House won't override DeSantis' ‘free kill' repeal veto
A trio of flashing billboards less than two miles from the Florida Capitol is slamming Gov. Ron DeSantis for vetoing the "free kill" bill on medical malpractice. (Photo credit: Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix)
House Speaker Daniel Perez said Thursday the chamber will try again next year to pass a repeal of the 'free kill' statute following Gov. Ron DeSantis' veto of the proposal.
DeSantis on May 29 vetoed the Legislature's attempt to remove the bar on parents of adult children and the adult children of single parents from suing hospitals and physicians for non-economic damages for the deaths of loved ones. The governor said repealing 'free kill' would increase health care costs for Floridians and make it harder to keep physicians in the state.
'Of course, the governor has in his right the power to veto this bill, and he chose to do so,' Perez told reporters. 'I disagree with the veto, and we will be bringing that bill back next year for a continued conversation.'
Lawmakers passed HB 6017 with bipartisan support. Repealing the ban on suits to recover non-economic damages is one of the perennial arguments in Tallahassee, as business interests and medical groups oppose the move.
Perez said he remains opposed to placing caps on the pain-and-suffering damages, which is something that DeSantis said could make him support the repeal in the future, along with caps on attorneys' fees. The family members barred from suing for pain-and-suffering damages can recover economic damages, such as lost wages, medical bills, and funeral costs.
'I don't think that we should determine how much a person's life is worth when someone negligently ended it,' Perez said.
The Senate also rejected a bid to cap the damages at $1 million on April 30. Florida, for now, remains the only state banning the recovery of pain-and-suffering damages for parents of adult children and adult children of single parents.
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House GOP Fears Trump-Elon Breakup Might Get In ‘Big, Beautiful' Bill's Way
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A US territory's colonial history emerges in state disputes over voting and citizenship
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It's the only U.S. territory where residents are not automatically granted citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil, as the Constitution dictates. Instead, by a quirk of geopolitical history, they are considered 'U.S. nationals' — a distinction that gives them certain rights and obligations while denying them others. American Samoans are entitled to U.S. passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for the Selective Service. They can vote in local elections in American Samoa but cannot hold public office in the U.S. or participate in most U.S. elections. Those who wish to become citizens can do so, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be cumbersome. 'To me, I'm an American. I was born an American on U.S. soil,' said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those charged in Whittier. 'American Samoa has been U.S. soil, U.S. jurisdiction, for 125 years. According to the supreme law of the land, that's my birthright.' Confusion over voting is not just an Alaska problem The status has created confusion in other states, as well. In Oregon, officials inadvertently registered nearly 200 American Samoan residents to vote when they got their driver's licenses under the state's motor-voter law. Of those, 10 cast ballots in an election, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office. Officials there determined the residents had not intended to break the law and no crime was committed. In Hawaii, one resident who was born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, ran for the state Legislature in 2018 before learning she wasn't allowed to hold public office or vote. She had always considered it her civic duty to vote, and the form on the voting materials had one box to check: 'U.S. Citizen/U.S. National.' 'I checked that box my entire life,' she said. She also avoided charges, and Hawaii subsequently changed its form to make it more clear. Is U.S. citizenship a birthright? Amid the storm of executive orders issued by Trump in the early days of his second term was one that sought to redefine birthright citizenship by barring it for children of parents who are in the U.S. unlawfully. Another would overhaul how federal elections are run, among other changes requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship. Courts so far have blocked both orders. The Constitution says that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' It also leaves the administration of elections to the states. The case in Whittier began with Pese's wife, Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith began volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of the 55 students were American Samoan — many of them her nieces and nephews. She would help the kids with their English, tutor them in reading and cook them Samoan dishes. In 2023, a seat on the regional school board came open and she ran for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the vote. One morning a few weeks later, as she was making her two children breakfast, state troopers came knocking. They asked about her voting history. She explained that she knew she wasn't allowed to vote in U.S. presidential elections, but thought she could vote in local or state races. She said she checked a box affirming that she was a U.S. citizen at the instruction of elections workers because there was no option to identify herself as a U.S. national, court records say. The troopers arrested her and drove her to a women's prison near Anchorage. She was released that day after her husband paid bail. 'When they put me in cuffs, my son started crying," Smith told The Associated Press. "He told their dad that he don't want the cops to take me or to lock me up.' A question of intent About 10 months later, troopers returned to Whittier and issued court summonses to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but came from the same American Samoa village as Pese. One of Smith's attorneys, Neil Weare, grew up in another U.S. territory, Guam, and is the co-founder of the Washington-based Right to Democracy Project, whose mission is 'confronting and dismantling the undemocratic colonial framework governing people in U.S. territories.' He suggested the prosecutions are aimed at 'low-hanging fruit' in the absence of evidence that illegal immigrants frequently cast ballots in U.S. elections. Even state-level investigations have found voting by noncitizens to be exceptionally rare. 'There is no question that Ms. Smith lacked an intent to mislead or deceive a public official in order to vote unlawfully when she checked 'U.S. citizen' on voter registration materials,' he wrote in a brief to the Alaska Court of Appeals last week, after a lower court judge declined to dismiss the charges. Prosecutors say her false claim of citizenship was intentional, and her claim to the contrary was undercut by the clear language on the voter application forms she filled out in 2020 and 2022. The forms said that if the applicant did not answer yes to being over 18 years old and a U.S. citizen, 'do not complete this form, as you are not eligible to vote.' A dispute entangled with a colonial past The unique situation of American Samoans dates to the 19th century, when the U.S. and European powers were seeking to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific. The U.S. Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Harbor in eastern Samoa as a coal-refueling station for military and commercial vessels, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided, with the western islands becoming the independent nation of Samoa and the eastern ones becoming American Samoa, overseen by the Navy. The leaders of American Samoa spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries arguing that its people should be U.S. citizens. Birthright citizenship was eventually afforded to residents of other U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress considered it for American Samoa in the 1930s, but declined. Some lawmakers cited financial concerns during the Great Depression while others expressed patently racist objections, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Legal History. Supporters of automatic citizenship say it would particularly benefit the estimated 150,000 to 160,000 nationals who live in the states, many of them in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska. 'We pay taxes, we do exactly the same as everybody else that are U.S. citizens,' Smith said. 'It would be nice for us to have the same rights as everybody here in the states.' Legal questions over status to be tested anew But many in American Samoa eventually soured on the idea, fearing that extending birthright citizenship would jeopardize its customs — including the territory's communal land laws. Island residents could be dispossessed by land privatization, not unlike what happened in Hawaii, said Siniva Bennett, board chair of the Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, a Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit. 'We've been able to maintain our culture, and we haven't been divested from our land like a lot of other indigenous people in the U.S.,' Bennett said. In 2021, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to extend automatic citizenship to those born in American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship on those who don't want it. The Supreme Court declined to review the decision. Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and the District of Columbia, allow people who are not citizens to vote in certain local elections. Tafilisaunoa Toleafoa, with the Pacific Community of Alaska, said the situation has been so confusing that her organization reached out to the Alaska Division of Elections in 2021 and 2022 to ask whether American Samoans could vote in state and local elections. Neither time did it receive a direct answer, she said. 'People were telling our community that they can vote as long as you have your voter registration card and it was issued by the state,' she said. Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, the head of the state Division of Elections, sent Toleafoa's group a letter saying American Samoans are not eligible to vote in Alaska elections. But by then, the voting forms had been signed. 'It is my hope that this is a lesson learned, that the state of Alaska agrees that this could be something that we can administratively correct,' Toleafoa said. 'I would say that the state could have done that instead of prosecuting community members.' ___ Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska, and Johnson from Seattle. Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.
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an hour ago
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The changes coming to Trump's 'big beautiful bill have little to do with Elon Musk
Washington was on two parallel tracks this past week when discussing President Trump's "big, beautiful bill." On one front: The nation's capital was transfixed by a seismic fight between Elon Musk and President Trump, centered on the cost of the $3 trillion tax and spending bill. On another front: Republican leaders steadily advanced the pricey package with only a few changes apparently on offer. "Pedal to the metal," Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered in a speech Thursday near the height of the Musk drama — ignoring promises from the world's richest man to oust lawmakers who didn't join his effort to kill the bill. Republicans instead appeared to move closer to passage. They previewed changes that will be of interest to taxpayers and businesses, but with little to fulsomely address the critique from Musk and others around the package's price tag. In spite of Musk's campaign and multiple government and independent analyses that found at least $2.4 trillion in new red ink, Thune dismissed Musk this week by saying "we're a long ways down this track" and that his party is "rowing in the same direction." Thune may be overstating things a touch, with a vocal group of fiscal conservatives emboldened by Musk suggesting they will vote no. But Republican leaders from the president on down echoed Thune's position throughout the week. Stifel's Brian Gardner offered a bottom line in a note this past week, suggesting the fighting "makes for great TV and fodder ... but it is unlikely to fundamentally change the composition of the tax bill." "Musk's sway among Republican voters is limited," he added. The week saw a flurry of negotiations over changes to the House package, but, perhaps Washington being Washington, even the cost-saving changes appear to have been immediately spoken for. A meeting on Wednesday with the president, Thune, and members of the Senate Finance Committee ended with a focus on two changes. The first could save significant money by paring back a $40,000 tax deduction in the House bill for state and local taxes (SALT). Any changes there will face fierce opposition when the bill returns to the House, but the Washington Post reported this week that Trump has even indicated he is willing to lower the deduction. But any savings there may be quickly eaten up by the second bit of news this week, which concerns making some business tax incentives permanent. These tax deductions to businesses involve property depreciation, interest expenses, and R&D and are currently temporary in the House package. But an array of key Senators are keen to make them permanent (and more expensive). It's still a matter of some debate, with some hawks like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin having told reporters he is looking to keep those tax breaks temporary and that Trump isn't sold. Johnson had emerged as a fierce critic of the package over spending and is also threatening to reform or break the package into different parts. He would need at least three Republican senators to join him and stand up to what is expected to be a fierce White House pressure campaign. Another key business-world change in the offing that emerged this week involves a provision that says no state may make its own law to regulate artificial intelligence in the coming decade. The need for changes there became evident when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia acknowledged she hadn't been aware of the provision when she voted yes in the House, but that she would flip to no if it stayed in place. Those proposed revision — seen this week as part of a larger spectrum package released by the Senate Commerce Committee — would change the House plan for a 10-year outright ban to a system that blocks some federal broadband funding if a state passes certain AI laws. Tech companies will be watching those developments closely, but they're not expected to have much impact on the bill's price tag. Another possible change could actually push up the price tag, with a growing debate around changes in the House bill to Section 899 of the IRS code, focused on what Republicans call "discriminatory foreign countries." The provision would allow the president to impose new taxes to combat the practices. Removing that change could cut into future government revenues, allowing the president to levy fewer taxes as a result. Other changes could also be coming that might increase the price tag, with some senators still concerned that current cost-saving measures go too far. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has been outspoken on one of the key changes around limiting Medicaid benefits, writing in a recent New York Times op-ed that cuts will hurt the working class and that the core of the issue is "will Republicans be a majority party of working people or a permanent minority speaking only for the C-suite?" Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices
