3 March 12-18, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | ▼ WESTCHESTER CO-SIGN THE FLORIDA HOUSE PASSES A BILL TO RENAME A MIAMI-DADE ROAD ‘CHARLIE KIRK AVENUE.’ BY ALEX DELUCA T he Florida House has passed a bill to rename a stretch of road in Miami-Dade County in honor of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk. On September 23, State Rep. Juan Carlos Porras (R-Miami) filed HB 33, which seeks to designate part of State Road 985/SW 107th Avenue — the stretch between SW 24th Street and State Road 90/SW Eighth Street, in front of Florida International University’s (FIU) main campus — as “Charlie Kirk Memorial Avenue.” Kirk, a right-wing commentator, was shot and killed last year during a speaking tour stop at Utah Valley University. The bill passed the House in an 82-30 vote and now heads to the Rules Committee in the Florida Senate. If passed, the bill would take effect in July 2026. “Proud to file HB 33 to designate Charlie Kirk Memorial Avenue in Miami-Dade County right outside .@FIU,” Porras wrote in a Sep- tember 2025 post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Charlie and I founded the first .@ TPUSA. chapter in FL back in 2015 where this road is going to be, now it will honor his legacy.” In 2012, Kirk founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a far-right group that promotes conservative values on high school, college, and university campuses. In 2015, Porras says he and Kirk founded Florida’s first .chapter of Turning Point USA at FIU in Miami. On September 15, just days after Kirk’s as- sassination, more than 700 FIU students gathered on campus for a vigil honoring Kirk. Porras filed HB 33 the same day that com- missioners in Lake County, near Orlando, unanimously voted to designate a highway in memory of Kirk. A week earlier, on Septem- ber 17, commissioners in Escambia County, Florida’s westernmost county, unanimously rejected a proposal to rename a Pensacola street after Kirk. Florida and its municipalities have a long history of renaming roadways after conservative figures. In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill renaming a portion of a road in Her- nando County “Rush Limbaugh Way” after the late conservative radio host. In late 2024, Miami-Dade commissioners voted overwhelmingly to rename Palm Avenue in Hialeah “President Donald J. Trump Avenue.” In late 2025, the Town of Palm Beach voted to rename a stretch of road near the president’s Mar-a-Lago home “President Donald J. Trump Boule- vard,” and, on March 3, Lauderdale-by-the- Sea town commissioners voted to co-name a portion of Sea Grape Drive as “President Donald J. Trump Drive.” HB 33 would also name another road in the tiny town of Lau- derdale-by-the-Sea after Trump. [email protected] | RIPTIDE | Charlie Kirk speaking with attendees at the 2025 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr ▼ MIAMI GO YOUR OWN WAY A SELF-DRIVING WAYMO TRAPS A RIDER ON THE MACARTHUR CAUSEWAY. BY B. SCOTT MCLENDON A utonomous driving service Waymo just unlocked a new fear for everyone, and perhaps gave new fodder for Final Destination writers, after a self-driving car trapped a Miami rider on a busy highway for nearly an hour, according to a Reddit post. In the post, a Reddit user accuses Waymo’s emergency protocol of failing so spectacularly that they nearly ended up in a wreck on the Ma- cArthur Causeway (a popular thoroughfare con- necting downtown Miami to South Beach). Waymo began offering its autonomous driving service in Miami in late January, after more than a year of mapping and test drives throughout the Magic City. The user hailed a Waymo vehicle on Monday to go from the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science to the Design District, a trip of less than four miles. All lanes of Biscayne Boulevard were closed for construction, the post reads, so the self- driving car used the MacArthur Causeway instead. “Because Waymo failed to account for con- struction advisories, the vehicle hit the edge of its Miami geofence and abruptly slammed on its brakes, diagonally blocking the highway on- ramp,” according to the post. “I hailed rider sup- port from the car and demanded we move immediately. The car moved slightly up the ramp but slammed on the brakes again at the edge of the geofence. After being transferred twice, support claimed they needed Highway Patrol to take manual control of the vehicle.” According to a statement from a Waymo spokesperson, “Safety is our highest priority at Waymo — for our riders and those with whom we share the streets — and while this event did not meet our standard for op- erational excellence, we learn quickly from