Gov. Ron DeSantis has approved a measure that will finally provide reparations for hundreds of men who as children were beaten and raped for decades while in the custody of the state.

The law (HB 21) signed by the governor on Friday morning will divide $20 million in compensation between those who attended the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in North Florida between 1940 and 1975, as well as the Okeechobee School, another state-based institution known for its abusive nature.

According to a bill analysis, there were reports of children being chained to walls in irons, brutal whippings, and peonage at Dozier as early as 1901. In the first 13 years of operation, six state-led investigations took place. After former Dozier School students began to publish accounts of the abuse, their complaints gained traction.

Ultimately, then-Gov. Charlie Crist in 2008 directed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the Dozier School and the deaths alleged there.

Meanwhile, the school was closed following a federal investigation in 2011 and lawmakers gave a formal apology to the survivors in 2017.

Over those years, some of the still-living victims of rape and physical beatings by officers repeatedly made their way to Tallahassee to tell state lawmakers about the horrors suffered at those state-run institutions. They’ve been dubbed “the White House Boys” for the building on the Dozier campus in Marianna where boys were — among other abuse — beaten with a leather strap attached to a wooden handle.

Retired Army Ranger Capt. Bryant Middleton was one of those victims who made the trek to Tallahassee for years. Earlier this year, he told a state Senate committee not to think of him as the man in his late 70s, but as a young boy decades ago, when he and other boys endured abuse at the Dozier School.

“I would ask you: If it were your child that came home from school, your child said to you, ‘They took me to a room and beat me with a paddle.’ Your daughter comes home and says, ‘They took me into a room and they did something to me that made me uncomfortable.’ That’s what we endured,” he said.

“We were children”

“We were children.  Don’t look at me as an adult. Think of me as a young child being beaten and molested and tormented, day in and day out. That’s what the school was really about. The beatings? We got over those. Those children that were raped at the age 6 and 7 and 8 — I don’t think they over got over that.”

Somewhat surprisingly, the governor’s office invited no news reporters or cameras to the bill signing, although about 15 of the men who have regularly visited the Legislature to lobby for the measure were there, along with the legislators who sponsored the measure — St. Petersburg state Sen. Darryl Rouson and House Republicans Michele Salzman from the Panhandle area and Kiyan Michael from Jacksonville.

“It came down to a crunch, you know, the final tranche of bills, and I know he has a very busy schedule,” Rouson said. “The important thing was to get it signed, and that’s what happened.”

The bill is set to go into effect on July 1. Applications for individuals eligible for compensation will go to the state Department of Legal Affairs, which will review and approve or deny applications.

Applications accepted through year’s end

The law says that only those who were confined to the Dozier School for Boys or the Okeechobee School between 1940 and 1975 are eligible; personal representatives or estates of those who attended the school but have died “may not file an application for or receive compensation” the law says. Applications will be accepted until Dec. 31 of this year.

Although it has been frequently mentioned that there are approximately 400 living survivors of the two institutions who are eligible to be compensated, one of the survivors, 80-year-old Tampa resident Gene Luker, told the Phoenix after the measure passed in the Florida Senate in March that he believes that far fewer than that are still alive.

“I don’t believe that,” he said at the time of the higher number. “I think if there’s around 100-150 from that time limit” — although he joked that more might “come out of the woodwork” now that it looks more possible than ever that the living victims will receive financial compensation.

After the measure passed out of a Senate committee in March, Broward County Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood approached one of the men who testified for the legislation.

“I’m deeply sorry for what happened to you,” Osgood said. “I know that no amount of money or no words can take away your pain, but I do want to tell you this morning that I love you. I love you. And I pray in the days to come that you will have at least a sense of peace and knowing that we care, and that we are doing the best we can to acknowledge that.”

Rouson has been pushing for the living victims at Dozier to be compensated for years. He said on Friday that he was “elated” after the governor signed the bill.

“It’s a poignant moment,” he said. “You can’t do anything about the 55 unmarked graves — individuals who we may never know. But we can do something about those still living, and who witnessed the trauma of beatings, disappearances, and injuries, both psychological and physical. It’s significant for them, and that’s why they showed up today.”

MIAMI – Flamingos are ubiquitous with Florida. From plastic lawn ornaments to the state lottery, flamingos and Florida just go together.

“When people think of flamingos they think of Florida and vice versa,” said Zoo Miami‘s Ron Magill.

