The Supreme Court of the United States has announced they will be taking up a legal battle over a decade in the making regarding how much money a state can recoup after a legal settlement.
The issue revolves around Gianinna Gallardo, who was struck by a bus in 2008 and suffered drastic injuries. Gallardo’s parents reached an $800,000 legal settlement, and the accident left Gallardo in a vegetative state.
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a case backing a new set of voting reform laws signed by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. In their decision, SCOTUS signaled support for measures taken by states like Florida in their attempt to clamp down on election and voter fraud.
The Florida Legislature, lead by Republicans, passed an election reform bill and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law on May 6. The bill sets in place new requirements for ballot drop boxes and mail-in voting.
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Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill exempting Florida’s colleges and universities from COVID-related lawsuits. The schools would be shielded from those seeking to sue the school based on decisions made to close campuses forcing students online.
“The Legislature finds that during the COVID-19 public health emergency, educational institutions had little choice but to close or restrict access to their campuses in an effort to protect the health of their students, educators, staff and communities,” the bill read.
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On Thursday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he vetoed four bills. The bill most notably being struck was SB 54, a bill related to motor vehicle insurance due to the bill potentially having “unintended consequences,” the DeSantis team said.
The bill was a repeal which would have eliminated no-fault PIP system and would have required more than $25,000 worth of mandatory bodily injury coverage. Florida’s lawmakers supported the legislation, but the insurance lobby argued the repeal could lead to more uninsured drivers.
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Last week, a federal judge upheld Florida’s law banning firearm sales to under 21 years old. The law was passed as part of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act which raised the purchasing age to 21. Previously, Floridians 18 to 20 were permitted to purchase firearms.
The judge, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, reluctantly upheld the law based on the Eleventh Circuit’s Second Amendment precedent but warned about the potential damage to 18-to-20-year-olds’ Second Amendment rights.
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Former Florida Senate Democrat Caucus Leader Sen. Gary Farmer (D-34) is continuing to criticize his fellow Democratic lawmakers even after he was ousted as their leader and replaced with Sen. Lauren Book (D-32).
Farmer and Book are both Democrats from Broward County, and Farmer is accusing his colleagues of “throwing votes” to Republican lawmakers and is questioning their motives.
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Washington Post reporter Hannah Dreier posted a series of tweets over the weekend pushing a politicized perspective on the Surfside, Fla. condo collapse.
Dreier’s claim is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis did not give permission for FEMA provide on-the-ground aid for a full day. Dreier’s tweets have since been debunked.
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Earlier this week, Florida District Judge Marcia Morales Howard issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against the Biden administration. The lawsuit was initiated by a farmer who said a debt relief program to “socially disadvantaged farmers” is discriminatory.
In the $1.9 billion stimulus packaged signed by Biden earlier this year, approximately $4 billion of the plan is designated to assist exclusively farmers of color for debt relief through direct payments up to 120 percent of the farmer’s outstanding debt.
The order by Howard prevents the USDA from distributing the payments directly to farmers enrolled in the program.
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Earlier this week, the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) officially tapped Harvard Vice Provost for Research, Richard McCullough, as the next president at Florida State University (FSU).
He was confirmed by the board to succeed outgoing president John Thrasher and will be starting with a base salary of $700,000 per year with a car allowance up to $1,000 per month.
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The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) established a set of regulations designed to assist in the implementation for collegiate athlete compensation in Florida’s universities. According to the standards, athletes will be able to hire agents but will have to disclose contracts and payments to their university.
These measures were taken by the BOG due to a bill signed into law last year by Governor Ron DeSantis allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness, and will take effect July 1.
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The Florida Democrat Party (FDP) announced the hiring of seven regional field directors in preparation for the 2022 election cycle.
As reported by Florida Politics, Democrats will be looking to capitalize on grassroots organizing and, they say, will hope to “get a head start on high-profile 2022 contests.”
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised more than $800,000 in the first two weeks of June, largely by small contributions from outside Florida. While touting some high-dollar donations, the recent fundraising influx has come from approximately 1,200 donors, including around 1,000 people who have given less than $1,000.
