Florida
Embrace Florida Kids and IMPACT 100 are bridging the gap for homeless kids | Guestview
Most of us have a place to call home. To us, home means comfort, safety, warmth, love, laughter and rest. We can be ourselves at home, so we can thrive, grow and learn.
Young people who live in foster care, relative care or another impermanent situation do not have a place to truly call home. Can you imagine? Even a great foster home is not a permanent home. These kids spend their energy and focus on survival and acceptance rather than growth and learning. If they make it through high school successfully and want a college degree, what happens next?
A few of these teens now have a home for their college years because of the generous 2021 IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area grant that allowed Embrace Florida Kids to purchase its first-ever Higher Education Home.
For those wondering who we are, Embrace Florida Kids and Embrace Alabama Kids began in 1890 as the United Methodist Children’s Home, an orphanage. During the past 130 years, we have changed with the needs of our communities, and we now provide a much wider range of services to the vulnerable, including foster care, family preservation, and group homes in Northwest Florida and Alabama.
IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area is a volunteer group of philanthropic women who pool their gifts of $1000 each to provide grants of $100,000 or more to nonprofit organizations, which makes a significant impact on the organization, the individuals it serves, and the community. For Embrace, that grant began to change the course of a few high school graduates’ lives forever.
We are thrilled that so many of our Embrace kids do successfully complete high school, but we know that foster children nationwide tend to have worse outcomes as adults than their peers. Even with a tuition scholarship, the cost of college – books, labs, food, housing, and transportation – seems impossible to a teenager who does not have a continuing support system.
Some teens who have experienced periods of instability have been fully funded for college through scholarships, work, grants, and loans, but they still struggle because they have gaps in their social and behavioral skills. Sometimes, they have not gained skills that kids in a stable home environment have developed through consistent teaching of parents and family.
Embrace’s Higher Ed Homes in Alabama have been successful in bridging this gap with group homes in college towns, so plans were made to begin a similar program in Northwest Florida. A grant from the amazing women of IMPACT 100 allowed us to purchase a home much faster than we expected, so we now have students who are enjoying college, studying hard and growing together with a resident advisor. We especially love the moments when they are laughing together while doing chores, watching movies or having dinner!
We celebrated our first Embrace Florida Kids Higher Ed scholarship recipient in December. She lived in a dorm while we worked to secure a house and funding, and because of the IMPACT 100 grant, she was able to live in the new home for two semesters, which was a dream come true for her. She was thrilled that so many people from her Embrace family showed up for her graduation. These kids have not always been celebrated, and they are incredible.
Embrace is providing not just a house, but a home. Our goal is to cultivate growth, with a focus on academic, spiritual, and social development. Laura Ingalls Wilder said that home is the nicest word there is. I am sure our Higher Ed Home residents would agree. We are so thankful to be able to say, “Welcome home” to these young adults. Visit our website at https://embraceflkids.org/ to learn more.
Florida
Florida college Republicans group chat reveals racist texts: ‘Avoid the coloreds like the plague’
It only took three weeks for a group chat for conservative students at Florida International University (FIU) to become a place where participants eagerly used racist slurs, prompting widespread condemnation from community leaders.
Abel Alexander Carvajal, secretary of Miami-Dade county’s Republican party and a student at FIU’s College of Law, reportedly started the chat after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, in September 2025.
But on Wednesday, the Miami Herald published leaked WhatsApp conversations in which the college Republicans made racist, sexist, antisemitic and homophobic comments, including variations of the N-word used more than 400 times. Knowledge of the chat’s existence was revealed on the same day that Republican lawmakers in Florida pushed forward a bill to rename a one-mile stretch of road alongside FIU in honor of Kirk.
William Bejerano, who the Herald noted once tried to start an anti-abortion group at Miami Dade College, was the most prolific user of the N-word. Using the slur, Bejerano called for dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, including crucifying, beheading and dissecting.
Dariel Gonzalez, then the College Republicans’ recruitment chair, who has recently applied to become a GOP committee member, responded to the calls for violence by saying: “How edgy.” He repeatedly used “colored” to describe Black people, including writing: “Ew you had colored professors?!” and “Avoid the coloreds like the plague,” according to the Herald.
Carvajal, who was appointed to a two-year role on the city of Hialeah’s planning and zoning board earlier this year, confirmed to the paper that the group chat was his doing, but he denied knowledge of the problematic comments until the publication contacted him about its logs last week.
