Café Bastille, their casual breakfast-lunch spot at 1660 Market St., debuted in the Weston Town Center on Friday, Jan. 16, with 54 seats indoors and 18 more on the patio. At 2,200 square feet, it occupies a high-traffic storefront in the open-air mall’s northwestern corner, and is painted in soothing olive greens with yellow flowers wreathed around its striped awnings.

Here, the menu brims with scratch-made fare du jour: trendy Dubai hot chocolate and crème brûlée croissants, triple-stack pancakes crowned with pistachio pieces and blueberry coulis, and French toast accented with kiwi slices and whipped-cream dollops resembling white roses.

It’s the fourth Café Bastille for Bellegy, 33, and Amsallem, 34, who cut their teeth at Michelin-recognized restaurants in the luxury hotel Le Royal Monceau-Raffles Paris. And now their burgeoning brunch brand is in expansion mode, they say, with a fifth location expected this spring in Miami’s MiMo neighborhood, followed by a kitchen commissary in Miami Gardens this summer, where fresh pastries will be made daily and shipped to all locations.

The couple also say Café Bastille has earned word-of-mouth buzz — commenters rave about it constantly on food groups — for their famously large portions that keep pace with viral trends.

Menus are refreshed every six months, Bellegy adds, roughly the life cycle of a TikTok food trend. Last year, Red Velvet pancakes sold like, well, hotcakes. Now they’re out, and here’s what’s in: Sweet Potato Waffles with maple-pecan butter, candied pecans and raspberry coulis.

“Instagram and TikTok have a bit of influence on what we do,” Amsallem says. “So we always look for the fun Instagram-friendly ideas that can bring people together and convince them to travel to our locations.”

Offerings, identical at all locations, include scratch-made Nutella croissants, alongside dulce de leche pancakes topped with bananas and cookie crumble, crispy French toast bites, plus iced tiramisu matcha lattes served with a ladyfinger biscuit. Even the specialty cocktails seem primed to explode on FoodTok, including a crème brûlée espresso tini “made with tequila because … Miami,” per its cheeky menu.

On the savory side, there are French breakfast burritos (spoiler: in crepes, not tortillas), plus truffle croque madames with truffle bechamel, ham and Gruyere on fresh brioche, a filet steak and eggs bowl, and Bae’s Shakshuka with three eggs, feta and a Jerusalem bagel (a sweeter, oblong, baked bread that’s distinct from New York-style boiled bagels).

The chefs in charge of menu testing are director of operations Francisco Aristy (ex-Biltmore Hotel Coral Gables, Nikki Beach) and administrative director Javier Tome, who also help develop new pastry recipes and have “the same mentality and ambitions we have,” Amsallem says.

The couple’s plan was always to open in Weston — especially after the runaway success of Café Bastille in Fort Lauderdale, which opened in late 2023 as a touristy, youthful magnet on a tranquil stretch of the Himmarshee Canal, Bellegy says. The riverfront eatery still commands hourlong wait times for customers traveling from Sunrise, Plantation and neighborhoods west of Interstate 75, which convinced the couple to pick a suburban outpost.

“There aren’t tourists coming to Weston, so here, we’re attracting families,” Bellegy says. “Each location really has its own personality, so if Fort Lauderdale is a hidden gem, this one is an all-day cafe where people come after yoga and Pilates, have their coffee, the smoothies, their eggs. But the common thread is we believe that brunch has to be generous. If brunch is not generous, then it’s boring.”

Amsallem and Bellegy first made it their mission to make brunch less boring as front-of-house directors for two restaurants, Matsuhisa Restaurant and the Michelin-starred Il Carpaccio, both at the luxe Le Royal Monceau-Raffles Paris hotel. They bonded over a shared love of brunch, something they had no downtime to enjoy while working in hospitality.

“In our industry, you’re never off Saturdays or Sundays,” Bellegy says. “Nobody is. So we decided to leave France, because America is better. The mentality is different in America. Here, age is just a number. If you work hard, and have a good ethic, you can move up the ladder very fast. And we could do that with brunch.”

After immigrating to Miami pre-pandemic, they took over an existing French restaurant in downtown Miami and morphed it into a brunch house while keeping the same name, Café Bastille. They opened a Miami Beach location in 2024.

Now they think their casual restaurant has the potential to fit in any American city.

“We think there’s space everywhere for Café Bastille,” Amsallem says. “Depending where we are, we can be a destination for tourists but also a great choice for locals who don’t mind spending a bit extra for brunch.”

Café Bastille Weston, at 1660 Market St., debuted Friday, Jan. 16. Go to CafeBastilleDowntown.com or call 786-425-3575.

It played out precisely according to script last weekend as word spread of the military incursion in which the U.S. captured and removed Venezuela’s dictatorial president, Nicolás Maduro.

A half hour north of Doral, in parts of Broward County — where Weston has one of the largest concentrations of Venezuelans in the United States — Maduro’s ouster produced just as much joy, and in the days after just as much concern, even though it didn’t attract the same volume of news cameras.

“The whole community, the whole Venezuelan community I would say is happy. The people are just happy,” said Alexander Rueda, a native of Venezuela who is now a U.S. citizen and Weston resident. I don’t know even one person who is not against Maduro.”

Rueda, 55, and his family are among the immigrants from Venezuela who have transformed the economy, culture and politics of Weston — and, more recently, pockets of other nearby communities in Southwest Broward.

