Florida
GOP seeking to head off ballot initiatives on abortion access, Florida’s included – Florida Phoenix
Gov. Ron DeSantis was blunt following a GOP presidential primary debate on Nov. 8: Abortion-rights referenda are becoming a problem for leaders like himself who want to come as close as possible to outlawing the procedure.
“Pro-lifers in particular have a big problem on these referenda,” DeSantis said during an interview with NBC News, referring in particular to Ohio voters’ decision that very week to enact a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, even though, as he noted, many of the voters support Republican candidates.
“But if the [abortion] issue is presented the way it is, they’re willing to vote for what from a pro-life perspective was a very extreme, very expansive pro-abortion amendment,” said DeSantis.
“So, I think the pro-life movement has got to start keying in on these referenda. You gotta be strategic about how you’re doing it; you need to know the landscape that you’re dealing with. There may be some states where you shoot in a certain direction; there may be others, you shoot in a different one. But they have been getting their clock cleaned on the referenda.”
In other words, either change the terms of the debate by injecting it with misinformation or look for ways to override the referendum process.
That’s being attempted in Florida, where Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody has asked the Florida Supreme Court to block a popular vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to enshrine protection of abortion rights in the Florida Constitution.
It’s happening in Arkansas, where state Attorney General Tim Griffin simply rejected a pro-abortion rights referendum on the ground that its ballot language was ambiguous.
Ohio
Then there’s Ohio, where, after voters OK’d the abortion-rights referendum called Issue 1 by a 13-point margin last month, anti-abortion Republicans immediately began looking for legislative avenues to undermine the initiative, as the Phoenix-affiliated Ohio Capital Journal has reported. That’s the state a 10-year-old rape victim had to flee to secure an abortion.
We don’t know yet how those efforts will work out, but at least the Missouri Supreme Court has blocked an attempt by Republican Secretary of State John Ashcroft to rewrite ballot language for a proposed abortion-rights initiative to make it less attractive — including that the measure would “nullify longstanding Missouri law protecting the right to life, including but not limited to partial-birth abortion.”
The court in November let stand a lower court’s finding that Ashcroft’s language was “replete with politically partisan language.”
“This is something that’s obviously affects folks in Florida, but it’s also a larger national trend that we’re seeing — which is really far right policymakers and others trying to go out of their way to either keep things off the ballots, keep voters from being able to exercise their voice on important issues, or to engage in misinformation to sort of confuse things,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group, told the Phoenix in a telephone interview.
In Florida, an organization called Floridians Protecting Freedom is circulating petitions to add explicit protections for abortion access to the Florida Constitution. The drive was a response to enactment of a 15-week abortion ban in 2022, in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal that summer of Roe v. Wade, and then, earlier this year, of a six-week ban.
Court challenge
The Florida Supreme Court could rule at any time whether the 15-week ban is constitutional, but that would require the justices to reverse a 1989 precedent to the contrary. If it does, the six-week ban takes effect 30 days later. That case tests whether the constitution’s privacy clause was intended to cover abortion access. The title of the new initiative leaves no doubt to its intention: It’s called the “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.”
The court also must decide whether the amendment can go on the 2024 general election ballot. The justices aren’t supposed to consider the merits of the policy it would enact — merely whether the ballot summary would confuse voters about what the initiative would do. That said, members of the court’s majority, including five DeSantis appointees, are longstanding opponents of abortion rights.
The Florida ballot language at issue reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
In briefs filed with the Supreme Court, Moody argues the language would “hoodwink” voters. She asserts that the meaning of “viability” is ambiguous.
“The ballot summary here is part of a similar overall design to lay ticking time bombs that will enable abortion proponents later to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought,” her brief says.
Initiative supporters argue that voters well understand that viability means the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, with the state allowed to intervene past that point if it can show a compelling reason, similar to the situation under Roe.
Disinformation
But abortion rights opponents underscored Moody’s argument. “Proposed Amendment hides from voters its sponsors’ true purpose: to codify unrestricted abortion as a fundamental right in Florida’s Constitution and allow abortions for virtually any reason, at any stage of the pregnancy,” the brief filed in November by the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops reads.
“What we know is that far right extreme actors have invested in organizations that seek to produce inaccurate information in the context of reproductive health care,” said Perryman, who contributed an amicus brief supporting placing the Florida amendment on the ballot.
DeSantis himself has accused Democrats of supporting “post-birth abortions” or “infanticide” — a blatant distortion of the facts widely circulated within the anti-abortion movement.
“There are organizations that have labeled themselves, such as the American Academy of Pro-Life OBGYNs, who routinely put information into the public domain that is not based on medical science or evidence, that is out of step with the views of the mainstream medical and research communities in this country,” Perryman said.
“We alsoknow that there are many other efforts by this movement to try to perpetuate misinformation online in various forms in order to prevent people from being able to participate in their democracy,” she said — mentioning Moms for Liberty and their campaign against schoolbooks containing LGBTQ+ material and Black history, “stoking culture wars and perpetuating misinformation about books and ideas and educational systems.”
