Welcome to the first day of Autumn as hurricane season heats up and concentration camps in Florida keep blooming
News and opinions for Florida's Left Coast. Feel free to forward this to your friends--and even your frenemies.
Florida is continuing its plans to develop mirror-image versions of Alligator Alcatraz throughout the state.
One, near Jacksonville, to be dubbed Deportation Depot. Another in the west to be entitled Panhandle Pokey.
Like this is all some kind of big joke, rounding up human beings and having a great time selling merch imprinted with all these snappy, lighthearted nicknames.
Receiving less attention have been the other prisons used as holding pens for I.C.E.—the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. A quick internet search shows they include:
Broward Transitional Center (Pompano Beach): A detention facility run by the for-profit GEO Group.
Glades County Detention Center (Moore Haven): A county-run detention center with an agreement to hold immigrants for ICE.
Krome Service Processing Center (Miami): An ICE detention facility in Miami.
Baker County Detention Center (Macclenny): An ICE detention center managed by the Baker County Sheriff's Office.
Wakulla County Facility: Listed as an ICE detention facility in Florida.
As well as various county jails and detention facilities at ports of entry maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’s role in all of this is the subject of a provocative article in today’s Florida Phoenix.
Journalist Barrington Salmon writes that our governor is merely one of President Donald Trump’s little minions obediently doing what he is told.
DeSantis has fervently signed on to the MAGA Republican white nationalist project of dragging the United States back to a time when European Americans ruled the roost using brute force; murder; laws, customs and norms; and terrorism and fear to intimidate and control African Americans.
Florida has served as the petri dish for DeSantis and his enablers to roll out the far-right agenda and gauge the public response or acceptance of these policies. Whether it’s banning books, laws seeking to curb or erase gay and trans individuals, anti-Black and anti-DEI bias, whitewashing facts, rewriting history, and attacking African Americans and other marginalized groups.
We are witnessing American apartheid, with the use of a range of mechanisms to more fully marginalize those who DeSantis and Trump deem “the other.” As the ACLU reminds us, DeSantis has joined Trump in amplifying already strained racial tensions in the United States. Both have been brazen in their overt quest to weaponize anger, resentment, and racial grievance.
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Grim and bear it
Another lawsuit has been filed to stop Florida’s first bear hunt in a decade, which is scheduled to begin in early December.
Bear Warriors United has filed the suit against the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which has authorized the hunt despite protests from animal rights and other conservation groups.
"The FWC's illegal action undermines its constitutional duty to manage the black bear population based on scientifically supported recommendations, not the whims of the Commission," the complaint reads. The suit has been filed in Tallahassee circuit court.
Autumn arrives in the Tropics
Welcome to the first day of Fall, the autumnal equinox, one of the two days of the year in which we experience equal hours of daylight and night. From now until late December, the days will become increasingly shorter.
But while the weather may be cooling, the hurricane season seems to be warming up.
We’ve got red dots and orange and red blobs on the National Hurricane Center’s threat map.
Gabrielle turned into a Category 3 hurricane this morning, but she is curling north and poses no threat to Florida, the United States, or the Conch Republic.
Trailing Gabrielle is yet another developing system (the red blob), but it, too, is curling away from North America. Not so much the third tropical disturbance that has meteorologists on their toes, but it is way too soon to tell whether it will pose a threat to the mainland, but it bears watching, and Caribbean islands could be in its sights.
But as hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross notes in his Hurricane Intel blog, a dip in the Jet Stream developing over the southeastern U.S. may keep these storms offshore. Fingers crossed.
Related stories
Why meteorologists and astronomers disagree on when seasons start
Today is …
The beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year. It’s also National Ice Cream Cone Day, Hobbit Day, and Elephant Appreciation Day.
Thought for the day
“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Florida factual
No matter where you are in Florida, you’re never more than 60 miles (as the seagull flies) from either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. And no matter where in Florida you are, you are nowhere near the Gulf of America because that’s not a real thing.
J.C. Bruce, journalist and author, is the founder of Tropic Press. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida. Forward this email to your friends. They will love you for it.
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DeStupid can and will do a lot of damage in the waning months of his last term, and after that, both he and that awful, Botoxed Tacky-O wifey of his will be political toast. Having seen what a complete toady for Trump post-failed 2024 prez bid DeStupid has been, responsible FloriDumb voters should move heaven and earth to prevent Uncle Tom Donalds from surviving his primary, and hope that Renner is the successful Republican candidate. I wish Jolly would win the general, but I'm not delusional.
No Trumpette, no MAGA, no cult, no idiot ever again, or this state will well and truly disintegrate.
As a lifelong Floridian and 40 year full time resident of the Florida Keys, I'm so grateful for your voice! I am saddened at what my home state has become. 🫤