Weston is home to so many Venezuelans who are now U.S. citizens, people who have been legally allowed to live and work in the country, and their American-born citizen children that the city is often called Westonzuela.

Rueda estimated that two of every three people in his neighborhood are from Venezuela. His two youngest children attend Cypress Bay High School, where an estimated 65% of the students are Hispanic. (School district data doesn’t break down background by nationality.) Rueda’s two older children are graduates of Florida International University.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has lived in Weston for 28 years, said in an interview most of the neighbors on her block are Venezuelan, and many of her now-adult children’s friends when they were in school there were Venezuelan.

And, she said, Venezuelans and non-Venezuelans aren’t isolated in separate enclaves the way different ethnic groups are in some places.

The numbers

A Neilsberg Research analysis in October of the Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey data found Broward has 58,811 Venezuelan residents.

Previous research estimated the county’s Venezuelan population was 25,073 in 2012, up significantly from 8,807 in 2000.

And the biggest concentration is in Weston, where the estimated 10,215 Venezuelans make up 15% of the city’s population. Venezuelans are 3% of the countywide population.

Pembroke Pines, Sunrise, Miramar, Hollywood, Coral Springs and Davie also have sizable, though smaller Venezuelan populations. Pembroke Pines has the largest number outside Weston, at 8,391, an estimated 5% of the city’s population. In Sunrise the estimated 5,734 are 6% of the city’s population.

Palm Beach County, by contrast, has an estimated countywide Venezuelan population of 14,385 — less than 1% of the county’s residents. Orange County’s 40,906 residents are 2.8% of the county’s total population.

Miami-Dade County’s 124,087 Venezuelans are 4.6% of its residents. Doral, home to an estimated 31,361 Venezuelans, or 41%, has the largest Venezuelan population in the country.

Impact

Food is a visible way the Venezuelan diaspora has had an impact, said Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University, and founder of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at FIU’s School of International and Public Affairs.

“I see the influence in the restaurants that have opened up there, especially in the Weston area and in parts of western Broward,” he said. “More than anything else they have improved our culinary experience.”

Thriving businesses are a result, Gamarra said.

Adelys Ferro, a Weston resident and executive director of the political advocacy organization Venezuelan American Caucus, said there are food truck owners, entrepreneurs, nurses, restaurateurs, teachers and delivery people, along with many other business and professional people.

“We have become a very important asset of Weston and of Broward,” Ferro said. “I think it’s a critical community, a really very important community. We are part of not only the cultural fabric of the community, but also the economic fabric of the community.”

And there are large businesses that started small in Weston. Rueda is CEO of Panna Group, a food company which in many ways illustrates the growth and economic importance of the Venezuelan community in Weston.

Panna started selling Venezuelan food — tequeños (fried dough-wrapped cheese sticks), empanadas (dough with a filling), and cachitos (ham-filled rolls) — at a gas station in Weston in 2000. It still does.

The company, which Rueda joined in 2014, now has five restaurants and coffee shops in Weston, Doral and Orlando.

Panna today has more than 200 employees, and the company produces and distributes its products to retailers, including Walmart, in 40 states. It had $45 million in revenue in its most recent year of business, Rueda said.

The now larger company’s products serve a wider range of tastes, including Argentinian empanadas, which use wheat as the main ingredient and are baked; Colombian empanadas, which have a yellow-corn base and are fried; and Venezuelan empanadas, which have a white corn base and also are fried, he said.

Why Weston

There are varied, complex and often interrelated reasons why so many Venezuelans have made Westonzuela their home.

Venezuelans have been coming to the U.S. for decades in waves, sometimes motivated more by economics, sometimes motivated by political turmoil and repression.

Weston has long been a prime destination. Wasserman Schultz said it is home to people who have lived in the community for decades along with newer arrivals.

Decades ago, some wealthier Venezuelans began splitting their time between South Florida and their home country, gradually spending more and more time. Some people with the financial ability moved their families to the area and, for a time, returned to Venezuela to conduct business.

Later, Venezuelans fled economic chaos and lawlessness under the repressive regimes of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Upheavals, repression and economic turmoil under those leaders sometimes produced large influxes of new arrivals.

(President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted, without offering evidence, that Maduro emptied prisons and mental institutions and sent millions of violent criminals to the United States.)

Attracted by the city’s reputation for having stellar schools and one of the lowest crime rates in Florida, many immigrants from Venezuela settled in Weston. Crime statistics show the city continues to have one of the lowest crime rates in the state and nation.

Rueda, who moved to the U.S. in 2006 as his career advanced with a Fortune 500 company, recalls that real estate companies had sales offices in Venezuela.

Fabio Andrade, who is Colombian, said that years ago developers building in the planned city of Weston advertised to potential buyers in Venezuela and Colombia. Old news coverage about Arvida, the company that planned and developed Weston, reported that developers advertised in those countries in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“That is how both the Colombian and the Venezuelan communities started coming to Broward,” Andrade said.

Elected to the Weston City Commission in 2024, Andrade founded the Americas Community Center decades ago, and the organization still runs programs helping Hispanic immigrants with assistance in jobs and networking in Broward County.

Given his corporate career that brought him to the U.S., Rueda said he’s different from many Venezuelan immigrants. He’s similar, though, in that schools attracted him to Weston, in 2016. “Weston became a very attractive place because of the education,” he said. “The Venezuelan people value education.”