such occur- rences to continu- ously improve. We have trained over 1,400 first responders in Miami and Miami Beach to date and will continue to expand our outreach program as we review our systems and pro- cesses in coordination with local officials to en- sure a better experience for riders in the future.” But Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) workers were seemingly unsure how to resolve the issue, according to the post. FDOT dispatched Road Rangers (not to be confused with Power Rangers), who told Waymo techs that officers would not come out to manually drive the car. The Road Rangers added that they legally couldn’t drive the autonomous vehicle. So, the rider was trapped for 45 minutes like “a sitting duck” in a dangerous situation on the highway ramp, “watching several cars swerve to avoiding hitting” them, according to the post. Meanwhile, state workers and Waymo employ- ees played the finger-pointing game. “As a fully licensed Florida driver, I could have easily been granted temporary manual control to simply drive down and turn around to a safe, low-speed city road. Waymo refused,” the user wrote in the Reddit post. When a Waymo technician, identified as Kenneth, arrived, he apparently refused to ap- proach the vehicle, insisting that FDOT resolve the issue, even after FDOT rangers made it clear that they would not drive the vehicle. Finally, a hero emerged in a flatbed tow truck to whisk away the immobile robo-taxi. Waymo’s roadside assistance offered the rider another Waymo ride, but — in the most obvious part of this story — they declined. A Road Ranger ended up taking them to Biscayne Boulevard, according to the post. “This lengthy, dangerous experience exposes massive gaps in Waymo’s processes regarding geofence limitations, construction reroutes, and emergency protocol,” the Reddit user concluded in their post. “These issues must be resolved quickly to move forward in Miami full adoption.” [email protected] FINALLY, A HERO EMERGED IN A FLATBED TOW TRUCK TO WHISK AWAY THE IMMOBILE ROBO-TAXI. ▼ FLORIDA MASTERS OF WAR THE PENTAGON EYES A UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GRAD PROGRAM PARTNERSHIP FOR TROOPS. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN T he U.S. Department of War, for- merly the Defense Department, has announced it will cut academic ties with nearly two-dozen think tanks and universities over their “toxic indoctrina- tion” and “wokeness.” In a social media video, U.S. Secretary of Defense (who has dubbed himself the “Secretary of War”) Pete Hegseth slammed the Ivy League and “similar institutions” for subjecting military service members to “wokeness” and teaching them to “despise the very nation they swore to defend.” “This is not education, it’s indoctrina- tion,” Hegseth, an Ivy League graduate himself, said in the video posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s a calculated, targeted assault on the core of our fighting force, and it’s a betrayal that we will no longer tolerate. The Department of War is finished subsidizing the corrup- tion of our own uniform class.” Beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, according to the “Rebuilding the Warrior Ethos in Professional Military Education” memo, the Defense Department will prohibit service members from enrolling in graduate programs and fellowships at several institu- tions, including Harvard University, the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Georgetown University, Tufts Uni- versity, and Queen’s University in Canada. The think-tanks on the list include the Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations, and Center for Strategic and Inter- national Studies. “We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders’ warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very val- ues they are sworn to defend,” the memo continued. The Defense Department said it plans to replace those institutions with new part- ners, such as the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee. The depart- ment also listed three private, conservative Christian colleges: Liberty University, Hills- dale College, and Regent University. “These institutions meet the following criteria: intellectual freedom, minimal rela- tionships with adversaries, minimal public expressions in opposition [sic] of the De- partment, and Graduate-level National Se- curity, International Affairs, and/or Public Policy Programs,” the memo reads. Additionally, Department of Defense emails leaked last month indicated that the University of Miami is among more than 30 schools where tuition aid may be banned for its graduate programs. [email protected]
