Orlando Sentinel

Republican US Rep. Cory Mills calls defamation bills not worthy of ‘free state of Florida’

The GOP-backed bills to make it easier to sue the news media in Florida face opposition from conservatives, including Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Mills and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, who call the measures unconstitutional. “This bill is encouraging the state to violate its citizens’ fundamental rights as Americans and is not only unpatriotic, but it is not representative of the free state of Florida,” Mills wrote in a letter to leaders of the Florida House and Senate last week. But on Friday, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner said in response that the House bill,in fact, was meant...

Trump’s 2016 targets say DeSantis faces dilemma of when to fight back

ORLANDO, Fla. — Veterans of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries remember how Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio attempted to remain above the fray when it came to taking on Donald Trump directly, only to respond too little, too late to stave off defeat. Now, as yet another Florida politician, Gov. Ron DeSantis, lays the groundwork to challenge Trump in the 2024 GOP race, those veterans say the governor has choices to make about how soon and how hard to fire back against Trump’s almost continuous attacks. “This is exactly what Trump did to every single candidate in 2016 who showed any sort of mome...

Six months after Ian: Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel remain changed but show human resilience

SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. — Darkness has not yet yielded to the rising sun, but there’s already a flurry of activity on the tip of Sanibel Island. More than a hundred island locals and public officials have gathered around the community’s beacon of light to mark five months after Hurricane Ian’s brutal arrival in this peaceful tropical paradise. In late September 2022, the Category 4 storm ravaged the coast of Southwest Florida, destroying homes, leveling businesses and damaging ecosystems. For many who remember the hurricane’s impact and the trauma it caused, it’s an occasion worth getting out of ...

Florida Legislature approves universal school vouchers bill

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Senate gave final approval Thursday to a bill creating universal school vouchers, and sent it to Gov. Ron DeSantis for his expected approval. The Senate voted 26-12 along party lines to approve the bill (HB 1). Republican state lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, want to open state voucher programs that currently provide scholarships to more than 252,000 children with disabilities or from low-income families to all of the 2.9 million school-age children in Florida, with an estimated cost ranging from $210 million to $4 billion in the first ye...

Florida passes on millions of dollars in federal gun violence prevention funds

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida is leaving up to $15 million in federal money on the table that could be used to fight gun violence. Florida was one of only six states that did not receive funding through a new federal grant to help carry out emergency risk-protection programs. Such orders are used by law enforcement to temporarily seize guns from people suspected of being a danger to themselves or others. State Sen. Lori Berman, D-West Palm Beach, is pushing for the state to file a late application, which she said federal officials would be open to receiving. “I don’t understand why Florida wouldn’t ...

New Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost focuses on gun violence in first bill

U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, Orlando’s new Gen Z congressman, is making gun violence the focus of his first bill. Frost filed legislation on Wednesday that would create an office within the U.S. Department of Justice to coordinate the nation’s response to gun violence. “I got involved in politics because of gun violence,” the 26-year-old Democrat said in an interview. “Going to the vigil after Sandy Hook served as my call to action. It is an issue I hold close to my heart. It’s an issue that plagues Central Florida.” While a variety of federal agencies handle aspects of gun violence prevention, no...

Florida rule would expand so-called ‘don’t say gay’ to 12th grade

ORLANDO, Fla. — The DeSantis administration next month could effectively bar all public school teachers from providing classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, a move that would expand Florida’s controversial 2022 law and go even further than the legislation Republican lawmakers are pushing in Tallahassee this spring. A proposed State Board of Education rule, scheduled for a vote next month, says teachers in grades 4 to 12 “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction” on either topic, expanding the prohibition in last year’s law that critics dubbed “don’t say g...

DeSantis wants to ban federal digital currency, despite debunking of concerns

TALLAHASSEE — Echoing recent claims by Alex Jones and other right-wing personalities that the federal government wants to create a Communist-style surveillance system to track the spending habits of Americans, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said he wants to ban such activities in Florida. At a news conference in Panama City, DeSantis said he’d heard such a plan was in the works within the Biden administration. He called on the Legislature to pass a law forbidding the use of Centralized Banking Digital Currency, or CBDC, in Florida, which he called a backdoor attempt at pushing “woke ideology.” “I...

