Why Are We Like This?

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 about the burgeoning Hope Florida scandal, and the involvement of Governor DeSantis and, crucially, his then-chief of staff James Uthmeier.

We also discuss Thomas' work with the family of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen from Georgia who was detained by FHP and held in the Leon County Jail despite his family showing his documentation in open court. From there, we get into the crush of illegal detentions and deportations, and how the Trump administration finds itself at loggerheads with the Supreme Court and headed for a constitutional crisis.

You can read Jason's Substack, Seeking Rents, here: https://jasongarcia.substack.com/

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 the Sunshine State, as our northern snowbird neighbors swear off Florida en masse. We also talked about SB 7030, another Republican-approved assault on public schools which aims to significant reduce how much funding school districts receive for students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) courses.

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, a Godfather of the First Amendment Auditor movement and creator of Photography Is Not A Crime. He shared his story of an almost 20-year fight to record police and the effects its had on his livelihood and health.

Read Carlos' reporting at Atlanta Black Star:

https://atlantablackstar.com/author/cmillerddm24/

And follow him on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/carlosmiller

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 New Guys.

Also: Thomas brings us on a deep-dive into the struggle in Tallahassee between Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature's proposals to make life miserable for undocumented people, and the petty politics animating the fight.

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 America's most prominent Milton Friedman acolyte and discuss how it affects the perception of a cunning, brass-tacks, no-nonsense economist when they out themselves as financially incompetent.

You can read more of Andres' reporting at El Observador and follow him on X/Twitter.

In the back half of the episode, we discuss Ron DeSantis' efforts to abolish property taxes in Florida (official vote count on the pod: 1 yay, 2 nays). Then we briefly catch up with two more of our favorite characters in Miami, Joe Carollo and Francis Suarez, who each have their own scandals firmly parked up their asses.

"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 looking like enormous losers. We went in depth on the "Sunshine Cabinet", a cheery phrase we coined to describe one of the most repulsive collections of depraved animals to take executive power in U.S. history. Finally, we got into some Florida Democrat news and notes, including the diaspora of middling politicos like Susan Valdes, Hillary Cassell and Maureen Porras, who are scurrying away from the failing and flailing party, desperately grasping for their bag and sucking up to the modern MAGA movement.

Your hosts are Thomas Kennedy, Gerald Doherty and David Quiñones. This episode was produced by David Quiñones.