florida

Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins' (D) surprise blowout win in Miami, Florida's mayoral runoff race this week is a "wakeup call for President Donald Trump," according to the Washington Post editorial board.

The Post wrote Thursday that Higgins' victory — in which she won 59 percent of the vote while Republican Emilio T. González won 41 percent — came despite Miami electing Republican mayors for decades and Florida surging further rightward in recent elections. In 2024, Trump himself was the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade County in nearly 40 years, and came within a point of winning Miami itself last year.

"It’s a huge deal in Miami because Cuban Republicans have dominated local politics for a generation. A Democrat hasn’t been elected mayor since 1997, and his victory was invalidated the next year because of ballot fraud," the Post wrote, noting that Trump's unpopular policies effectively doomed González.

"Insiders in both parties say Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign against immigrants who have no criminal record beyond being in the country illegally turned off Hispanic independents who backed him last year," the editorial read. "Another frustration was Trump revoking temporary protected status for several nationalities with a presence in the city."

Higgins was able to localize Trump's policies by highlighting the fact that 27 employees at a Miami-area medical clinic were immediately fired after the Trump administration revoked work authorization for Venezuelan immigrants. She also promised to revisit the city's cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying local police had no business "checking residents’ papers."

"It’s politically perilous to draw too many national lessons from a local race, but the Miami upset comes against the backdrop of Democrats overperforming across the map," the Post wrote. "House Democrats contend that the mayoral results suggest they have three pickup opportunities in South Florida next year, though the GOP incumbents will probably be shored up by mid-decade redistricting."

The Post also asserted that Higgins' victory could also provide a lesson for Democrats, noting that she was from the party's more moderate wing, like Governors-elect Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) The paper further observed that Higgins' stumped not with progressive household names, but alongside former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), who is regarded as more conservative than most Democrats.

Click here to read the Post's editorial in its entirety (subscription required).

Cuban American outrage is growing following the Florida Cabinet's unanimous vote to designate a $67 million plot of land in downtown Miami to the foundation for President Donald Trump’s presidential library, according to the Washington Post.

The announcement last week that Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his administration planned to take over a vacant lot on the campus of Miami Dade College — next to the iconic Freedom Tower — to donate for the library drew outrage, especially from Miami's Cuban American community.

Downtown Miami's iconic landmark Freedom Tower, a National Historic Landmark known as the “Ellis Island of the South,” is a beacon for Cuban American immigration and the antithesis of Trump’s mass deportation efforts of late. The land — currently being used as a parking lot — is valued at an estimated $67 million.

The college spent $30 million restoring the 11-story tower built in 1925 by a newspaper publisher as headquarters for the Miami News. In August, “El Refugio” — the refuge, as generations of Cuban Americans call it — reopened as a museum dedicated to the plight of refugees and immigrants.

While the president's youngest son Eric, a trustee for his father's library foundation, celebrated the move, saying on his X account that it will be “It will be the greatest Presidential Library ever built, honoring the greatest President our Nation has ever known," Cuban Americans with connections to the Tower disagree.

“I can’t think of any two narratives that are any more in opposition than the one of the humanity that the Freedom Tower is a symbol for, and then how this president has spoken about immigrants and immigration,” Ana Sofia Pelaez, co-founder and executive director of the Miami Freedom Project, told the Washington Post.

Pelaez, whose mother arrived to America via the Pedro Pan flights that in the 1960s brought in thousands of Cuban children fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro, added that the Tower "is a monument to what that experience was and the help that they received and the support that they received. It is very much about receiving refugees.”

And though nearly 70 percent of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County in Florida voted for Trump, his harsh immigration crackdown has seen the president losing support of what was once his stalwart base, with a recent Politico poll showing his Latino support down 20 percent. This latest move isn't helping.

"It was our lifeline,” said Mercedes Toural, 77, who came to Miami—specifically to the Freedom Tower— with her sister Amelia on a Pedro Pan flight. “It helped us to survive. Now they’re using El Refugio as something political for political games, and I think that is dreadful.”

Toural's sister Amelia agreed, saying, “To put it right next to the building that represents immigrants, that is a symbol for freedom, that is a slap in the face to immigrants.”