of having the good taste to not use far right enabling Substack (Substack literally pays some far right pushers millions of dollars to post) are just some. Kruse uses Ghost, same as TWIFL, by the way.
There's only one I read every single thing she posts and that's historian Heather Cox Richardson. Her review of Deputy Chief of Staff (read, dude has a door from his office into the Oval Office) Stephen Miller's unhinged, unamerican screed on January 31, 2026 is must read.
Heather Cox Richardson
Other things Bear found this week...
Paul Krugman
Dan Friedman
Laura Esposito
Have a news or event tip?
Another great way to help TWIFL out is to send a tip about something going on in South Florida, especially something that is important to our community but may not be getting the coverage it needs. This can be anything from an ice cream social put on by kids to support a local retirement home to a protest for or against the current administration to an endangered species thriving or being threatened.
A special thanks to Carol Peckins who became the first paid member of TWIFL last week! TWIFL has a goal of 200 paying members in 2026–which means only 198 more to go!
Though This Week in Florida is a labor of love it is in fact a lot of work and costs quite a bit of money to produce. The hope is that one day it will be able to be financially viable–right now it is operating at a loss.
You can help by sharing this newsletter with your friends, making a donation or becoming a paying member.
Help us out! Donations of $50 or more (or becoming a paid member who pays annually) will receive a free 8x10 or 8x12 photo from my collection.