Flamingos were once native to the state, but in the 1800s, the population was decimated for the birds’ vibrant feathers and meat. Since then, they have only been visitors. Until recently.

Late last year, Hurricane Idalia’s winds carried many from the Caribbean to the U.S. That led to a number of sightings and in some cases, the birds aren’t leaving. So many wild flamingos have popped up that the first-ever flamingo census took place this year.

“We are getting our own surveys and we’re asking the public for what they saw, too,” said Jerry Lorenz with Audubon Florida who spearheaded the count.

The census turned up 101 wild flamingos including more than 50 in Florida Bay, 18 in the Pine Island area, and 14 at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge in Titusville.

“Considering that a decade ago I would have considered four a very large number of flamingos, we’re pretty happy with that number,” said Lorenz.

He credits conservation efforts in the Everglades for the triumphant return.

“As we’ve improved the habitat, these birds are not only coming back, but they’re coming back to a place they find that they like,” said Lorenz.

He hopes to see nesting flamingo populations flourish in their once-native Florida home. 

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump is hearing arguments Friday on a long-shot defense effort to get the indictment thrown out based on the claim that the prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed.

The arguments over the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment kick off a three-day hearing that is set to continue next week and bring further delays to a criminal case that had been scheduled for trial last month but has been snarled by a pileup of unresolved legal disputes. The motion questioning Smith’s selection and funding by the Justice Department is one of multiple challenges to the indictment the defense has raised, so far unsuccessfully, in the year since the charges were brought.

Even as Smith’s team looks to press forward on a prosecution seen by many legal experts as the most straightforward and clear-cut of the four prosecutions against Trump, Friday’s arguments before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon won’t involve discussion of the allegations against the former president. They’ll center instead on decades-old regulations governing the appointment of Justice Department special counsels like Smith, reflecting the judge’s continued willingness to entertain defense arguments that prosecutors say are meritless, contributing to the indefinite cancelation of a trial date.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, had exasperated prosecutors even before the June 2023 indictment by granting a Trump request to have an independent arbiter review the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago — an order that was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel.

Since then, she has been intensely scrutinized over her handling of the case, including for taking months to issue rulings and for scheduling hearings on legally specious claims — all of which have combined to make a trial before the November presidential election a virtual impossibility. She was rebuked in March by prosecutors after she asked both sides to formulate jury instructions and to respond to a premise of the case that Smith’s team called “fundamentally flawed.”

The New York Times, citing two anonymous sources, reported Thursday that two judges — including the chief federal judge in the southern district of Florida — urged Cannon to step aside from the case after she was assigned to it.

The hearing is unfolding just weeks after Trump was convicted in a separate state case in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who has said she had sex with him. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is set to issue a landmark opinion on whether Trump is immune from prosecution for acts he took in office or he can be be prosecuted by Smith’s team on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

At issue in Friday’s hearing is a Trump team claim that Smith was illegally appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland because he was not first approved by Congress and because the special counsel office that he was assigned to lead was not also created by Congress.

Smith’s team has said Garland was fully empowered as the head of the Justice Department to make the appointment and to delegate prosecutorial decisions to him. Prosecutors also note that courts have upheld prior appointments of special counsels, including Robert Mueller by Trump’s Justice Department.

On the agenda for next week are arguments over a limited gag order that prosecutors have requested to bar Trump from comments they fear could endanger the safety of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials involved in the case.

The restrictions were sought after Trump falsely claimed the agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in August 2022 were prepared to kill him even though he was citing boilerplate language from standard FBI policy about use of force during the execution of search warrants. The FBI had intentionally selected a day for the search when it knew Trump and his family would be out of town.

Trump’s lawyers have said any speech restrictions would infringe on his free speech rights. Cannon initially rejected the request on technical grounds, saying prosecutors had not sufficiently conferred with defense lawyers before seeking the gag restrictions. But prosecutors subsequently renewed the request.

Another issue set to be discussed next week is a defense request to exclude from the case evidence seized by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago search, and to dismiss the indictment because of evidence it includes that came from former members of Trump’s defense team.

Though attorney-client privilege protects defense lawyers from being forced to testify about their confidential conversations with clients, prosecutors can get around that shield if they can establish that the lawyer’s legal services are being used to further a crime.

That’s what happened last year in the classified documents investigation, with prosecutors in their indictment repeatedly citing details of conversations Trump had with M. Evan Corcoran, an attorney who represented the former president during the investigation and who was forced by a judge to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump .

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Tucker reported from Washington.