DeSantis’ popularity has gained traction nationally and is reflected by the states where his political committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, has been receiving donations. Many conservatives and Republican voters have looked to DeSantis as a leader for his handling of COVID, the signing of “pro-law enforcement” legislation, banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports, banning Critical Race Theory, and prioritizing religious freedom.
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Last week, the Florida Chamber of Commerce released their annual Legislative Report Card which reviews Florida’s lawmakers’ efforts during the legislative session and tabulates corresponding grade. The lawmakers’ grades are determined by alignment to Florida Chamber priorities and Where We Stand, another annual publication detailing the policy positions of the Florida Chamber heading into each legislative session.
For the 2021 Legislative Session, 88 lawmakers earned an “A” and 39 earned failing grades.
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Florida’s Supervisors of Elections are unsure about the new election reform bill signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis in May. The bill, SB 90, was a Republican priority issue designed to ensure election integrity, supporters said. However, supervisors of election are having a difficult time implementing the new law they never supported to begin with.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Early said the relationship between the legislature and elections offices has become more strained because of the controversial legislation.
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Earlier this month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill earlier this month designed to bring relief to a sector of the property insurance industry. However, some Floridians might be seeing rate increases.
The new law will prohibit contractors from soliciting homeowners to file claims for their roof, but it provides a larger window of time for insurance companies to accept or decline the claim. Some homeowners might find themselves in a discouraging position due to the extended time frame.
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The 1st District Court of Appeals has ruled Nikki Fried’s Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services improperly denied a concealed weapons license to a man who was previously convicted in 1969 in Illinois.
The man, only identified as R.C., said his rights were restored in 1971, two years after his conviction for stealing an eight-track tape player, and even was approved for a concealed weapons license in Illinois before moving to Florida.
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On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried had a war of words related to governance issues related to the defunding police issue.
Fried, who is running as a Democratic candidate to unseat DeSantis in the 2022 gubernatorial election, said DeSantis was bullying local municipalities under the rule of Republican control in Tallahassee.
“Now, the so-called party of small government is yet again telling government closest to the people what they can and cannot do with their money,” she said. “So, as you vote today, ask yourself, who is really the big government bureaucrat in the faraway Capitol?”
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Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill requiring Florida’s public schools to allow for one to two minutes of silence at the beginning of each day, before instruction begins.
DeSantis signed the legislation while at the The Shul of Bal Harbour, a Jewish community center in Surfside, FL. Principals in all public schools will be directed to set aside the moment of silence and teachers will be prohibited from making suggestions regarding the nature of the suggested prayer or reflection during the allotted time.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called out President Joe Biden and Silicon Valley Big Tech companies for caring more about China’s interests than “middle America” on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News program.
Biden’s big event last week was meeting with world leaders at the G-7 summit. DeSantis said Biden’s “performance may have played well with European elites, but not sure there was much in it for Middle America.”
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U.S. Rep. Val Demings (D-FL-10) raised $1 million in the first few days of her campaign against Florida Senator Marco Rubio for the 2022 election. The early momentum comes as Democrats will be backing Demings, who will likely be the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, to try and expand their majority in the U.S. Senate.
Florida is continuing to be a major battleground state, and Republicans, likewise, will look to gain ground in the U.S. Senate by keeping Rubio in his current post.
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Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried raised only approximately $215,000 in May, according to newly filed campaign finance reports. Fried’s political action committee, Florida Consumers First, saw exactly $214,832 come in from primarily small-donor contributions. However, the May numbers do not reflect the campaign fundraising effort after she formally announced her candidacy on June 1.
Fried’s foremost competitors, Democratic U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL-13) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), raised $1.2 million and $7.5 million, respectively. DeSantis has been on a fundraising crusade in recent months, raking in nearly $14 million back in April and capitalizing on his administration’s move to ban Critical Race Theory, banning transgender females from competing in female sports, and to push back against “cultural Marxism” in May.