‘A lot of thought’
Initiative supporters fully expected Moody to raise the issues she did, Amy Weintraub, reproductive rights director for Progress Florida, one of the organizations assisting in the petition drive, said in a phone interview.
“The people who put together the wording for our ballot measure put a lot of thought into what would meet the state standards for ballot initiatives, and we are very, very confident that we have taken everything into consideration,” Weintraub said.
As doctrinaire as the court might be, “They still have to abide by Florida law,” she added.
“They don’t have to agree with the amendment, but they do have to agree that it’s within a certain number of words, that it’s clear, that it is one issue, and we believe that we’ve hit all of those [legal criteria].”
Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe, came down from the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, abortion has roiled state politics across the nation. Voters in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Vermont have defeated initiatives to restrict abortion or else passed protections for abortion rights, to name a few.
In Ohio, Republican state legislators have proposed a variety of crimps on abortion rights since Issue 1 passed, including a 15-week ban on the procedure and moving enforcement of abortion rights from the state judiciary to the Legislature, the Ohio Capital Journal reported.
In Missouri, the secretary of state reviews ballot initiatives and prepares summaries to appear on the ballot. The incumbent, Ashcroft, wrote that a number of proposed abortion-rights initiatives would “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions.” He also used the expression, “right to life,” according to the Missouri Independent, another Phoenix affiliate.
A trial judge objected, and an intermediate state appeals court agreed, concluding, for example, that “the use of the term ‘right to life’ is simply not an impartial term.”
Anti-abortion efforts
Abortion opponents are availing themselves of the ballot as well. Iowa, for example, will have an initiative on the 2024 ballot to restrict abortion rights.
Anti-abortion activists are not giving up.
“The true lesson from last night’s loss is that Democrats are going to make abortion front and center throughout 2024 campaigns,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a written statement following the Ohio amendment’s passage and statehouse elections in which Virginia Democrats gained control of both chambers of the General Assembly, seen as a rebuke of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s call for a 15-week abortion ban.
“The GOP consultant class needs to wake up. Candidates must put money and messaging toward countering the Democrats’ attacks or they will lose every time,” she added.
Florida
Florida Gators, Golden Pass Opening SEC Test
Gainesville, Fla. – The SEC is currently one of the strongest conferences in college hoops. Nine teams within it are currently ranked in the AP Top 25, and four others have received votes to be a top 25 team.
And, while the Florida Gators would’ve preferred an easy start to the year, they were handed an early test that consisted of the No. 1, No. 6 and a previously ranked top 25 team to begin their SEC slate, which they passed with flying colors.
To open SEC play, Florida was tasked with traveling to Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY., to take on the No. 6 Kentucky Wildcats. Unfortunately, for Gators head coach Todd Golden, 2025 didn’t start how he had expected. His team stumbled and lost their first game of conference play, 106-100.
A lot of the loss boils down to their poor defensive effort, especially defending the three-point line, and missed free throws. The Wildcats hit 14 triples – half of them coming from one player, Koby Brea – while the Gators missed 13 free throws. This can’t occur if they want to win the big games.
Some players or teams could’ve let this loss demoralize them and let it bleed over into the next game or two. However, that didn’t happen for the Gators. They made sure to use the agony from this loss and channel it into the next game against Tennessee.
Just a few days after this loss, they welcomed the number one team in the country to Gainesville and handed them one of the worst losses an AP No. 1 would have in a while.
Florida dismantled Tennessee 73-43 behind Alijah Martin’s 18 points, but it was the defensive effort that would be talked about after the game.
The Volunteers were held to just 21.4 percent from the field in this game, going 12-for-56 overall. Additionally, their offense was just 4-for-29 from deep. It also didn’t help that they missed 10 of their 25 free throws.
This extremely ugly offensive display from the Volunteers led to Florida’s first regular-season win over an AP No. 1-ranked team in program history and the largest win over a No. 1-ranked team in the NCAA since 1968.
“It’s hard to say when you host the No. 1 team in the country that you expect to win, but I think our program did going into this game tonight,” Golden said after the game.
Even if you expect to win, to win like that after a heartbreaking loss in the previous game is wild.
But while they may have had a night to celebrate this victory, that’s all they had because, in the SEC, games fly at you head-on one after the other and will not wait for you to be ready.
Luckily for Golden, his guys were prepared for Arkansas. Albeit a scrappy one, the Gators clawed out a 71-63 win over the Razorbacks on Saturday.
And, despite another poor outing from Walter Clayton Jr., it was sophomore Alex Condon and Martin who stepped up big time for the Gators in this one. Condon stuffed the stat sheet against the Razorbacks, ending with 12 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and three blocks. He also provided the kill shots against his opponents, dropping in a huge three-pointer and tough layup on back-to-back possessions heading into the final minutes of the game.
So, despite many thinking that the Gators’ rather easy non-conference schedule would come back to bite them and cause them to falter in their opening SEC games, they came out on top and passed it with relative ease.
Furthermore, being put to the test early and having two very difficult road games handed to them to begin 2025 will only benefit them as time goes on. Florida now has two straight home games and three of their next four games will be at home as well.
