Editorial: Florida Sunshine laws are dimming. Here's how to find brighter days ahead
Welcome to Florida. Where Sunshine needs lobbyists and lawyers, and the state motto could just as well be 'nothing to see here.' Where elected officials shamelessly reject attempts to let the people who voted for them know what they are up to. Where government bureaucrats seem increasingly inclined to simply ignore the law, particularly in the agencies overseen by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
When Florida first started observing an annual 'Sunshine Week,' it was billed as a celebration of the state's 1967 Government in the Sunshine law that codified open meetings and access to public records. Today, it's more like the award-show reels of the year's casualties. This year, there are a few bright spots — albeit in legislation that faces a high bar to become law. Meanwhile, a flock of brand-new exemptions to the state's open-records laws are clustered at the gates of the state Legislature, fueled by support that's often bipartisan and likely to pass.
Unless champions step forward. The good news: It's not too late.
House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton have positioned themselves as empowered advocates for principled government. If they are willing to stand up for government in the sunshine, they have a good chance of turning this dark tide. Floridians should reach out to both leaders, along with their own representatives, to ask for their support of the public's right to know.
Once upon a time, this state enjoyed a reputation for open government that was second to none. Florida's leaders took pride in the fact that almost every document produced by a governmental agency was available to its residents, even in the days when that meant records kept on reams and reams of paper and meetings that could only be viewed in person. Those who violated these laws had reason to fear serious consequences, including prosecution and the penalty of watching secretive deals unwound in the light of public condemnation. Meanwhile, any attempt to pass exemptions to public information met with fierce, often fatal opposition — and new laws that passed the Legislature often died quickly in court challenges.
With the advent of the internet, video streaming and easy, self-service access to government documents online, it should be easier than ever before to access the information that belongs to the public by right. In some cases, that's true — politicians, as it turns out, love to see themselves on video. The websites for the state Legislature provide ready access to session documents and, on the House side, considerable data on the vast lobbying apparatus that seeks to wield influence. And Florida's court system continues to shine as a beacon of openness, in large part thanks to the longstanding collaboration between state court leaders, judges' to-the-letter interpretation of state law and local elected clerks of court, who work hard to make court documents ever more accessible.
But the forces of darkness are formidable, and for decades, they played the long game. A tweak here, a nip there —- gradually, more and more documents were officially obscured through exemption bills that officially blacked out records. Year after year, lawmakers hide public records. They make it easier for public officials to do business behind closed doors. Worst of all, local and state government agencies have shown an increasing tendency to fend off public-records requests with barriers like unjustified fees or a simple cold shoulder, letting records requests lie dormant for weeks or months with no response.
Over the past few years, the Orlando Sentinel has had to send attorneys to fight for information on several fronts: We fought for records regarding the oversight of publicly funded vouchers that divert hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into unregulated private schools. It took months to uncover information about a shadowy new department that DeSantis set up to provide guidance for ultra-conservative local politicians who were turning school board meetings across Florida into three-ring circuses with endless discussions of drag queens and book bans. The Sentinel even needed attorneys to get public records from local police departments about questionable incidents involving officers.
If one of the state's biggest newspapers had to fight for these records, what chance do ordinary citizens stand?
That's why state lawmakers who care about good government should embrace a proposed bill (SB 1434, by Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg) that would put teeth back into the state's defanged Sunshine-compliance laws by setting strict timelines for governmental agencies to acknowledge public-records requests. It limits fees for agencies that slow-walk demands for records, and even levies fines when delays become egregious. It doesn't go far enough — certainly, not back to the days when state employees took records demands seriously.
But it would be a pivot. And lawmakers have their own recent snub to fuel their ire: The decision to conceal, for nearly two years, a state report that detailed how property-insurance companies bled billions of dollars from their own ledgers and then screamed that they were on the verge of economic collapse. That fake narrative helped convince lawmakers to provide additional taxpayer support, while weakening consumer protection laws to the point where half of all hurricane-related claims following a series of killer storms were denied.
Right now, Rouson is the only name attached to SB 1434, which was drafted with the assistance of Florida's First Amendment Foundation and the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability. Perez and Albritton should make it a priority.
There's one more way they can immediately claim the mantle of champion. Back when DeSantis' presidential ambitions burned bright, he demanded legislation that made it impossible for Floridians to track where he went (even when he was supposedly traveling on public business) or who he met with. Rolling that sweeping, completely unjustifiable shroud of darkness — and then daring DeSantis to veto it — would be a power move on behalf of Florida's citizenry, making it harder for DeSantis to cut secretive deals in the last few years of his lame-duck administration.
