Florida
‘Democracy in Florida is not functioning.’ Governor’s rigged maps rob Black voters of power
![‘Democracy in Florida is not functioning.’ Governor’s rigged maps rob Black voters of power ‘Democracy in Florida is not functioning.’ Governor’s rigged maps rob Black voters of power](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/be836973d77965f5baa678a9c2f390408d9aa8cd/0_131_3500_2101/master/3500.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom,left&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=8007efad52538b4154609331fd640655)
As Florida Republicans gave closing approval to new congressional districts on Thursday, Black lawmakers staged a sit-in on the ground of the legislature, praying, chanting and singing that Black voters have been beneath assault within the state.
The extraordinary second served as a outstanding endpoint to a brazen assault by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
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Earlier this month, in an unprecedented transfer, Republicans within the legislature took the weird step of permitting DeSantis to take the lead on drawing new congressional districts. The governor’s plan went out of its strategy to cut back from 4 to 2 the variety of districts the place Black candidates can elect the candidate of their selecting.
The plan considerably distorts the map in favor of Republicans, giving them a maintain on 20 of 28 congressional seats in a state Donald Trump gained in 2020 with 51.2% of the vote. In keeping with FiveThirtyEight, the Florida map is sort of tied with Texas as probably the most biased within the US.
DeSantis obtained his map after rejecting much less biased however nonetheless GOP-friendly maps proposed by the legislature. The actual fact the legislature ceded its energy to DeSantis solely underscores how the governor, thought of a possible presidential candidate in 2024, controls Florida politics.
“For all intents and functions, there’s presently, in Florida, one-man rule,” stated Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican strategist who’s now retired.
“Democracy in Florida will not be functioning. It’s not gone, the construction is there, the potential of a return to consultant authorities with checks and balances stays. But it surely’s not presently functioning.”
DeSantis’s plan doesn’t make a severe effort to adjust to authorized protections for minority voters. An modification within the Florida structure, overwhelmingly permitted in 2010, makes it unlawful to attract a district that diminishes the flexibility of a minority to elect the candidate of their selecting. DeSantis nonetheless eradicated two districts that permit Black voters to take action.
The governor has brazenly talked about his want to eliminate the fifth congressional district, which is 46% Black and stretches from Jacksonville to Tallahassee.
The governor has stated the district, presently represented by a Black Democrat, is an unlawful racial gerrymander as a result of it was drawn to protect the flexibility of Black voters to elect the candidate of their selection. DeSantis’s plan chops the district into 4 Republican districts the place Black voters would comprise a a lot smaller share of the inhabitants.
DeSantis’s plan seems to have “all of the hallmarks of intentional discrimination”, stated Stuart Naifeh, an legal professional on the NAACP Authorized Protection and Academic Fund who works on redistricting circumstances.
“He needs to dismantle a Democratic district. And on this case a Democratic district that’s been held by a Black particular person for a very long time. And it’s a majority-minority district, so it’s regarding that he’s diluting minority voting power with the pretext being that he’s obtained constitutional issues about it.”
The protest began on Thursday after Yvonne Hinson, a Democrat from Gainesville, was talking about her work in the course of the civil rights period solely to have her mic reduce off when her time expired.
“I’ve been kicked. I’ve been talked about and I’ve been referred to as names you don’t even put within the dictionary any extra,” she stated. “The Voting Rights Act of 1965, I fought for that. I’ve met Martin Luther King, I don’t simply discuss him. He taught me peaceable protests, and right here we’re in 2022, rolling again the tide.”
Two Black lawmakers, Tray McCurdy of Orlando and Angie Nixon of Jacksonville, wore T-shirts that stated “Cease the Black assault” as they protested on the Home flooring.
“What we have now here’s a group of people who find themselves apprehensive and anxious and scared in regards to the browning, in regards to the darkening of our nation and they’re attempting to carry on to energy a lot that they’re altering the principles,” Nixon informed reporters.
Republicans waved the principles to skip debate and cross all payments together with the petty assault on Disney & unconstitutional Congressional maps that erase black entry seats.
This isn’t democracy — that is one get together rule drunk on energy and bullying anybody of their method into submission. https://t.co/IZ6ASmtN88
— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani ? (@AnnaForFlorida) April 21, 2022
DeSantis and his attorneys have proven little concern for precedent however made it clear they’re betting federal and state courts will agree with their interpretation of the regulation.
The US supreme court docket has lengthy stated lawmakers can take into account race in redistricting if they’ve justification, so long as it’s not the predominant issue, stated Michael Li, a redistricting skilled on the Brennan Heart for Justice.
The supreme court docket’s conservative majority has not too long ago signaled, nevertheless, that it is vitally skeptical of using race in redistricting.
“They’re attempting to see what they will get away with,” stated Stuart Naifeh, of the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund. “Talking from the view of what the courts have performed extra not too long ago, they might get away with it.”
DeSantis seems wanting to assault the anti-gerrymandering language Florida voters added to the state structure. Along with outlawing discriminatory gerrymandering based mostly on race, the language additionally bans partisan gerrymandering.
“I feel our dispute very nicely might result in saying that Florida’s redistricting amendments should not according to the 14th modification’s equal safety clause,” the governor stated in March.
“It’s a dismantling of our rule of regulation,” stated Cecile Scoon, president of the Florida chapter of the League of Ladies Voters, which filed a lawsuit difficult the maps on Friday.
“If every considered one of us merely stated, ‘I don’t agree, I’m gonna do precisely the alternative of that regulation,’ I don’t know the way we will handle a authorities and handle change in a lawful method which is what People are identified for.”
