Why Are We Like This?

A couple years ago, the US electorate — and especially in Florida — was fired up for mass deportations and welcomed the second Trump administration with hopes that it would solve all our problems by blaming foreigners. Today, between the closing of Alligator Alcatraz and cities like Miami regretting their participation with 287G agreements, which allow ICE and DHS pernicious unprecedented access t...

Miami is one host city for this summer’s World Cup, joining others across North America, for what is shaping up to be one of the biggest debacles in the tournament’s history. Woefully underprepared and overpriced, the US has provided no end of friction by suspending visas and travel privileges, exerting pressure on foreign visitors, and using dynamic pricing to price out the average fan. We’re joi...

A spate of news you can use this week from the WAWLT boys, who will continue to stay posting on main. On tap this week: What's going on with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jared Moskowitz, Maria Elvira Salazar, and the congressional district hopscotch being played across South Florida? Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's confirmation and the the statistical subterfuge we are all living through. The Atlantic has go...

Is public rail designed to fail? We’re revisiting our favorite public-private partnership (aka privatization) and checking in on the Brightline rail system which seems to be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after burning through billions of dollars and propping. How did they lose so much money? How did the venture fail so stunningly? And what will become of the valuable land where the downtown...

Two big stories on the docket today: First, Thomas has new reporting on TruthOut.org about how Miami and wide swaths of Florida have become a show-me-your-papers state, where fishing-while-Latino can get you stopped, frisked, and maybe detained. The proliferation of so-called 287(g) agreements with law enforcement, state agencies, municipalities and all manner of other organizations has become alm...

Florida ain't goin' anywhere! Why Are We Like This is back after an extended break, and we're talking about, well, just a whole slate of goings-on in the Sunshine State during our dark period, picking up with Thomas and David's trip to the Emerge Americas Conference last week and their interaction with some of Miami's new AI hologram ambassadors that will soon be gracing the halls of our finest ai...

We're back with a new season of Why Are We Like This?, and the guys play a round of catch-up on various topics, including the impact of good internet on media professionals, the intersection of sports and politics, the Venezuelan crisis, human rights violations in Alcatraz, conspiracy theories related to high-profile crimes, cultural commentary on nepo babies, crisis communications in politics, th...

After an extended work/family/pneumonia-driven hiatus the WAWLT Boys are back and we're getting right into it. Among the topics discussed in our comeback episode: Open-carrying in Publix Charlie Kirk memorial campus streets Fort Myers' Madison Cawthorne infestation Miami mayoral race Eric Adams update Dominion Voting out, Liberty Voting in Argentina-Puerto Rico soccer match out in Chicago, in in S...

We intended to talk about the so-called Alligator Auschwitz or Alligator Alcatraz Detention Center that opened last week a mere 45 miles from our WAWLT offices at the Dade-Collier Training & Transition Airport in the Big Cypress Preserve.  The $450 million affront to common decency and humanity was hastily slapped together by the Florida Division of Emergency Management and our old friend...

Joe Carollo's "Not Involved in Weaponizing City Government" shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the shirt. On May 30, Thomas and David attended a special City of Miami commission hearing with commissioners Joe Carollo, Miguel Gabela and Damian Pardo aimed at exploring how Carollo has government resources against his political and perceived enemies, including Gabela. Duri...

You've heard WAWLT episodes before, but have you ever heard a cynically-sold-out-to-a-political-party version of a WAWLT episode? To demonstrate our value and in our effort to chase the "Joe Rogan of the Left" title we played a little game where we transplanted our own opinions with those of the Democratic Party. See, we can play nice when we have to! But first, we discussed the recent town hall w...

Today we're tackling the real problems facing our magical home city, discussing the viability of election and political reforms across Miami like a new election calendar and district map, as laid out in a recent Miami Herald opinion piece . Our conclusion? It's all too far gone, and the entire city is no longer viable. What about... disintegrating Miami? Longtime Magic City raconteur and returning...

