Florida

Florida seeks to end lawsuit after redistricting plan passes

Published

2 years ago

April 25, 2022

Florida seeks to end lawsuit after redistricting plan passes

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – As a brand new spherical of authorized battling begins about congressional redistricting, the state is asking a federal court docket to dismiss a lawsuit that has urged judges to attract new district traces.

Attorneys for Secretary of State Laurel Lee filed a movement Friday that mentioned the federal lawsuit, which was filed March 11, is moot. The movement got here shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a congressional redistricting plan that lawmakers handed final week in a particular legislative session.

The teams Widespread Trigger Florida and FairDistricts Now and particular person plaintiffs filed the federal lawsuit final month as DeSantis and lawmakers had been at an deadlock within the once-a-decade reapportionment course of. The lawsuit contended that judges ought to step in to ensure revamped districts are set earlier than this 12 months’s elections, as persevering with to make use of present districts can be unconstitutional.

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Within the four-page movement filed Friday, Lee’s attorneys wrote that the newly handed redistricting plan made these arguments moot.

“Now that Florida’s outmoded congressional districts have been outmoded by correctly apportioned congressional districts, there is no such thing as a longer any controversy, and this court docket can not present the plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors (different plaintiffs who joined the case) the reduction they search,” the movement mentioned.

As of Monday morning, the plaintiffs’ attorneys had not filed a response to the movement, in accordance with a web-based docket.

Regardless, the redistricting plan that DeSantis signed Friday already faces one authorized problem and will face others. Teams such because the League of Ladies Voters of Florida and 12 particular person plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court docket Friday contending the congressional map (SB 2-C) fails to adjust to state redistricting legal guidelines and is badly designed to favor Republicans.

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DeSantis known as final week’s particular session after he vetoed a redistricting plan that lawmakers handed. In the course of the particular session, the Republican-dominated Home and Senate handed a map that DeSantis’ workplace proposed.

The map is projected to extend the variety of Republican congressional seats in Florida from 16 to twenty, primarily based on 2020 election outcomes. Additionally, it will reduce the variety of districts prone to elect Black Democrats from 4 to 2 — a change that spurred a uncommon protest by Democratic lawmakers that briefly shut down proceedings on the Home flooring Thursday.

Within the federal lawsuit filed final month, attorneys for the plaintiffs proposed utilizing a map that the Senate handed in January. That map, for instance, would have usually stored intact a sprawling North Florida district that has elected U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat.

DeSantis criticized the present configuration of the district, which stretches from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee, as being unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The DeSantis-backed plan handed final week would condense the district within the Jacksonville space and make it prone to elect a Republican.

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Earlier than the particular session, a three-judge panel dealing with the federal lawsuit scheduled a trial to start out Could 12. However the court docket’s order appeared to acknowledge that the lawsuit may turn into moot, saying that for “now, we have to put ourselves able to attract a brand new congressional map if the Florida Legislature and Governor DeSantis fail to agree on one throughout the particular session.”

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Florida

Florida husband’s cunning trap before shooting dead his estranged wife and wounding their dog two weeks after separating – as his chilling texts emerge

Published

25 mins ago

July 27, 2024

Press Room

Florida husband’s cunning trap before shooting dead his estranged wife and wounding their dog two weeks after separating – as his chilling texts emerge

By Bethan Sexton For Dailymail.Com

Published: 23:43 BST, 27 July 2024 | Updated: 23:45 BST, 27 July 2024

A Florida man who allegedly fatally shot his estranged wife and wounded their dog set a cunning trap to snare her.

Timothy Kramer, 51, was lying in wait inside the couple’s Pensacola home when his wife Rosa, 47, came to collect her belongings, police said.

Authorities believe the gunman deliberately parked his pick up truck in the backyard so it would not be seen before opening fire, the Pensacola News Journal reports.

‘It is reasonable to believe that Timothy Kramer attempted to conceal his vehicle behind the privacy fence in an effort to avoid Rosa Kramer from knowing he was present at the residence,’ a police report by Escambia County Sheriff’s Office said.

Once inside, Kramer allegedly shot Rosa in the head and injured their seven-year-old dog Cody who was rushed to the veterinary hospital, but managed to survive.

Florida man Timothy Kramer, 51, is accused of fatally shooting his estranged wife Rosa after lying in wait for her at their Pensacola home

He has been charged with first degree murder and aggravated animal abuse.

‘In the bedroom, I noticed a significant amount of blood on the flooring and surrounding areas, along with smeared blood and what appeared to be bloody footprints leading from the bedroom to the hallway,’ the police report said.

The couple had been separated for just two weeks when the incident occurred on Tuesday.

The alarm was raised after Rosa could not be reached by phone. Once they arrived at the scene on Hillcrest Drive, deputies discovered her body.

Kramer was picked up by Milton police in Santa Rosa County and was with an unidentified woman.

The woman told police that Kramer said he had shot his wife in self defense.

Rosa, 47, was found with a bullet wound in her head on Tuesday after she had gone back to the property to collect her things

Police said the couple had been separated for two weeks when the incident occurred. Kramer is said to have parked his truck around back to be able to sneak up on his wife

Kramer is also accused of shooting their dog Cody, 7, who survived the ordeal

‘She advised that Timothy Kramer called her at approximately 6 a.m. and confessed that he had shot Rosa Kramer and claimed it was in self-defense,’ the police report said.

‘(Redacted) said she urged Timothy Kramer to contact law enforcement and explain the situation to avoid getting into trouble.’

However, police determined that Kramer, ‘provided a fictitious story’ which ‘lead her to believe he was not in any trouble regarding the incident.’

Text messages between the accused and the unidentified woman state, ‘It is all good I did this it is on me.’

A man reportedly told police he was concerned about Rosa being around her ex ever since she left him because ‘he began calling her and threatening to shoot himself if she didn’t come back,’ according to the report.

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Florida

Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools

Published

8 hours ago

July 27, 2024

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Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools

CBS News Miami

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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.

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Florida

Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know

Published

15 hours ago

July 27, 2024

Press Room

Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know

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.

During an open house at Boeing Plant 2 in Seattle, Washington, people walk around to view the lineup of Boeing bomber planes. This lineup at the northend of Boeing Field includes the B-29, B-47 “Stratojet,” and the B-52 “Superfortress.” (Photo by © Museum of Flight/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) (Museum of Flight/Getty Images)

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.

Tybee Island Lighthouse (Photo by J. Miers via Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

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.

The Baker test during Operation Crossroads, a series of two nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll. 25th July 1946. The purpose of the operation, which included two shots, ABLE and BAKER, was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval warships. Mushroom-shaped cloud and water column from the underwater Baker nuclear explosion. Photo taken from a tower on Bikini Island, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away. Marshall Islands, Pacific. (PHoto by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) (2015 Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

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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