Should they come out of this next stretch of games untouched, which is definitely within the realm of possibility, then they will be one of the clear favorites for the SEC.
Florida
Florida housekeeper assaults, robs 83-year-old employer who couldn’t afford her Christmas bonus: sheriff
No, Scrooge you!
A 29-year-old Florida housekeeper robbed and assaulted her 83-year-old employer on Christmas Eve when the elderly woman said she couldn’t afford to pay her once-trusted worker a holiday bonus, authorities said this week.
Heather Nelson, 29, became irate when her request for a $500 bonus was rejected by her octogenarian boss — and decided to take what she wanted anyway, according to a press release from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office.
“Nelson responded by physically wrenching the victim’s checkbook from her hand, stealing a check from the checkbook, and then, I guess in an effort to ruin other people’s Christmas as well, stole Christmas cards that were set to be mailed out also containing checks,” Sheriff Wayne Ivey said in the statement.
The housekeeper, whom Ivey repeatedly called a “Grinch,” allegedly grabbed the checkbook with such force that she nearly broke the woman’s wrist.
Nelson then allegedly wrote a check for $1,400 — and used the victim’s credit card to pay her rent and make other purchases, BCSO said.
“What’s next … kick her dog, too?” Ivey asked in the release.
Nelson was nabbed on Jan. 7 after the check cleared and credit card transactions were posted, Law and Crime reported.
“Since you were so worried about getting your bonus, we had some extra gifts for you, like a keepsake booking photo, a slightly used pair of shower slides and unlimited access to our world-famous one-star dining facility where you can enjoy absolutely nothing you eat,” Ivey snarked in the BCSO statement.
She faces a laundry list of charges, including aggravated battery, robbery, forgery, fraud, passing a counterfeit instrument and grand theft, according to court filings reviewed by the outlet.
She was held on a $30,000 bond and released on Jan 9, the outlet reported.
Florida
Former Florida State Wide Receiver Transferring To MAC Program
Florida State has retooled its wide receiver room through the NCAA Transfer Portal after multiple starters and contributors moved on from Tallahassee. The Seminoles will have an array of different pass-catchers to support quarterback transfer Thomas Castellanos in 2025.
Earlier this week, former FSU wide receiver Darion Williamson announced his transfer to Miami (OH). Williamson entered the portal in December to explore his options elsewhere. The veteran spent the last five seasons with the Seminoles after signing with the program as a three-star prospect in Mike Norvell’s inaugural recruiting class in 2020.
This past season, Williamson appeared in all 12 games, contributing on special teams and as a member of the wide receiver rotation on offense. He caught five passes for 71 yards, including a 35-yard reception in the loss to SMU in September.
In total, Williamson appeared in 41 games, making two starts, and hauled in 35 receptions for 454 yards and one touchdown. His best performance with the Seminoles came in 2022 in a victory against Boston College where he caught five passes for 98 yards in one half of action.
READ MORE: Former FSU Football Standout Accepts Invitation To Reese’s Senior Bowl
The Tennessee native had a ton of potential but injuries limited his contributions over the years. He’ll have a chance to instantly play a big role on a Miami (OH) squad that is losing its top three wide receivers.
Williamson stands at 6-foot-3, 202 pounds. He’s expected to have one season of eligibility remaining. Williamson got an extra year due to COVID-19 and redshirted in 2022. Williamson played in five games that season but one of those appearances was in the bowl game against Oklahoma, which doesn’t count towards the redshirt rule.
FSU has six scholarship wide receivers eligible to return in 2025; junior Hykeem Williams, redshirt sophomore Jalen Brown, sophomore Lawayne McCoy, sophomore BJ Gibson, redshirt freshman Elijah Moore, and redshirt freshman Camdon Frier.
The Seminoles signed four wide receivers during the Early Signing Period; four-star Jayvan Boggs, four-star Tae’Shaun Gelsey, three-star Teriq Mallory, and three-star JUCO Jordan Scott. The program also landed USC wide receiver transfer Duce Robinson and Tennessee wide receiver transfer Squirrel White.
Last month, the program officially announced the addition of new wide receivers coach Tim Harris Jr.
Williamson is one of 19 scholarship players to enter the transfer portal since the conclusion of a 2-10 season. Redshirt senior wide receiver Deuce Spann, redshirt junior tight end Jackson West, redshirt junior defensive end Byron Turner Jr, redshirt sophomore defensive tackle Tomiwa Durojaiye, senior defensive back Omarion Cooper, sophomore wide receiver Destyn Hill, redshirt freshman defensive end Lamont Green Jr., redshirt sophomore offensive lineman Julian Armella, junior tight end Brian Courtney, redshirt sophomore tight end Jerrale Powers, junior defensive end Marvin Jones Jr., redshirt sophomore linebacker Shawn Murphy, true freshman quarterback Luke Kromenhoek, freshman defensive end DD Holmes, redshirt junior defensive end Patrick Payton, redshirt junior defensive tackle Grady Kelly, senior wide receiver Malik Benson, and redshirt freshman linebacker DeMarco Ward have also declared their intentions to move on.
READ MORE: Florida State Drops In On Blue-Chip Miami Commitment
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