Ramón Peraza, 70, said he arrived in Weston 22 years ago with his wife and four children, then between 9 and 18 years old. The family has grown; he now has four grandchildren.

A few years after arriving, they bought Café Canela on the Weston-Sunrise border, where he said most of his customers were, and remain, Venezuelan.

He was an electrical engineer, who came to the U.S. for better opportunities, having previously vacationed here. Peraza said he left Venezuela, because it was impossible to work there. And he’s now a citizen of the U.S., which he called “a great nation, the best nation in the world.”

Gamarra said earlier phases of Venezuelan migration featured people with more money and more education, who were better able to afford to buy in Weston. Many of the more recent arrivals didn’t have financial resources to buy homes in an upscale community and are more dispersed.

U.S. politics

There aren’t any Venezuelan Americans in elected office in Broward, Ferro said. But the community enjoys some political clout even though it is not a large voting block.

Amassing influence and getting people elected takes time. Some immigrants were concentrating on making a living. It also takes time to gain citizenship, which allows people to vote.

And some immigrants had a bad feeling about politics in general, after fleeing a country where disagreeing with the regime could lead to harsh treatment. “Many of the people fled from Venezuela because they don’t want to continue living a life where politics has to be the main thing in your life,” Rueda said.

Still, political leaders in both parties are responsive to the Venezuelan community.

Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, has long been an outspoken critic of the Chavez and Maduro governments — and has often advocated more hawkish U.S. policy toward the country’s dictatorial leaders than other Democrats. In 2019, she visited the Colombian-Venezuelan border and met with refugees.

Gamarra said the congresswoman is reflecting her constituency “probably better than any other Democrat that I know of. … She certainly wasn’t doing the progressive agenda with them. The rest of the Democratic candidates were never able to do what she did.”

Andrade, who was the founding president of Republican Amigos, a Broward political club, also said the Democratic congresswoman has been responsive to the Venezuelan and Colombian communities.

For many years, Gamarra said, Venezuelans who had become citizens tended to lean Democratic, something he said changed with the rise of Trump in 2016.

As to how Venezuelan Americans vote in 2026 and beyond, that’s unclear. “How the Venezuelan vote plays out is going to greatly depend on how the next few months goes,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Anxious, optimistic

Many in the Venezuelan community praised Trump’s actions that removed Maduro. “We are very, very happy what the United States is doing about liberty for Venezuela,” Peraza said.

Others are concerned about what comes next in the country and whether the administration’s efforts to end temporary protected status, known as TPS, will result in mass deportations of Venezuelans.

The Trump administration is terminating TPS, a humanitarian program, which allows people who’ve fled turmoil in their home countries and can’t return home to legally live and work in the U.S. The administration is working to end TPS for people from multiple troubled countries.

If large numbers of Venezuelans are forced to leave, Gamarra said the effects would be significant. “It’ll be big. I don’t think we fully understand that yet.”

Republican Andrade and Democrat Ferro said the end of TPS is a major concern.

On Friday, Wasserman Schultz and U.S. Rep. Darren Soto of Orlando, led 70 Democrats in writing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding they immediately restore TPS for Venezuelans.

Questions remain about the nature of the government the Trump administration is allowing to run the country, with many Maduro allies in positions of power, including his vice president. And people in the country may be unable to obtain basic goods and services, something that was already difficult under the crumbling Maduro-led economy.

Wasserman Schultz called the capture and removal of Maduro “welcome news.”

“The real concern that exists right now among Venezuelans in our community in Broward is that they’ve cut off the head of a snake and swapped it for another head on top of the same snake’s body,” Wasserman Schultz said. “So while there’s excitement and hope, probably still cautious optimism, there’s real concern.”

Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.

Instead, she scrolled Instagram at 3 a.m., where news spread that the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. By 6 a.m., she saw that President Donald Trump had confirmed it.

So Boscarolo woke up her family, blasting the popular anthem “Venezuela” and telling them, “turn the lights on, we are free!”

Similar celebrations were happening in other South Florida homes as news of Maduro’s capture overnight spread. By late Saturday morning, several Venezuelan Americans had gathered at PANNA, a popular Weston restaurant, embracing and watching the news, where updates continued to stream in. Some carried the Venezuelan flag; others wore flags painted on their faces or embroidered on their shirts.

The mood was largely hopeful, but there was also some apprehension around a key question: what comes next?

Many in South Florida’s Venezuelan community fled Maduro’s regime but still have family in the country, and are now anticipating the next chapter. Several said they hoped to see power go to Edmundo González, who is widely viewed as the true winner of the 2024 presidential election, and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

Janet Guzman, 67, said her family in Venezuela could hear explosions near the home where she used to live before she fled eight years ago. They are now waiting inside for more information.

But Guzman said she wasn’t too worried and believes Trump and Venezuelan opposition leaders have a plan.

“I’m just waiting for what is coming, what is going to happen,” she said. “But it’s all written. Everything is really very well prepared.”

Several in the community said Maduro’s capture was only the first step towards real change.

Ricardo and Gisa, who asked that their last names not be used, also came to the U.S. eight years ago, shortly before their daughter was born. They no longer felt safe in their home or walking down the street, they said. Both have friends and family back in Venezuela.

Gisa said she had “mixed emotions” about Maduro’s capture.

“I’m just hoping from this point on there is a peaceful transition,” she said. “People in Venezuela have suffered enough.”

“Right now the regime is still in place,” Ricardo added. “Maduro has been taken out but the regime still has to fall down.”