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Florida
Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools
![Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2023/05/12/eb3046d8-ea20-4c77-8309-3c5a737d47ab/thumbnail/1200x630/2b74a63547c55893dab4e6dc31a92f8d/south-broward-high-school.jpg?v=5501038cbc281520ff9fdc308faab7dc)
An 11-year-Virginia boy has been charged in Florida with calling in more than 20 bomb or shooting threats to schools and other places, authorities said Thursday.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said that authorities worked hard to find the caller before the school year resumes.
“This kid’s behavior was escalating and becoming more dangerous,” Staly said. “I’m glad we got him before he escalated out of control and hurt someone.”
Swatting is slang for making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to send a SWAT team or other armed police officers to a particular place.
Flagler County emergency services initially received a bomb threat at Buddy Taylor Middle School on May 14, officials said. Additional threats were made between then and May 22.
Investigators tracked the calls to a home in Henrico County, Virginia, just outside Richmond. Local deputies searched the home this month, and the 11-year-old boy who lived there admitted to placing the Florida swatting calls, as well as a threat made to the Maryland State House, authorities said. Investigators later determined that the boy also made swatting calls in Nebraska, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Alaska.
The boy faces 29 felony counts and 14 misdemeanors, officials said. He’s being held in a Virginia juvenile detention facility while Florida officials arrange for his extradition. Investigators didn’t immediately say whether the boy had a connection to Florida.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested in Florida in May, several days after the initial call, for making a copycat threat to Buddy Taylor Middle School.
Florida
Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know
![Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know](https://res.cloudinary.com/graham-media-group/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/c_thumb,w_700/v1/media/gmg/W6DCEII3XJBRTEXKRZYYCQLLWQ.jpg?_a=DATAdtfiZAA0)
TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. – Off the coast of Georgia, a massive bomb potentially sits in the water after having been flown out from Florida decades prior.
According to NPR, the whole incident began in 1958 when a B-47 bomber plane took off from Homestead AFB in Florida with the 7,600-pound nuclear bomb in tow, heading out to meet up with another bomber for a training exercise.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN?
The plan was to reportedly simulate an attack on the Soviet Union as part of the exercise, and everything was going well — until another training mission mistakenly crashed into the B-47 carrying the bomb.
As a result, the pilot chose to let loose the bomb over the water off Tybee Island in Georgia before making an emergency landing in a nearby swamp.
The bomb didn’t go off even after dropping into the ocean below, though that could be because the nuclear material needed to set such bombs off was typically kept separate from the weapon until it was needed, the BBC reports.
DID THEY FIND IT?
Federal officials spent over two weeks searching for the bomb in the aftermath, but it was ultimately determined to be irretrievable.
While a receipt written by the pilot shows that the necessary capsule wasn’t added to the bomb before the training exercise — meaning it wouldn’t be at a huge risk of detonation — other federal officials have claimed otherwise, such as a former Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard, who claimed that the bomb was “complete.”
“He concluded that despite our best efforts, the possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion still existed,” a declassified report reads.
Nowadays, the bomb is thought to be covered by several feet of silt on the seabed, but if the explosives within are still intact, it could pose a major hazard to the environment. As such, federal officials have determined that it should be left undisturbed — even by further recovery attempts.
CAN AN ATOMIC BOMB GO OFF UNDERWATER?
If it’s actually off the coast of Tybee Island, then yes: the bomb can still detonate, even underwater.
In 1946, the U.S. tested an atomic bomb at the Bikini Atoll — in the Pacific Ocean far southwest of Hawaii — by suspending it below several ships filled with pigs and rats.
After it was set off underwater, nearly all of the animals died, either thanks to the initial explosion or from the radiation poisoning afterward. And the area is still irradiated to this day.
WHAT HAPPENS IF IT DETONATES?
For starters: it doesn’t appear as likely that the bomb will explode.
While Howard initially claimed the bomb was complete, a military spokesman told The Atlantic in 2001 that they’d spoken with him, and “he agreed that his memo was in error.”
But if the bomb did manage to get outfitted with a plutonium trigger and detonated, it would erupt into an explosion with a mile-wide radius — and thermal radiation reaching 10 times that distance, according to the Savannah Morning News.
That would no doubt cause havoc within the immediate proximity, but on the bright side, Tybee Island is well over 100 miles (roughly a two-hour drive) from Florida’s border. This means Florida residents have little to fear from the direct impacts of such an explosion.
So you can sleep tight knowing you’re not likely to find yourself on the worse end of a nuclear weapon.
That being said, there are still plenty of other scary things in Florida to keep you up at night.
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Florida
Trulieve adds $5M to recreational marijuana campaign in Florida
![Trulieve adds M to recreational marijuana campaign in Florida Trulieve adds M to recreational marijuana campaign in Florida](https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox35orlando.com/www.fox35orlando.com/content/uploads/2023/06/1280/720/GettyImages-455527934.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Stream FOX 35 News
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The medical cannabis company Trulieve has contributed another $5 million to a campaign to allow recreational marijuana in Florida, according to a newly filed finance report.
The company made the contribution on July 15 to the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is leading efforts to pass a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot.
MORE HEADLINES:
According to a state Division of Elections database, Trulieve had contributed about $60.39 million to the committee as of July 19.
The committee raised a total of $66.475 million in cash and nearly $129,000 in in-kind contributions, and it spent $53.963 million.
The initiative, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 3, says, in part, that it would allow “adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for nonmedical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise.”
Voters in 2016 passed a constitutional amendment that allowed medical marijuana.
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