Miami Herald

MIAMI — Kansas City’s celebration of itself and its champion Chiefs was winding down at storied Union Station. The day was idyllic, sun bright, air crisp, temperature in the 60s. Then came that popping sound, the one you might first mistake for fireworks, until the screaming starts. Panicked moments later amid a terrified stampede, Super Bowl-winning Chiefs coach Andy Reid knelt to comfort a teenager who had been shot. “Please breathe,” he told the boy. It happened on Main Street. It can happen anywhere. It can happen everywhere. Because this is America. “Parades, rallies, schools, movies,” Ka......

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s top adviser at the White House on the Western Hemisphere is set to depart his post in mid-March, a National Security Council official told McClatchy and the Miami Herald. Juan Gonzalez, special assistant to the president and senior director for the Western Hemisphere, advocated for direct talks with Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and for avoiding U.S. military involvement in Haiti throughout his tenure at the White House. A national security official noted that Gonzalez, who previously advised Biden on Latin America during his time as vice president, was “the pr......

MIAMI — A political action committee supporting Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s failed presidential campaign paid its top fundraising consultant more money than the super PAC raised in new donations last year, according to an analysis of the committee’s latest report filed last week. The pro-Suarez super PAC paid nearly $2.2 million to Virginia-based consulting firm Starboard LLC, while raising just $1.5 million, the report showed. The report underscores the desperation and inexperience of Suarez’s campaign, which relied on gimmicks to drum up support, including an AI version of the candidate and......

MIAMI — Florida Republicans voted on Saturday to endorse Donald Trump for the GOP’s presidential nod – an unusual step for the party given that the former president still faces a primary challenge, but one that reflects the widely held belief that Trump has already run away with the nomination. The endorsement came amid a flurry of votes by members of Florida’s Republican Party during their annual meeting in Wesley Chapel. Members also moved to elect state Sen. Joe Gruters, a former Florida GOP chairman, as the party’s new national committeeman and formally oppose a proposed ballot amendment t......

MIAMI — Federal prosecutors have filed an appeal with a Miami judge seeking to overturn a Denver court’s decision that allowed an American man accused of sexually abusing boys at a Haitian orphanage to be sent to a halfway house until trial. Earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak in Colorado denied a request by federal prosecutors to detain Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 71, after he was indicted on Jan. 18 by a grand jury in Miami. Geilenfeld, who was arrested in Denver, is accused of traveling from Miami to Haiti 14 times between November 2006 and December 2010 to engage in “illicit s......