Week ending March 20, 2026

I needed to fly to California to attend to som family issues and will be on the West Coast through Easter, which means I missed the Signs of Fascism protest on Saturday March 21, 2026 in Tropical Park and will miss the No Kings 3 protest in Tropical Park on March 28, 2026 (there's another one on Calle Ocho the same day I wanted to stop by) and, of course, I'll be missing Easter with my wife and kids and beloved church community.

But, I'll be with my mom and brother, so I've got that going for me. Anyway, on to this past week in Florida. I'm also looking into covering the No Kings 3 in Sacramento just mix things up.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC in February of 1968.

Table of Contents

Finite Disappointment

Florida Gonna Florida

Infinite Hope

Bear the History Hound Finds

Finite

Disappointment

The coverage of the Nazi saluting UF students is almost as bad as the Nazi saluting UF students

My take on the multiple group chats on Florida university campuses championing Nazism, antisemitism and hate.

Another college Republican group at a public Florida university exposed with Nazi sympathies

By Philip Cardella March 16, 2026 Florida, United States The coverage of the Nazi saluting UF students is almost as bad as the Nazi saluting UF students In the Associated Press coverage of the University of Florida “deactivating” the College Republicans chapter at the flagship university this is how they

This Week in FloridaPhilip Cardella

California isn't liberal, y'all

Basically, me ranting about how terrible treatment of unhoused people reveals that we suck, as Kat Abughazaleh puts it.

California isn’t liberal, y’all

By Philip Cardella March 18, 2026 Between Sacramento and Miami Bear’s only been to California once but... Even Bear understood the notion that California is a “liberal” or progressive state is a sick joke. While Miami fights to open an actual treatment center for unhoused people going in and out

This Week in FloridaPhilip Cardella

Florida

Gonna Florida

Florida Man Has Thoughts about Venezuela Becoming the 51st US State

Venezuela defeated Italy in the World Baseball Classic in Miami on Monday and that prompted the President of the United States to float the idea of statehood for a country living under a dictatorship with a per capita annual income of $4510.62. Of course, long time US territory with a much stronger economy, Puerto Rico, is not going to be considered for statehood, for reasons.

I've railed against the over-application of the term "imperialism" but Trump's post here does reek of imperialism (as do his comments about Canada and Greenland).

Not for nothing, did you know that Republican staffers strongly considered invoking the 25th Amendment on Ronald Reagan and removing him during the peak of the...wait for it...Iran-Contra Affair? Reagan left office when he was the same age, 78, as Donald Trump when Trump started his second term.

Regarding Reagan:

The staff “told stories about how inattentive and inept the president was,” Cannon recalled to journalists Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus in Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988. “He was lazy; he wasn't interested in the job. They said he wouldn't read the papers they gave him—even short position papers and documents. They said he wouldn't come over to work—all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence.”

At the time, Reagan was the oldest president the country had ever had. “President Reagan was an older man in his 70s, and he showed it,” writes Stephen F. Knott, a professor of national security affairs at the United States Naval War College, in an email. from https://www.history.com/articles/reagan-health-25th-amendment

Doral, a Miami suburb and the city where Trump's "favorite" golf course sits, is the city with the most Venezuelan born people in the United States. Many if not most of those people fled the Venezuelan Chavista dictatorship (which was started by Hugo Chavez, who passed it to Nicolas Maduro, who in turn passed it to Delcy Rodriguez) so any story about Venezuela is, in effect, a story about Miami-Dade County and Florida.

Trump Floats Wild ‘Statehood’ Idea For Yet Another Country After Baseball Game

“STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE?” the president asked on his Truth Social platform.

HuffPostLee Moran

Trump teases Venezuela as 51st state after team advances to World Baseball Classic final

President Donald Trump weighed in on Truth Social after Venzuela came back to defeat Italy in the World Baseball Classic semifinal on Monday night.

Fox NewsRyan Gaydos

Trump Eyes Another Country for 51st American State

The president had a late-night brainwave in front of the TV.

The Daily BeastCameron Adams

Infinite

Hope

Not gonna lie, seeing my work in other publications is cool to me

I don't have a subscription to New Scientist but apparently they published the photo in the link below in January. It at least gives me hope that this project isn't in vain. This particular photo went out through Alamy and thus I got paid ($15!).

What good is greed? part 2

Probably every organism has evolved to do everything possible to maximise acquiring and storing resources, explains one reader

New Scientist

Sheriffs helped create the modern immigration system–now some sheriffs in Floria are criticizing it

That headline of mine fills me with hope. This story is from this week.

Florida sheriffs criticize federal mass deportation efforts

A group of sheriffs on a state immigration enforcement board sharply criticized the federal government’s mass deportation efforts Monday, a stark departure from hardline policies in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has spearheaded collaboration with federal officials to remove all undocumented immigrants.

WLRNAna Goñi-Lessan | News Service of Florida

This podcast is about how sheriffs created the modern immigration system–and Florida sheriffs did more than their share.

Detention By Design

As recently as 1955 there were virtually no immigrants held in detention in the U.S. Today, the federal government holds tens of thousands each day, in 130 facilities across the country. But the story of how we got here did not start at the U.S.-Mexico border - it started on Florida’s shores, 50 years ago. Through personal histories and meticulously compiled archival materials, Detention By Design will tell how the arrival of Haitian and Cuban migrants by boat in the 1970s and 1980s - and the crude experiments in small Florida jails that followed - shaped the immigration and detention system that we have in this country today.Detention by Design is funded by The Shepard Broad Foundation.

WLRNHelen Acevedo

And this book is the main argument.

The Migrant’s Jail

A century-long history of immigrant incarceration in the United States

Princeton University PressBrianna Nofil

Bear

The History Hound Finds

Wanna be depressed?

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog | Martin Gelin

Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too, says writer Martin Gelin

The GuardianMartin Gelin

What if we didn't suck?

What Kat Abughazaleh can teach politicians about winning.

“What if We Didn’t Suck?”

Kat Abughazaleh lost. What she built is what the Democratic Party is missing.

The Present AgeParker Molloy

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.

Though This Week in Florida is a labor of love it is in fact a lot of work. The hope is that one day it would add to the family income.

You can help by sharing this newsletter with your friends.

Help us out! Donations of $50 or more will receive a free 8x10 or 8x12 photo from my collection.