
Florida agency tells newspaper to halt reporting angle on foundation associated with governor's wife
The newspaper's executive editor, Roger Simmons, said the agency's characterization of the reporter's conduct was 'completely false.' The yet-to-be-published story was looking into grants distributed by Hope Florida to organizations, families, and individuals, according to the Sentinel.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
'We stand by our stories and reject the state's attempt to chill free speech and encroach on our First Amendment right to report on an important issue,' Simmons said in an email.
Advertisement
DCF on Monday repeated the claim that the reporter had harassed multiple foster families who complained to the agency.
'The Orlando Sentinel can report on whatever they want, but they do not have a right to harass foster families,' Miguel Nevarez, DCF's press secretary, said in an email.
The letter is attempting to intimidate the Sentinel from publishing what may be unflattering news about Hope Florida in what is known as prior restraint, and prior restraint efforts typically are unconstitutional, said Clay Calvert, a law professor emeritus at the University of Florida and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Advertisement
If he were the Sentinel's attorney, Calvert said, he would tell the agency 'to go pound sand.'
'DCF can send all the cease and desist letters it wants, but the Sentinel isn't obligated to follow any of them,' he said. 'This is really trying to silence any negative coverage before it comes out.'
Prosecutors in Tallahassee have opened an investigation related to the Hope Florida Foundation. A public records custodian in the office of Second Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jack Campbell confirmed the existence of 'an open, on-going investigation' last month in response to a records request from the Associated Press. The investigation was first reported by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times.
Republican state lawmakers in DeSantis's own party have been scrutinizing Hope Florida and its nonprofit foundation, which gave $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement to two nonprofits. Those groups in turn gave millions to a political committee, chaired by DeSantis's then-chief of staff, that campaigned against a failed referendum on recreational marijuana.
In April, Republican state Representative Alex Andrade wrapped up the investigation he had been spearheading into Hope Florida, saying he would leave the rest of the inquiry to 'the FBI and Department of Justice,' though there is no public evidence that either is doing so. Andrade has alleged that the flow of funds from the foundation to the nonprofits and on to the political committees amounts to 'conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.'
The governor has dismissed the investigation of Hope Florida as a politically motivated smear against his wife, whom he's floated as
Advertisement

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Keep it real and show the receipts': California Congresswoman on how to fight Trump's agenda
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who represents parts of Los Angeles and sits on the House Judiciary Committee, says Trump has 'created and manufactured violence in Los Angeles to distract from the Republican budget.' She joins the Weeknight to break down Trump's escalating use of force on protesters – and what the tactics are really about.
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Challenge to Tampa Bay Senate seat revisits how it was created in 2022
The federal courthouse in Tampa on June 11, 2025. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix) Day Three of the federal lawsuit alleging that a Tampa Bay area state Senate district was racially gerrymandered focused in part on how that district was created in 2022. The suit, filed by the ACLU of Florida and the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at New York University on behalf of three residents of Tampa and St. Petersburg, alleges the Legislature packed Black voters into District 16 to reduce their influence in nearby District 18, in violation of their equal-protection rights. Democrat Darryl Rouson serves in SD 16, while Republican Nick DiCeglie is the incumbent in SD 18. The defendants are Senate President Ben Albritton and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, and their attorneys began their defense on Wednesday, bringing Jay Ferrin back to the witness stand in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa. Ferrin is now a senior adviser to the Florida Senate, but he served as staff director of the Florida Senate Committee on Reapportionment in the fall of 2021, when the districts lines were created. He discussed how he and his staff went about drawing up the Senate districts that year and the guidelines they followed. The reapportionment process beginning that fall was taking place under the guidance of Ray Rodrigues, who chaired the Senate Reapportionment Committee. Defense attorneys aired several Florida Channel video excerpts on Wednesday showing Rodrigues explaining how 'hard lessons were learned' following the Florida Supreme Court's decision in 2015 to throw out the GOP-controlled Legislature's maps after deeming them unlawful under the Fair Districts constitutional amendments adopted by voters in 2010. Rodrigues was insistent that he wanted the 2022 Legislature to conduct itself in such a fashion that the courts would not reject the maps lawmakers would produce. 