“It’s been five months since this was sent and this is the first time I’ve seen this message,” Carvajal told the Herald.
“I guess to an extent, I bear some responsibility, cause I created a chat. But if I had seen this at the moment, I would have removed [Bejerano] from the chat. I probably would have even blocked his number.”
The Herald found that Carvajal had deleted 14 messages sent by other participants in the chat and 42 of his own messages before the publication obtained the chat’s logs.
He also participated in some of the racist discussions. While referring to a Black student who allegedly left FIU’s College Republicans after a member of the group “called her a [N-word]”, the Floridian reported that Carvajal wrote: “Why didn’t miggress leave?” Elsewhere in the chat, the publication reported that Carvajal used “Miggress”, “Migglet” and “Migger” to refer to Black women, Black children and Black people, in general.
At one point, Gonzalez wrote: “You can fuck all the [K-word, a slur for Jewish people] you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.”
Ian Valdes, the Turning Point USA FIU chapter president, responded, “I would def not marry a Jew,” before changing the group chat’s name from “Uber [R-word slur for disabled people] Yapping” to “Gooning in Agartha”. “Gooning” is a gen-Z slang term for male masturbation, while “Agartha” is a mythical white civilization promoted by Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful leaders in Nazi Germany next to Hitler.
Gonzalez reportedly described Agartha to the group chat as “Nazi heaven sort of”.
Kevin Cooper, the first Jewish chair of the Miami Dade Republican party, condemned the group chat in a statement published to X and called for Carvajal’s resignation.
“The majority of our board voted to request Carvajal’s resignation. We have commenced removal proceedings and look forward to resolution from the Republican Party of Florida,” he wrote.
That call was echoed by Juan Porras, a Republican state representative and Miami-Dade GOP state committee member, who said in a statement: “Leadership carries responsibility. When someone in a leadership role engages in this kind of behavior, it damages the trust placed in our party by voters across Florida. For that reason, I am asking the Miami Dade Republican party secretary to step down from this position.”
In a joint statement, Florida Republican state senators Alexis Calatayud, Ileana Garcia and Ana Maria Rodriguez denounced the chats and called for the expulsion from party leadership of its participants.
“The individuals in the group chat have exposed how profoundly misaligned their beliefs are to the views of the Republican party of Florida,” their statement said. “We call for the immediate expulsion of the individuals disseminating from any level of leadership of the Miami-Dade Republican Party … We will not tolerate bigotry or discrimination.”
Multiple leaked group chats from young Republicans have created controversy in recent years.
Last year, Politico published messages from a group chat of more than 100 conservatives across the country in which users also made racist and antisemitic comments. In 2022, a Young Republican group chat from North Dakota was revealed as a cesspool of homophobic and antisemitic rhetoric.
Florida
Federal judge blocks DeSantis executive order declaring CAIR a 'terrorist organization'
Florida
Gas prices rise in South Florida amid U.S. and Israel’s conflict with Iran, as the stock market also reports a dip
Four days into the Iranian conflict, gas prices are rising at many stations in South Florida.
“I’ve traveled all over the United States,” says Stacey Williams. CBS Miami spoke to him as he was gassing up on the turnpike. He paid $66 for 20 gallons of diesel to fill his pickup truck. Williams has noted the fluctuations in fuel as he drives to locations for his work on turbines. He just spent three weeks at the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant south of Miami.
“The salary we get paid per hour does not add up to what we pay for gas, housing, and food,” he says.
Mitchell Gershon is also dealing with the higher gas prices. He has to fill three vehicles constantly for his business—Thrifty Gypsy, a pop-up store at musical venues. He’s back and forth from Orlando to Miami and says fuel is costing him 20% more. When asked how he handles these fluctuations, he said, “Have a little backup cash so you are ready for it.”
The rise in oil prices contributed to a drop in the stock market on Tuesday, which means some retirement accounts dipped, too. CBS Miami talked to Chad NeSmith, director of investments at Tobias Financial Advisors in Plantation, for perspective on the drop.
“We are seeing most of the pullback today. Yesterday was a shock,” he says. He’s not expecting runaway oil prices but says investors should stay in the loop: “Pay attention to your portfolio. Stick to your goals. Have a plan because these things are completely unpredictable.”
That unpredictability has Williams adjusting his budget. “You just cut back, cut corners, all you can do,” he says.
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