Javier Alegre, 50, who left the country 36 years ago at the age of 14, said that the corruption in Venezuela is “way deeper” than Maduro and Flores.

His family fled when Venezuela was still considered a democratic nation, he said, but corruption and a lack of security were rampant. Then Maduro took power, and it became “unbearable.”

“People would kill you to steal a pair of shoes,” he said.

Alegre said he hopes people see what happened in Venezuela as a warning.

“Let’s make sure that we learn from what happened,” he said. “And prevent that from happening in this country. A lot of people have given everything to come here. This is one of the last lifeboats on earth, and it needs to be preserved as well.”

While many Venezuelan South Floridians celebrated, local Democratic political leaders and advocates criticized the Trump administration for acting without approval from Congress, and for the president’s comments during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago Saturday that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily.

“This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”

State Sen. Shevrin Jones, who represents parts of Miami-Dade County, also celebrated Maduro’s removal but condemned the Trump administration.

“While it is encouraging to see the removal of this dictator, bombing a sovereign nation without congressional approval is unacceptable,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, South Florida Republicans championed the military action.

“This extraordinary action sends a clear message: the United States will not tolerate narco-terrorism in our hemisphere,” U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who represents parts of Miami-Dade county, said in a statement.

“This is a historic day in Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan, Cuban, and Nicaraguan exile communities in the nation,” U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, who also represents parts of Miami-Dade, said in a post on X. “We are forever grateful to President Trump and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.”

Many younger South Floridians had never visited Venezuela or only had distant memories from when they were children. They hoped Maduro’s capture could mean finally visiting the country, where their friends and family still live.

Outside the restaurant, Mariana Boscarolo hugged her 11-year-old daughter, Isabella, who began to cry.

“I never really got to go to Venezuela because of Maduro, and I’ve always wanted to go and I’ve always waited for the moment to be free,” Isabella said, adding that her great-grandfather, Alberto, had been waiting for Venezuela to be freed from Maduro but died last year.

Inside, Fiorella Ramirez, 12, gathered with her family, some wearing shirts reading “Venezolana soy.”

Ramirez was 3 years old when she came to the U.S. Her sister woke her up Saturday morning with the news.

“It felt like I could finally go back home,” she said.

Now La Torretta Italian Grill, a comforting staple of the Indian Trace neighborhood, is scheduled to permanently close Jan. 11, management confirmed with the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday. Manager Martha Vasalo said new landlords in the Weston Lakes Plaza planned to “dramatically” increase rents beyond what longtime owners Fabrizio and Vita Russo could handle.

“Silent investors from California have decided to raise us,” said Vasalo, adding that La Torretta marked its 34th anniversary in business in early December. “We don’t want to close at all.”

La Torretta’s imminent closing marks Weston’s second shuttering of a longtime comfort-food icon in recent months, after Lucille’s American Cafe shuttered in late August after 26 years. It also bookends another particularly brutal year for local dining, adding to the tally of longtime eateries that met their demise after grappling with doubled rents, increased food and labor.

Vasalo, the sister-in-law of co-owner Fabrizio Russo, insists that the owners are “actively” scouting a future La Torretta location “in the near vicinity of Weston,” she says. She confirmed no new lease has been signed.

“La Torretta’s name in Weston will not be put to sleep,” Vasalo adds.

Regular diners who heard about La Torretta’s plans to close took to social media in waves of shock and anger, listing their favorite dishes while bemoaning the hardship that legacy restaurants face to stay alive.

“We have been ordering from La Torretta for 27 years!!!” commenter Lisa Cole wrote. “What a loss to Weston!”

“We had a large group for dinner after my mom’s funeral and they treated us very well. Hate to see this when they were one of the first restaurants in Town Center,” commenter Linda Palmer said, adding, “We really miss Lucille’s as well.”

“I guess we’ll be ordering there a few more times before they close,” Traci Caruso-Borkowski wrote. “I’ve never had a bad meal there.”

At its peak, La Torretta operated two locations — one in Weston Lakes and a second 3 miles east, with a slightly altered menu, at 1352 Weston Road in the Country Isles Plaza. Here, La Torretto turned out a carousel of Italian-American classics in its spacious dining room and pink column-wrapped patio, including manicotti, ravioli and lasagna, chicken fortified with Marsala wine, mussels marinara and calamari.

La Torretta faced recent setbacks, among them being temporarily ordered shut July 30 by state inspectors for a handful of dirty dining issues.

La Torretta Italian Grill, at 308 Indian Trace, in Weston, expects to close Jan. 11. Call 954-389-0551 or go to LaTorrettaWeston.com.

Florida Blue and Broward County’s two public health systems, both under the same CEO, still lack a new contract. The months-long impasse between Florida Blue and Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System has affected as many as 40,000 policyholders who must deal with higher out-of-pocket costs, a disruption in their doctor relationships, and finding ongoing treatment for non-emergency care. Earlier communication from the parties indicated new contracts might be completed by year’s end, but that hasn’t happened.

“We are having ongoing and productive discussions with the leadership teams from Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare System,” Florida Blue spokesperson Jorge Martinez said Tuesday.

In addition, unless Florida Blue reaches an agreement with Cleveland Clinic Weston by March, notices will go out to policyholders informing them that the hospital will be out of network as well, meaning they will not be covered for non-emergency services. For now, Florida Blue members can continue scheduling appointments and receiving care as usual at the Weston hospital.