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The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) tweeted on Monday they are accepting proposals for new projects to be a part of the Job Growth Grant Fund. DEO is accepting applications coming off Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing Florida’s $101.5 billion budget last week.
The grant program is getting an extra $50 million from this year’s budget and over $24 million left unspent from 2019. In all, the program will have over $74 million to spend on communities seeking “workforce training and public infrastructure projects to support growth and employment in Florida.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continued his push to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) from Florida’s classrooms while speaking at the State Board of Education Meeting. He maintained the ideology, which is designed to distinguish people based on skin color and considers the United States’ systems of justice and governance as inherently racist, will not be featured as part of instruction, and will instead focus on “the best possible civics instruction standards.”
During the meeting, the State Board officially banned CRT from classrooms in an effort to prevent “state-sanctioned racism,” DeSantis said on Twitter.
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On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke at a town hall organized by the Jewish Federations of Florida and touted an education bill he signed after this year’s legislative session requiring schools to teach about the Holocaust.
DeSantis also took time to address the increase of anti-Semitic attacks and overall anti-Semitism.
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State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-32) announced his intention to run against U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-7) in Florida’s potentially newly drawn congressional district as a result of 2020 U.S. Census data and Florida picking up two additional congressional seats.
Sabatini is highly critical of Murphy and her policies which he says are a reflection of “corporate interest groups” in Washington.
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Democrat Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell announced Thursday his intention to challenge Sen. Marco Rubio for Rubio’s Senate seat in 2022. He has served in his current post since 2015 and will likely be considered a big underdog with little statewide recognition.
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Chairman of the Leon County GOP, Evan Power, filed an ethics complaint at the end of last week against Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. He claimed the violation stems from her failing to disclose more than $400,000 in income on official financial disclosure forms, which she quickly amended after her official gubernatorial campaign launch on June 1.
One of the sources of her income increase is from Ignite Florida, a consulting firm where she is sole proprietor and lobbies the marijuana industry. Specifically, she amended a 2018 financial statement on May 28 indicating she received $351,480 from the firm. Previously, she had to amend the same 2018 statements on January 30, 2020 saying she received $72,000 in 2018 income.
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The NCAA is threatening to pull key competitions and championships out of Florida since Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” yesterday. The new law prohibits transgender women from competing in high school and collegiate women’s athletics.
“In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,” DeSantis said, speaking at a private school in Jacksonville.
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Facebook announced it will likely scrap its highly debated policy regarding moderating the speech and content posted on its site form politicians. Previously, politicians were subject to suspension or permanent ban under a different set of rules compared to regular Facebook users.
This decision comes on the heels of former President Donald J. Trump being permanently banned from Facebook, but no decision has come regarding whether to resurrect Trump’s Facebook account. Facebook’s Oversight Board is giving Facebook time to determine if Trump will be allowed back on the platform.
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Last month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill to expand school choice and education options. Some have said it could be the largest school choice expansion among any state in the country.
The bill will expand eligibility to for school vouchers to low-income students and students with unique abilities. Approximately 60,000 Florida students, including military kids, foster children, and adopted students, will now be eligible to receive vouchers to attend private, charter, or other home schooling.
Florida is reporting the lowest number of COVID positive cases and hospitalizations in months. On Wednesday, Florida reported 1,234 new positive cases, which was the lowest 24-hour total since September. Florida also is currently only seeing 1,832 hospitalized patients for COVID.
The number of Floridians hospitalized was the lowest recorded single day number since the metric was initially tracked in July. The average of hospitalizations has declined 19 percent in the last two weeks and approximately 38 percent lower than one month ago.
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The Florida Department of Education is launching a listening tour for two weeks hoping to get feedback regarding revisions to education standards for civics and English-language arts (ELA). The three tour stops will take place at:
Thursday, June 3 – Osceola County
Tohopekaliga High School
3675 Boggy Creek Road
Kissimmee, FL 34744
Wednesday, June 9 – Baker County
Macclenny Elementary School
1 Wildkitten Drive
Macclenny, FL 32062
A part of the new standards is a provision explicitly stating teachers and classroom instructors will not be permitted to “share their personal views or attempt to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view” that is inconsistent with state standards.
