Sierra Club Against 836 Highway, Devastating Florida Citrus Season & Former Obama Speechwriter

Miami-Dade County commissioners will vote on the future of an 836 highway extension on Wednesday as tensions brew over traffic congestion in South Florida. This extension will add a 14-mile stretch of highway from the western portion of the 836, moving south along the Urban Boundary Development line west of Kendall. Some residents want this to ease traffic on their daily commute, but environmental groups argue this could push development past that boundary, into the Everglades wetlands vital to the ecosystem. Sierra Club of South Floridarepresentative Diana Umpierrejoined Sundial to talk about this threat to the Everglades.

The Florida orange is an iconic crop, responsible for employing nearly 76,000 Floridians in the $9 billion industry. But as summer approaches, so does the end of the worst citrus growing season seen in decades. The citrus greening disease epidemic combined with impacts of Hurricane Irma meant that only 45 million boxes were produced this year - that matches the output at the start of World War II. Sundial sat down with Michael Rogers, the Director at the University of Florida Center for Citrus.

Many of President Obama’s foreign policy achievements were memorialized in major speeches broadcasted around the globe. Think back to the speech he made from the Oval Officefollowing the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the speech in Havana announcing the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Ben Rhodes - President Obama’s speechwriter and one of his advisors on national security, joined Sundial via Skype from Dallas. Rhodes will also be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Wednesday, June 20 to discuss his new book, “The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.”