The inability to negotiate a contract, however, would put Florida Blue policyholders at a significant disadvantage when choosing care. Open enrollment for employer-sponsored health plans has now closed for most companies, forcing them to decide whether to continue with Florida Blue and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Martinez said it’s too soon to know if and how contract disputes affected enrollment choices. Broward’s public health systems have suffered, too, with patients delaying care or finding new providers.

In Palm Beach County, Cigna policyholders received good news Wednesday when an eleventh-hour deal allowed them to stay in network at their major hospitals.

Tenet’s Palm Beach Health Network, which operates six major hospitals, was about to go out-of-network with Cigna on Wednesday. However, a Tenet spokesperson said the parties reached an agreement that will allow 1.3 million Florida Cigna policyholders and 13,000 Palm Beach County residents to be covered at its hospitals. Those hospitals are Delray Medical Center,  Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, and Palm Beach Children’s Hospital in West Palm Beach. Tenet also operates Florida Coast Medical Center in Port St. Lucie.

Non-renewal of Cigna’s contract would have put the county’s only children’s hospital out of network, just as Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital has gone out of network for Florida Blue policyholders in Broward County.

Cigna’s standoff with Tenet’s Palm Beach Health Network was part of a national contract dispute with Tenet Healthcare facilities and services nationwide, which the two health giants resolved on Wednesday.

Patients are increasingly caught in disputes as health insurers and providers disagree on contract terms and the two parties urge each other to stop disrupting medical treatment.

On Wednesday,  Cigna spokesperson Madeline Ziomek said, “An agreement has been reached with Tenet-owned Palm Beach Health Network, their physicians, and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to continue providing in-network health care with no interruption in coverage for our customers. Together we will continue improving the health and vitality of the people we both serve in this community through access to affordable care.”

The heated negotiations between the insurer and healthcare company may represent the trend ahead and the role AI will play.

Tenet had set up a website for patients to demand that Cigna relent and said that Cigna would not guarantee that a physician, not a computer algorithm, makes decisions about patient care.

“Tenet Healthcare has been negotiating in good faith to keep in-network access to hospitals and providers at the Palm Beach Health Network for our patients,” Andrew Lofholm, Communications and Community Relations Manager with Palm Beach Health Network, had said.  “If Cigna ends its contract by December 31, 1.33 million Floridians could lose affordable access to both of the county’s Level I trauma centers and the only children’s hospital in the region. Because Cigna refuses to agree to reasonable terms to guarantee that a doctor, not a computer algorithm or AI, will make meaningful decisions about our patients’ care, families will be faced with paying thousands more or leaving the doctors and hospitals they’ve relied on for years.”

The standoffs over financial terms and reimbursement rates are also infuriating Broward patients, who at one point were told by Memorial and Broward Health they couldn’t make appointments as Florida Blue policyholders, even if they wanted to self-pay. On Tuesday, Broward Health and Memorial said they would accept Florida Blue patients who want to self-pay to continue seeing their doctors.

“We welcome any Florida Blue policyholders to continue their care with Broward Health providers,” said Broward Health Vice President of Communications Jennifer Smith. “Patients would need to self-pay or get a single-case agreement from Florida Blue. ”

The law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to patients regardless of whether they are in network.

“Anyone who arrives at our emergency departments will be treated regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay,” Smith said. “If admission is required, we notify the payor, and they decide whether to authorize admission or start transfer to an in-network hospital. But ultimately, it is the patient’s choice where they are treated.”

South Florida patients are upset that they are caught in the conflict between provider and insurer.

“My husband and I have complex medical histories,” Rev. Corrie Montoya of Davie wrote in a letter to the Sun Sentinel. “We have Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance through my employer. Most of our physicians are with Broward Health. We now must find a new primary care doctor and at least eight new specialists. It’s frustrating to have to start over. I can push through, but what I can’t abide is Florida Blue putting my child and all Broward children at risk.”

The breakdown in contract negotiations between health providers and health insurers put South Florida residents like Bob and Gayle Pifer in the position of losing access to doctors they have come to rely on over many decades.

Bob Pifer has been calling and writing Memorial Healthcare and Florida Blue, seeking answers to whether they can continue to see their doctors, and when the contract dispute will be resolved. The couple live in Pembroke Pines and all hospitals nearby, south of Interstate 595, are operated by Memorial. Both see various specialists at Memorial and Gayle Pifer is undergoing cancer treatment. The Pifers said they have been Blue Cross Blue Shield policyholders for more than 40 years, but can’t afford to keep seeing the same doctors.

“We live eight minutes from Memorial West. If we keep going, we could be stuck for the whole bill,” Bob Pifer told the Sun Sentinel. “In my wife’s case, the last infusion was very expensive.”

Plantation resident Andy Greenfield said he has been getting primary care at Memorial for over 30 years. “Because of this impasse, I will be forced to look elsewhere, even for ongoing conditions that Memorial physicians had treated. I don’t understand how so many hospitals can be out of network simultaneously for residents of Broward County.”

South Florida Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.

“‘What’s going to happen?’” friends, neighbors and shopkeepers ask each other, Alarcón said. “We don’t know what the outcome is going to be or what the strategy is.”

The administration has been ratcheting up its pressure campaign against Venezuela for months with deadly boat strikes, which a range of experts in laws governing the use of armed force have denounced as illegal, and a significant buildup of U.S. Naval forces in the Caribbean. Recent days have felt like whiplash, Alarcón and several other Venezuelan Americans said, as military intervention seemed imminent, only to have President Donald Trump say he would be open to talks with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro.

Yet the many Venezuelans who fled to South Florida over the past 25 years — after Hugo Chávez and then Maduro, his successor, came to power — do not all agree on what should happen. The differences of opinion, complicated by unease over Trump’s immigration policies, are creating tense divisions among Venezuelans in South Florida, as supporters of U.S. intervention try to drown out critics whom they consider a small minority.

“In theory, we should be united by the same thing, which is liberty for Venezuela,” said Esteban Hernández Ramos, 30, who lives in Fort Lauderdale. “In practice, there’s this division.”

Hernández left Venezuela when he was 16 and now works for a right-wing media outlet that publishes pro-Trump news in Spanish. He wants the U.S. military to occupy Venezuela for a sustained period — not only to take down Maduro, who is widely seen as having stolen the country’s 2024 presidential election, but also to dismantle the military leadership that has kept him in power.

Alarcón, 36, was born in the United States and works as a Democratic political analyst. She wants a peaceful transfer of power from Maduro to Edmundo González, the diplomat who defeated Maduro in a presidential election last year more than 2-1, according to the Venezuelan opposition’s vote count. But she said she was cynical that Trump’s pressure would result in her desired outcome.

Venezuelans’ ties to South Florida date back decades, but their numbers grew significantly during the Chávez era and again after Maduro came into power. Embraced by Miami’s influential Cuban exiles, who saw them as ideological brethren fleeing a dictatorship, Venezuelan American voters were courted by Republican politicians, who succeeded in winning many of them over.

Now, disagreeing with Trump is seen among many Venezuelan Americans as unpatriotic and disloyal — including some old enough to remember past disastrous U.S. military interventions in Latin America.

“It’s like, if you’re not 1,000% with them or you don’t want a military intervention, then you’re a collaborator,” said Luis Fernando Atencio, 32, a co-founder of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, a Miami-based activist group allied with the left-leaning Latino Victory Project. He said he feared military intervention because it could result in Venezuelans being injured or killed.

The vast majority of Venezuelans in the United States oppose Maduro and would like to see him gone, said José Antonio Colina, a former Venezuelan military officer who fled his country for Miami in 2003 after being accused of planting bombs in Caracas. The United States decided not to extradite Colina, 51, who now runs a group called Politically Persecuted Venezuelans in Exile.

“Since that regime is there by force,” he said of Maduro, “it has to be taken out by force.”

But some Venezuelan Americans, including Colina, cannot accept the pressure campaign given the Trump administration’s simultaneous push to end temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants. In Doral, business owners and residents have noted that the city feels quieter as Venezuelans get deported, leave voluntarily or stay in their homes out of fear.

“There are at least 660,000 Venezuelans that are being threatened to be sent back to Venezuela under this regime that apparently is about to be attacked by the U.S. military,” Adelys Ferro, another co-founder of the Venezuelan-American Caucus, said at a news conference last month. “How can you reconcile these realities?” she asked.

Ousting Maduro should take priority over deporting Venezuelans and leaving their fate in Maduro’s hands, Colina said. He could accept Trump’s immigration policies if Maduro and his allies were no longer in charge, he added.

He and other exiles who have long condemned Maduro have lately found themselves vilified by other Venezuelans for questioning Trump. On social media, Colina said, many try to shut him down.

Such behavior, he said, “is irresponsible and does not take into account the suffering of thousands of Venezuelans.”

César Miguel Rondón, one of Venezuela’s best known radio journalists, who fled the country for Miami eight years ago, has also faced online attacks for voicing skepticism about Trump’s approach. He has been called a Maduro government collaborator, an attitude he says leaves little room for nuance or middle ground.

Social media has turned into “a sort of firing squad,” Rondón said in an interview.

“Here, I’ve had to take great care in opining, for reasons very similar to why I had to be careful in Venezuela,” he said. “I had to leave Venezuela precisely for opining and calling out the dictatorship. But here, the intransigence, especially among ourselves, has become something incredible.”

At least some of those who criticize Rondón and others see any questioning of Trump’s approach as an implicit questioning of María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month. She has been a strong supporter of the American pressure campaign.

“It sows many doubts,” Hernández, the young conservative, said of the opposition to U.S. military intervention. He wondered whether Venezuelans in that camp truly want Maduro gone, refusing to consider that they are instead grappling with what role, exactly, the United States should play.

“Maybe it’s naïveté. Maybe it’s complicity,” Hernández said of the skeptics’ hesitation. “One has room to debate, but what more is there to debate?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

“What needs to happen is that Donald Trump needs to put the sanctions back on Venezuela and starve the regime, not enrich Maduro” by continuing to allow Venezuelan oil to flow to foreign buyers, she told reporters while appearing alongside two leaders of the Venezuela-American Caucus at her district office in Sunrise on Thursday.

The Democratic congresswoman also asserted that the Pentagon’s military assaults in international waters against alleged drug traffickers from Venezuela — a campaign that has resulted in an estimated 61 deaths in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific thus far — have occurred “with no evidence, due process or congressional authorization.”

“Extrajudicial murder of Venezuelans is what Maduro does, it is not what America should do,” she said.

Disbelief and disappointment

Wasserman Schultz made her remarks after meeting privately with six Venezuelan community leaders. Only two appeared to meet with reporters to discuss the potential for mass deportations of 600,000 Venezuelans after the Trump administration removed their temporary protected status this summer.