There are a few more bright spots. One bill (HB 671/SB 798) would make it easier to track requests and pay any costs of sourcing and copying records via electronic means, making it easier to hold agencies accountable when they stall or 'lose' payments. Another (HB 1321/SB 1726) would strip some of the secrecy from state-university-president searches, letting the public take part in the process of hiring some of the state's highest-paid employees.
There's one more crucial way that Albritton and Perez could step up as champions of public access: Say 'no' to most (if not all) of the 130 new exemptions that have been filed this session. Many of them are small, but some are doozies. We'll cover them in another editorial, but for now, 'just say no' is the guidance the president and speaker can offer — and the least Floridians should expect.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
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Hamilton Spectator
29 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.' Ideologies aren't always aligned — or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. Dallek said Trump has been 'both a victim and an accelerant' of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,' he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
San Francisco Chronicle
36 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that — the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. 'We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,' said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. 'A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.' Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. 'You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,' said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. 'It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.' The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. 'We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,' Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: 'They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded." Ideologies aren't always aligned — or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called 'nihilistic ideations.' But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. 'The far left is murderously violent,' billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: 'Where is Nancy?!' On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. 'All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,' she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them 'horrific violence.' The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls 'sick' and 'evil,' and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to 'HIT' disrespectful protesters and warned of a 'migrant invasion' of the city. 'It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle," he said, 'and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.'
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
In Minnesota, America's Luck Ran Out
Early this morning, a gunman apparently impersonating a police officer targeted two Democratic Minnesota state lawmakers in their homes. First, he shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, who were seriously wounded. Law-enforcement officials believe the same gunman then shot Melissa Hortman, who served as Minnesota's speaker of the House from 2019 to 2024. She was killed, along with her husband, Mark. In September 2023, shortly after Donald Trump yet again encouraged direct political violence against his opponents, I wrote this: 'As a political scientist who studies political violence across the globe, I would chalk up the lack of high-profile assassinations in the United States during the Trump and post-Trump era to dumb luck … Eventually, all luck runs out.' That luck has now run out, in an idyllic Minneapolis suburb. Although details are still emerging, law-enforcement officials are searching for a former appointee of Democratic Governor Tim Walz in connection with the killings, which Walz called 'politically motivated.' The gunman reportedly had a manifesto and a list of targets that included the names of other Minnesota politicians as well as abortion providers in the state. Law-enforcement authorities intercepted but were not able to arrest the shooter shortly after he assassinated Hortman. Had they not, it's possible that he would have made his way to the homes of other Minnesota officials, trying to murder them too. Political violence—and assassinations in particular—are notoriously difficult to predict, precisely because the violence is often carried out by 'lone wolf' attackers. Just one deranged zealot is sufficient to carry out an act of consequential violence. In a country of 340 million people and even more guns, there will always be a small pool of potential killers eager to wreak havoc on the political system. That's why researchers who study political violence, including myself, try to understand what elevates or reduces the risk of violence, even if it can never be fully eradicated. In a context such as the United States, three key factors stand out: easy access to deadly weapons, intense polarization that paints political opponents as treasonous enemies rather than disagreeing compatriots, and incitements to political violence from high-profile public figures. When you combine those three social toxins, the likelihood of political violence increases, even as it remains impossible to predict who will be targeted or when attacks might be carried out. Again, law-enforcement officials still don't know the attacker's precise motivations, and trying to draw conclusions from any single act of political violence is foolish. Because they are rare, randomness plays a role in these instances, and many perpetrators are mentally unwell. But consider this comparison. Although we can't say that climate change caused a specific hurricane, we know that climate change produces stronger hurricanes. Similarly, we may not be able to draw a direct link from rhetoric to a specific act of violence, but we do know that incitements to violence make killings more likely. The United States has repeatedly refused to do anything about easy access to deadly weapons, despite having, by far, the highest rate of mass killings among developed democracies. As a