It's the stupid economy, you stupid idiot. Another week, another spate of economic uncertainty roiling markets and the nerves of our tender tummies. GDP has shrunk (shrank? shrinked?) and while it might SEEM like Florida's favorite president is to blame, it was actually previous president Joe Biden's fault. It just is! We also hear from Thomas about the end of a legislative session in Tallahassee...

Hope Foundation is a Florida nonprofit that was supposed to help struggling Floridians on government assistance get back on their feet. Instead, the organization -- with profound ties to Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis -- is at the center of the first scandal threatening to affect the DeSantis family's waning political prospects. Today, we had returning guest Jason Garcia (@Jason_Garcia) to talk...

For our main story this week, we're looking at a brewing scandal plaguing Gov. Ron DeSantis and Casey DeSantis. The Governor's Agency for Healthcare Administration is in hot water for allegedly directing a private healthcare company to shift a $10 million penalty to Hope Florida, a nonprofit with direct ties to his wife Casey. Before that, we look to the north and explore the de-Canadafication of...

We marked our first Liberation Day with a breakdown of the special election results in Wisconsin and Florida. We also checked in on some of our favorite mayors, NYC's Exonerated Eric Adams and Miami-Dade's belt-tightening Daniella Levine Cava.

We talked about the intersection of scamming, regulation, and public corruption against the backdrop of a recent petty scandal where Miami-Dade health inspectors were caught extorting restaurants for clean reports. After that, we get into recent news including more tariff chaos, DOGE moves, and the latest from Tallahassee.

We check in with our roving reporter Thomas Kennedy on the latest bile pouring from the state capital and try to figure out exactly where the priorities lie. It's a short one folks, enjoy it!

On January 1, the so-called HALO Law went into effect across Florida, limiting and in many cases criminalizing citizens' ability to record police in public. The law is part-and-parcel with an ever more reactionary and authoritarian drift in a state that purports to support freedom but is, in practice, one of the least free places in the country. We were joined this week by journalist Carlos Miller...

He's back, and boy does he have some opinions about how to Make America Great Again. That's right, we're once again talking about our favorite invented demographic cohort, the Miami New Guy, who has spent the past few Joining us is author, amateur mangrove trash collector, and professional Cuban Andrew Otazo, who shares his own experience growing up among Miami New Guys before they became Miami Ne...

When's a rug not a rug? When it's pulled right out from under ya, ya dummies. Fans of Javier Milei recently learned that hard lesson when they dropped millions of dollars of (presumably not) hard-earned cash into a meme coin fraud sponsored by the famously sister-curious Argentine president. We invited Andres Fidanza, editor-in-chief of El Observador USA, to talk about the curious case of South Am...

"Nothing Ever Happens" is a classic shit-poster meme about the phenomenon of crisis-based media hype cycles and how we ingest them as people who might not be on the immediate frontlines of the crisis. It's a useful lens for us to examine the onslaught of this month's top headlines, so that's what we do!

Happy MLK Jr. Day! Happy Inauguration-They're-Gonna-Write-About-In-History-Books-But-For-All-The-Wrong-Reasons Day! The WAWLT Boys return from a protracted break to bring you up to date on America's speed-run into full Florida status. We talked about the spasmodic, seemingly hourly new developments surrounding the TikTok ban and its implications for a Democratic Party left holding the bag and look...

So it turns out Florida -- and every swing state -- wasn't in play after all. Following a tectonic collapse that saw Florida Democrats somehow lose even more ground, we discuss the fallout and what it means for the future of our state, our nation, and the world.

Over the summer, Redfin released a report analyzing rent trends across the country and while the national average ticked up 1%, analysts were surprised to find many major metros across Florida cratering due to increased inventory, slowing migration, and myriad other factors. In this episode, we examine whether this is good news, bad news, or maybe a good news-bad news combo. We also got into the d...