Adelys Ferro, the executive director of the Venezuela-American Caucus and a member of the Latino Victory Project, and Luis Fernando Atencio, co-founder of the caucus, told reporters that they preferred a peaceful transition of power from Maduro, who most observers say stole a presidential election last year and jailed political opponents. The two leaders said the Venezuelan community is in a state of “disbelief” and “disappointment” after Trump invalidated the protections that allowed them to stay in South Florida and elsewhere around the nation.

“What he is doing, in many ways, sadly, is very similar to what we know, what we have experienced back in Venezuela. And that similarity doesn’t have to do with any political way of thinking,” Ferro said.

Wasserman Schultz added, “Many of the Venezuelans in my district and across South Florida fled the brutality and despotism of the Maduro regime [and] many have family members who are still there.”

“Deal with a devil”

“[Trump] cut a deal with the devil Maduro to deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans  to a country where they know they will face oppression, danger, persecution and arrest — and I am talking about people who have never committed crimes,” she said. The deal, she asserted, allowed Maduro to continue to sell oil “and continue to remain in power.”

Earlier this year, the administration renewed a license for the multinational energy conglomerate Chevron to resume oil drilling in the South American nation.

“Donald Trump can pretend off to the side with his distractions that he has the best interests of Venezuelans in restoring democracy at heart,” she added. “But the stories I hear from across our community including today at our roundtable underscore that the opposite is true.

“Trump’s presidency has been an unending nightmare for Venezuelan-Americans here and around the country,” she added. “He has ripped away temporary protected status from law-abiding families and thrown countless families into terror through raids conducted by agents in masks.”

The meeting came one day before a flurry of reports emerged — and were subsequently denied by the administration — that U.S. ships and troops amassed in the southern Caribbean are close to launching a series of attacks on various locations inside Venezuela.

A salad of actions

Since starting his second term in the White House, Trump has undertaken a salad bowl approach for dealing with the Venezuelan regime.

The reported actions include:

• A prisoner swap with the regime that saw the release of 10 American citizens in exchange for 250 deported Venezuelan nationals held in a prison in El Salvador.
• Renewal of a U.S. Treasury license — previously revoked by Trump — for the oil multinational Chevron to resume doing business in Venezuela.
• Removal of temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. and the start of deportations.
• Establishment of a $50 million reward for the arrest of Maduro as a “narco-terrorist.”
• Rejection of offers from a worried Maduro regime to cede natural resource rights in Venezuela to the U.S.
• Authorization of the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.
• Dispatch of U.S. ships and warplanes including the massive aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to the Caribbean.

Toward a ‘peaceful’ political transition

Wasserman Schultz cast doubt over whether an attempt at a forceful U.S.-led regime change would end well.

“Our track record in the United States is abhorrent when it comes to regime change, particularly in Latin America, and he is alienating Latin American leaders who are opposed to Maduro, but who are starting to sympathize more with him because of Trump’s illegal actions,” she said.

“We have to make sure that we build consensus and that we starve Maduro out of power through really significant sanctions and pressure through regional unity,” she added.

Luis Atencio asserted that “Venezuela is in dire need of a political transition.”

“This political transition has to be democratic, peaceful, but also centered on justice,” he added. “This pathway was opened up last year when Venezuelans elected Edmundo Gonzalez as our president-elect. Above all else, this has to be respected and maintained.”

Gonzalez has been living in exile in Spain after a 2024 election in which most domestic and international observers agreed he had soundly defeated Maduro, who rejected the results and retained power.

“It would be opportune to thank the United States and representatives such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz for always having our back and standing with us whenever we needed it the most,” Atencio said.

But in the interest of reconciliation among all Venezuelans, he said, it is “extremely important” that the effort remain centered on the rule of law and human rights.

“If these principles aren’t followed we know that true liberty in Venezuela cannot be attained,” Atencio said.

At least one cold front, or possibly two, could hit South Florida next week.

What that means for Halloween depends on the second front, said National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Garcia. “It’s looking like that later front may be more into the midweek, Wednesday into Thursday, so we could see Thursday and Friday (Halloween, Oct. 31) with some of that drier, cooler air.”

The National Weather Service limits its forecasts to seven days, so they have not yet made temperature predictions, but other weather services are calling for cooler temperatures on Halloween.

According to The Weather Channel, Halloween in coastal spots such as Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale will have early morning temperatures of 61 to 62 and daytime highs of 79.

Inland, Weston will be a bit cooler, dropping to 59 overnight Thursday and rising to 80 Halloween day.

The Apple weather app has similar outlooks, with morning lows of 62 to 63 and daytime temperatures of 78 for Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and Weston.

AccuWeather didn’t list low temperatures, but predicted a 0% chance of rain for now.

Those morning lows won’t last through the day, however. Days should be crisp and sunny, with sunset at 6:40 p.m. on Halloween. Daylight savings time does not kick in until Sunday, Nov. 2.

“This time of year it’s not quite where everything dries out, but a good front will give you that clearing that makes it nicer once nighttime comes and it gets a little more crispy,” said Garcia.

Garcia said that the fact that Florida is a peninsula tends to keep cool snaps shorter at this time of year. Ideally, a nice cold front rolls in with a high behind to keep northerly winds over the area for two or three days. “Even then, with time, we have water on both sides … eventually you’ll have wind coming from the Atlantic or the Gulf and that moisture, that ocean area will kind of moderate things.”