result, the only feasible levers are reducing polarization and stopping high-profile incitements to commit violence. Instead, during the Trump era, polarization has sharply increased. And over the past decade, Trump himself has been the most dangerous political actor in terms of routinely inciting violence against his opponents, including against specific politicians who could become assassination targets. Such incitements matter. When a person with a massive public platform spreads information that encourages violence, attacks become more likely. From the April 2023 issue: Adrienne LaFrance on America's terrifying cycle of extremist violence From the beginning of his first campaign for president, Trump encouraged supporters to beat up hecklers at his rallies, saying he'd cover their legal bills if they ' knock the crap ' out of them. He floated the ideas of shooting looters, shooting shoplifters, and shooting migrants crossing the border. Trump also targeted the press, sharing a variety of violent memes involving specific outlets. He endorsed Greg Gianforte, now the governor of Montana, specifically because he violently attacked a reporter. ('Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type,' Trump said, to cheers.) And, at the end of his first term, Trump's speech on the National Mall on January 6 doused an already incendiary environment, culminating in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Trump's rhetorical incitements to violence extend to politicians, too. He has called his political opponents ' human scum.' Even more worrying are Trump's endorsements of violence against specific Democrats. In 2016, he suggested that maybe there was something that ' Second Amendment people ' could do to deal with Hillary Clinton. In October 2022, when a QAnon disciple who had peddled Trump's lies about the 2020 election attempted to assassinate then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—and fractured her husband's, Paul's, skull with a hammer—Trump made light of the incident. (His son Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo on Instagram of a hammer and a pair of underwear like the ones Paul Pelosi had been wearing during the attempted murder, with the caption: ' Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.') Less than a year later, Trump openly mused that Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be killed. When such language becomes normalized, deranged individuals may interpret rhetoric as marching orders. In 2018, Cesar Sayoc, a die-hard Trump supporter, mailed 16 pipe bombs to people who frequently appeared as targets in Trump's tweets. (Nobody died, but only because Sayoc wasn't skilled at making bombs.) In 2020, Trump tweeted that people should 'LIBERATE MICHIGAN!' in response to its COVID policies. Thirteen days later, armed protesters entered the state capitol building. A right-wing plot to kidnap the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was narrowly foiled months later. It also matters that Trump is one of the biggest vectors for spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation in the United States. When a major political figure disseminates lies about shadowy plots and treasonous acts carried out by the 'human scum' on the other side of the aisle, that can increase the likelihood of violence. (Several followers of QAnon, which Trump has repeatedly amplified himself, have carried out political violence based on the conspiracy theory.) Trump often makes a brief show of condemning political violence—as he has with the killings in Minnesota. While trying to play both the arsonist and the firefighter on social media, his actions in power make clear where his true loyalties lie, sending much stronger signals. One of his first official acts at the start of his second term was to pardon or grant clemency to people convicted for their involvement in the January 6 riots, including those who had violently attacked police officers and were targeting lawmakers. In recent weeks, Trump has floated the possibility of pardoning the far-right zealots who sought to kidnap Governor Whitmer in Michigan. The message is unmistakable: Use violence against my political opponents and there may be a pardon waiting. Joe Biden abused his pardon power to protect his son from tax-evasion charges. Donald Trump abused his pardon power to condone those who attacked cops and hoped to murder politicians. Both abuses were bad. But they are not the same. Trump, more than anyone, should be aware of the risks of political violence. After all, he narrowly escaped an assassin's bullet last summer. He would be dead, but for a gust of wind or a slightly different tilt of his head. But when that assassination attempt happened, Biden didn't mock it; Kamala Harris didn't float the idea of pardoning the assassin; and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hadn't previously mused that Trump should be executed, or that he was human scum, or that Jeffries would pay the bills of people who used violence against Republicans. Neither party has a monopoly on the risks of political violence. Democrats and Republicans in public office are targets who face credible threats in a hyper-polarized political climate. Likewise, supporters of Democrats and supporters of Republicans are both capable of carrying out political violence. (There have also been a small number of statements by Democrats that could be interpreted as incitements to violence, including some by Representatives Maxine Waters of California and Dan Goldman of New York. Goldman apologized for his phrasing the following day.) The difference is that only one party is led by someone who uses his megaphone to routinely normalize and absolve acts of political violence. There is overwhelming evidence of this asymmetric rhetoric between those in party leadership. The United States is a fraying society, torn apart by polarization, intense disagreement, and ratcheting extremism. Cheap weapons of mass murder are readily available. And into that tinder box, Trump adds incendiary rhetoric. We don't know when or where the deadly conflagration will strike next, but more flames will no doubt come. We may still be shocked by tragic acts of political violence like the assassination in Minnesota, but we can no longer feign surprise.