Days before her likely official gubernatorial launch, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried announced her support for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Florida’s schools and classrooms.
Fried is making a major announcement on June 1, which most are speculating is a governor’s race campaign launch, and in preparation for statewide attention, attended a local community meeting on Tuesday night where she criticized Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for saying CRT is “divisive” and should not be taught in public schools.
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Earlier this week the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a challenge from the medical marijuana industry, backing the state’s strict regulation of the industry’s business model standardized by the Florida legislature.
The challenge was filed by a marijuana company, Florigrown, where they contested the legislation put in place which limits the amount of medical marijuana licenses issued in Florida and requires dispensaries to grow and process their product. Florigrown was denied a license to become a medical marijuana treatment center in 2017.
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U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist (D-13) leads all Florida Democrats in the 2022 gubernatorial primary in a recently released St. Pete Polls survey. In the poll, Crist came away with 55 percent of respondents, while likely candidate and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried only drew 22 percent.
Only 11 percent of voters are supporting other candidates and 12 percent are undecided.
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Business, political, and religious leaders are urging Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to take up immigration reform legislation which would add security to around 490,000 immigrants in Florida.
Democratic Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at a panel hosted by the American Business Immigration Coalition he is urging Florida’s senators to take up bipartisan legislation offering a pathway to citizenship for children, brought here by illegal aliens, classified under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status. Dyer noted almost 20 percent of Orlando population was born in another country and their status as workers drives Central Florida’s economy.
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Earlier this week, Florida State University (FSU) announced the Board of Trustees unanimously voted for Richard McCullough to be the next president. The Florida Board of Governors still has to approve the verdict.
McCullough currently serves as Vice Provost at Harvard University, as well as being the strategic developer for the university’s research initiatives. Specifically, the university’s website dictates his role as to ““encourage, cultivate, and coordinate high impact academic research across all of Harvard’s schools and affiliated institutions.”
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Yesterday Florida TaxWatch released their annual Budget Turkey Watch Report, a report designed to ensure budget oversight and accountability toward Florida’s elected leaders. The report is a compilation of “Budget Turkeys,” which are described as “local member projects, placed in individual line-items or accompanying proviso language that are added to the final appropriations bill without being fully scrutinized and subjected to the budget process.”
The 16-page report highlights the millions of dollars spent by the Florida Legislature added to the overall state budget without the same “deliberation, debate, and accountability they deserve.”
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Yesterday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill, SB 7072, designed to limit the scope of Big Tech companies and their influence in Florida. The bill will fine companies $250,000 per day if they censor or suspend accounts for political candidates, with Disney World being a notable exception.
“This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites,” said DeSantis in a release. “Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
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Republicans have dominated Florida Democrats for nearly 30 years, where currently only one statewide elected post is occupied by a Democrat: Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. With Fried all but officially running against Governor Ron DeSantis and U.S. Rep. Val Demings (D-FL-10) challenging Sen. Marco Rubio for his Senate seat in 2022, Florida Democrats are having to rearrange who is going to be running for open positions and the potential political losses those candidates could face.
If Fried continues on her current trajectory for a likely gubernatorial bid, Democrats might lose the only statewide post they have. Fried won in 2018, weeks after Hurricane Michael devastated the agriculture-rich areas of the Florida Panhandle, which saw diminished Republican Panhandle voter turnout compared to the rest of the state. Fried won the race narrowly by approximately 6,000 votes.
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The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are joining the fight to defend the recently signed election law in Florida. The two organizations filed motions to intervene in two lawsuits against the law.
The law, known as SB 90 while in the Florida Legislature, is designed to curb the chances of fraudulent elections in Florida, but critics immediately called it “Jim Crow” tactics. Civil rights groups immediately filed lawsuits against it calling it a “backlash to Black voters.”