The second front next week would make the difference.

“So right now, for Halloween and Halloween night, if that front is able to clear through Wednesday into Thursday, it could very well be dry and with temperatures a few degrees cooler, and potentially a little breezy,” Garcia said.

A total of 3 to 4 inches of rain fell across parts of Broward County and northeast Miami-Dade County on Friday, mostly between noon and 3 p.m., said NWS Miami Meteorologist George Rizzuto. Areas from Pompano Beach south to Hallandale Beach were under a flood advisory for much of the afternoon.

Near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the NWS Miami recorded just over 2 inches of rain on Friday as of 4 p.m., close to a record total of 2.34 inches set in 1968.

Numerous roads in Wilton Manors were submerged and closed for hours, the police department said in a post on X. Commercial Boulevard in Oakland Park, as well as Federal Highway and Northeast 56th Street in Pompano Beach, also experienced some flooding, up to 8 inches, according to NWS Miami local storm reports.

In Davie, the fire department’s Technical Rescue Team freed a horse that became stuck in the mud. There were no other significant calls for service related to flooding, said Jessica Montes, a spokesperson for Davie Fire Rescue Department.

“The horse wasn’t stuck very deep in the mud — she had fallen onto her side and the ground was too slippery for her to get back up on her own,” Montes said. “She had also worn herself out trying, which is why our crews responded to assist.”

Fort Lauderdale officials said crews were out monitoring the areas that saw some flooding and made sure drains were clear. Fire rescue crews did not receive any major calls for service related to the weather, according to Frank Guzman, a spokesperson for Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue.

Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue Batallion Chief Michael Kane said there were many weather-related calls for assistance Friday afternoon but none involved rescue or a major medical emergency.

FLOOD ADVISORY: The below roadways are underwater. Please seek alternative routes.

NE 26 St & Andrews Av
700 – 900 NW 26 St
800 – 900 NW 29 St
2700 – 2900 NW 7 Av
2600 – 2700 NW 3 Av
NW 29 St & Andrews Av
NE 26 St & 15 Av
2600 – 2800 NE 16 Av
2700 – 2800 NE 16 Ter pic.twitter.com/YaQGyU52iI

— Wilton Manors Police Department (@wiltonmanorspd) October 10, 2025

South Florida is expected to see a cold front in the region starting Saturday. Friday’s storms were “right ahead of the front,” Rizzuto said.

Rain chances will decrease for the weekend and early next week, according to NWS Miami, though Rizzuto said there’s still some chance for showers early Saturday morning.

Temperatures are forecast to drop to the low 70s Saturday and Sunday night and into next week.

The Jolly supporters include four county commissioners, two school board members, five state legislators, two mayors and four city commissioners and a long list of former elected officials and Democratic Party leaders.

“This coalition sends a clear message: David Jolly is the candidate who can energize Democrats, appeal to independents and common sense Republicans, and deliver real solutions to Florida’s affordability crisis,” Broward Mayor Beam Furr said in a written statement.

Broward, the second most populous county in the state, has lost some of its political swagger in recent years as Florida has become more Republican and the Democrats have had difficulties mobilizing their registered voters to show up at the polls.

Still, Broward is a home to an enormous number of Democrats who could determine the outcome of the August 2026 primary for governor. Any Democratic candidate for statewide office faces a tough climb next year — since 2002, Republicans have won 32 statewide elections and Democrats have won six.

A Democratic nominee has no hope of winning a statewide general election without running up a large advantage in Broward to help overcome more Republican parts of the state. “Winning statewide in Florida requires winning big in Broward,” Furr said.

Jolly agreed. “Broward County is vital for any Democratic path to victory in Florida,” he said in a statement..

The endorsements from the Democrats, who collectively have won dozens of elections, provide validation for Jolly, who once was a Republican member of Congress from Tampa Bay. In December 2015, while he was still in Congress, Jolly called on Trump to drop out of the presidential race. Jolly lost his bid for reelection in 2016.

In 2018 he left the Republican Party. After years as a no party affiliation/independent voter, he became a registered Democrat in April.

Endorsers include County Commissioners Furr, Nan Rich, Lamar Fisher and Steve Geller; School Board members Maura Bulman and Nora Rupert; state Sen. Tina Polsky; state Reps. Dan Daley, Mitch Rosenwald, Michael Gottlieb, and Robin Bartleman; Mayors Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale and Angelo Castillo of Pembroke Pines; and Commissioners Steve Glassman and Ben Sorensen of Fort Lauderdale and Caryl Shuham and Idelma Quintana of Hollywood.

Another 20 former elected officials also endorsed Jolly, as did former Broward Democratic Party Chairs Mitch Ceasar and Cynthia Busch.

Jolly’s campaign chair is Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and prominent Democrat.

“I’m grateful to have the support of so many leaders who have dedicated their lives to public service. Together, we’re building the coalition needed to solve the affordability and insurance crisis, defend our public schools, and restore common sense in state government,” Jolly said.

Jolly’s endorsers don’t include top elected Black Broward Democrats. The political world is waiting to see whether Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings enters the primary.

Demings became his county’s first Black mayor in 2018, after serving as its first Black sheriff and Orlando’s first Black police chief. Unlike Broward and Palm Beach counties, where county commissioners elect one of their own to serve a term as county mayor, the Orange County mayor is elected by voters.

Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.