Disney plans 4,000 layoffs as part of previously announced job cuts: report

The Walt Disney Co. plans to lay off about 4,000 people company-wide as part of the 7,000 job cuts CEO Bob Iger announced in February, according to a report by Business Insider. Managers have been asked to identify layoff candidates by April, an unidentified person with knowledge of Disney’s decision told the publication. The same individual said the remaining 3,000 cuts will come from open positions that will be eliminated, Business Insider reported. It is unclear how many of Disney’s jobs in Florida could be affected by the cuts. State records show Disney has not filed any mass layoff notice...

Taxpayer-funded vouchers in Florida go mostly to religious schools. ‘Pay for it yourself,’ rabbi says

ORLANDO, Fla. — Most Florida students using state vouchers to pay for private school spend their scholarships at religious schools, as their parents select campuses where lessons from the Bible, the Torah and the Quran are taught alongside traditional academics. At two of Central Florida’s Islamic schools, girls must wear hijabs, a head covering worn by some Muslim women, as part of their school uniforms. IBN Seena Academy — its mission to nurture children “in an Islamic environment” free of the “evils of modern society” — and Leaders Preparatory School combined received more than $1.6 million...

Parents sue Airbnb after fentanyl killed a 19-month-old girl at a South Florida vacation rental

ORLANDO, Fla. — It was supposed to be a peaceful Florida vacation for a couple and their five children at a lake house in Wellington, but it ended in a nightmare, a lawsuit says. A day after Lydie and Boris Lavenir arrived at their Airbnb rental, she found their 19-month-old daughter, Enora, foaming at the mouth with a lethal amount of fentanyl in her blood, according to the wrongful death complaint. After paramedics rushed her to the hospital, she was pronounced dead. The source of the fentanyl remains a mystery. Now, the Lavenirs are suing Airbnb, along with the house’s owner, the rental age...

SpaceX Crew-5 departs space station, headed for Florida splashdown Saturday night

ORLANDO, Fla. — Another four humans are headed back to Earth after spending more than five months in space with the SpaceX Crew-5 mission departing the International Space Station aiming for a Saturday night splashdown off the coast of Florida.

The quartet of mission commander and NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, pilot and NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina climbed aboard Crew Dragon Endurance and detached from the forward-facing port of the ISS’s Harmony module at 2:20 a.m.

A principal may be out at a top Florida charter school. Some blame it on a tiara

A popular, A-rated charter school in Seminole County faces turmoil over the possible departure of a well-liked principal, with some parents blaming board members for unfairly pushing out a talented educator. The months-long struggle at Choices in Learning Elementary Charter School began,by most accounts, after a board member was denied permission to deliver a tiara to his daughter, a student at the school, on her birthday. The tumult has some fearful for the future of the Winter Springs school, and many are angry they have little recourse because the school’s governing board is not elected. “I...

Ads praise, bash Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he visits battleground states

Gov. Ron DeSantis took his book tour to Iowa on Friday, the first GOP caucus state in the 2024 primaries, as his would-be presidential campaign heated up with new ads both for and against him seeking the White House. One ad by an independent super PAC called Never Back Down states that DeSantis “has acted to protect our children from Disney like no one in history.” Friday’s appearances in Davenport and Des Moines were among DeSantis’ first stops outside Florida to promote his book “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.” “We get things done and in the process, we be...

Florida GOP lawmakers take aim at defining sex and gender

ORLANDO, Fla. — Republican bills aimed at preventing transgender children from transitioning have led to a firestorm of criticism from Democrats and the LQBTQ community. One proposal would allow the state to take a child away from a parent even “at risk” of doing so. But in this year’s legislative session, the issue is just one part of a larger GOP focus on defining sex and gender in general. “At its core, it is a reductive worldview that sees people as nothing more than their reproductive organs,” said Brandon Wolf, spokesman for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “And I’ve never seen...