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Financial disclosure forms indicate that Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has a financial in Harvest Health & Recreation Inc., a company acquired by Trulieve Cannabis Corp. for $2.1 billion last week. Trulieve is one of the most notable cannabis companies in the United States and is the largest licensed cannabis company in Florida.
According to 2019 documents, Fried’s assets in Harvest Health totaled over $190,000, and her personal overall net worth increased by 416% during the time frame of June 2018 to June 2019. During that period, she was also gifted a $700,000 home with her fiancé Jake Bergmann, who has financial stake in another marijuana company, Surterra Wellness.
Fried has repeatedly promoted the cannabis industry as the Agriculture Commissioner while she and her family maintained financial interests in cannabis companies.
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On May 3, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 2006 into law banning vaccine passports in Florida, with the lone exception being health care providers and facilities within the healthcare industry.
DeSantis has been critical of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines (CDC) and vaccine passports being endorsed by states and governors across the country. He has said, long before he signed the legislation, vaccine passports being required for citizens to participate in society will not happen in Florida.
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It was announced earlier this week Florida State University trimmed their list of potential replacements for retiring President John Thrasher to three candidates. The three candidates are: Giovanni Piedimonte, Robert A. Boulin, and Richard McCullough.
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U.S. Rep. Val Demings (D-FL-10) officially announced her candidacy for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) seat in the 2022 election cycle. Demings had long been rumored to be seeking statewide office, but many were uncertain if she was challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis or Rubio. She said she mulled a gubernatorial run, but felt her chances were better running for Senate.
Demings rose in popularity after then-candidate Joe Biden announced she was on a short list as a potential running mate last year. Even before then, she rose in fame for being the first black female police chief for the City of Orlando. She was elected to Congress for the first time in 2016.
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Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has long been rumored to be challenging Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the 2022 gubernatorial race but has yet to make a campaign launch official.
However, last week, on Twitter, she made an announcement indicating “something new” is coming on June 1 through a video.
Since she posted the video, news and political commentary about Fried and her personal relationships, business interests, potential ethical questions, and how they all fit together have entered the conversation in light of an impending campaign launch.
Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 90 into law. The bill, addressing elections, has been derided as a “Jim Crow” tactic and characterized as voter suppression by political opponents. However, in 2012, a grand jury taking part in an election fraud case in Miami-Dade County provided a list of recommendations to lawmakers to crack down on absentee ballot-related voter fraud. A number of those grand jury recommendations were included in SB 90.
DeSantis has praised the bill saying Florida has some of the “strongest election integrity measures” in the country.
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Governor Ron DeSantis’ political committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, in 2021, has raised over $23 million, and nearly $14 million of the total was raised during April alone. During April, the campaign received primarily two large sums of money, one was for over $5 million from Chicago-based hedge funder Kenneth Griffin, and the other was a $2.8 million donation from the Republican Governors’ Association. Griffin was one of DeSantis’ primary contributors to his 2018 gubernatorial run.
DeSantis has not formally filed the paperwork to run for reelection in 2022, but the account is ramping up donations, indicating a DeSantis campaign is likely imminent.
Over 30 contributions came in totaling over $50,000, 139 contributions over $25,000, and 86 contributions of $100 to $500.
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Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was the featured guest in a town hall discussion entitled “Leading to Liberty” for Sean Spicer’s program Spicer & Co. on Newsmax. In the hour-long interview, DeSantis fielded questions from Spicer and the audience ranging in topics from Florida’s COVID response, illegal immigration, and education.
Political pundits who watched the interview said it felt more like an informercial for a possible 2024 presidential run, but others said he made his case for reelection in 2022.
DeSantis was on the offensive at times throughout the night, criticizing President Joe Biden’s first few months in the White House, but also theorizing where Florida would be right now if he had not been elected in 2018.
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Florida State University (FSU) has trimmed their list of potential candidates to replace retiring President John Thrasher to nine. Among them, three notable non-traditional candidates emerged with buzz surrounding their names: Richard Corcoran, Sean Pittman, and David Coburn.
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