'This map will withstand a court challenge,' Rodrigues declared on the floor of the Senate. That's what the trial taking place this week will ultimately determine. Ferrin testified that, after his staff created other Senate districts in the Tampa Bay area, there remained about 100,000 residents in Pinellas County who would have to be inserted into another Senate district. (With the population of Florida in 2021 at 21.5 million people, Ferrin said, his staff were tasked to draw approximately 538,438 voters into each of the 40 Senate districts). The resultant SD 16, which encompasses parts of St. Petersburg and Hillsborough County, is similar to the 'benchmark' map created in 2015 that was then known as Senate District 19. Ferrin denied that he was instructed to maintain that same configuration. He also said that under the rules promulgated by Rodrigues, he and his fellow staffers could speak about any new maps only with either the Senate's general counsel or other Senate members — and not the general public. He was not supposed to review public submissions. Florida senators were allowed to propose amendments during the reapportionment process, to add their own maps. Rodrigues and Democratic Sen. Audrey Gibson had filed such amendments, Ferrin said, but no senator had asked him to directly to create any Senate maps. ACLU attorney Nicholas Warren said at the beginning of the morning that he had sought to depose Rodrigues and fellow Republican and committee member Danny Burgess before the trial, but both had asserted legislative privilege, which shields them having to testify in certain lawsuits. In the afternoon, the defense called two expert witnesses who criticized the expert witness testimony and voting analysis that came from the plaintiffs on Tuesday. Steven Voss is a political science professor at the University of Kentucky. When asked to break down the political partisanship of the Tampa Bay area, he included four counties that make up the Tampa Bay metropolitan statistical area — Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk and Hernando. Based on population, he said, five Senate districts could be folded into the area, and that three historically were reliably Republican while two would favor Democrats. Currently, that breakdown is four Republican districts and one Democratic — with Senate District 14, which Voss said historically favored Democrats, going to the GOP in 2022. Voss took aim at the alternative voting maps produced for the ACLU by Penn State University professor of statistics Cory McCartan. Those maps showed that a district could have been fairly drawn up exclusively in Hillsborough County while still protecting Tier-1 standards there and in Pinellas County. (That involves the Florida Constitution's Fair District Amendment, which says that districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice). Voss said that the result of McCartan's work was that he was 'cracking and packing' voters in his maps to ultimately help Democrats at the voting booth. Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics, also testified for the defense. He praised the composition of the Senate maps passed by the Legislature in 2022, saying it was 'pretty incompetent racial gerrymandering, if that's what's going on.' The trial is expected to conclude on Thursday. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
CO Rep. Jeff Hurd reacts to anti-ICE protests in his district and nationwide
WASHINGTON, D.C. (KREX) – The anti-ICE immigration protests in Los Angeles have inspired pop-up demonstrations of solidarity nationwide, including in Colorado Congressman Jeff Hurd's 3rd district. On the heels of a reportedly peaceful protest last night at Grand Junction's Lilac Park, the republican congressman sat down with WesternSlopeNow from D.C. with a message for protesters in his district and beyond. 'We should not be celebrating lawlessness and destruction of private property,' says Hurd. 'It sows chaos. It hurts families. It hurts communities. Now, by contrast, what we saw in Grand Junction was a peaceful protest. That's an example of the First Amendment properly used.' While the congressman shared support for peaceful protests in his district, he also supports the very thing they are protesting against: President Trump's immigration policies and ICE. 'I stand with the president and with ICE and with law enforcement when it comes to securing our borders and keeping our community safe,' says Hurd. 'When you stop the flow of drugs and crime into our community, that's something that the president campaigned on and something that I campaigned on.' But protesters in his district tell WesternSlopeNow, fighting criminals isn't the whole story. 'There's people getting kidnapped out of their immigration appointments and being told that they shouldn't be here when they're trying to do the right thing,' says protester Stephanie Dedduang. 'They are not just taking criminals. They are trying to arrest around 3,000 people a day in order to make this million-people deportation quota.' Demonstrations against ICE and the administration are scheduled to continue this weekend at the No King's Day protests in Grand Junction. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.