DeSantis signs bill that makes changes to rebuilding storm-damaged homes, debris removal
The new measure, which took effect immediately, will require local governments each year to set in advance at least one debris-management site; to develop plans for businesses and homeowners about post-storm permitting processes; to establish what are known as mutual-aid agreements to bring in help from elsewhere; and to set plans for staffing after storms.
Local governments also will be prohibited from increasing building-permit and inspection fees for 180 days after emergencies are declared for hurricanes or tropical storms.
Pushback against changes
The bill drew some criticism for prohibiting "restrictive or burdensome" changes to local growth guidelines through Oct. 1, 2027, and retroactive to Aug. 1, 2024, in counties under federal disaster declarations after last year's hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton.
"A similar 2023 law that applied to 10 counties already has been cited to prevent local governments in the region from adopting stronger environmental protections," 1000 Friends of Florida Policy and Planning Director Kim Dinkins wrote to the group's supporters on June 19. "SB 180 would also nullify local efforts to adopt land-use changes to promote greater community resilience, to protect lives, property and public dollars from future storms."
The bill also would seek to prevent a repeat of an incident where a crane collapsed into a St. Petersburg office building when Hurricane Milton slammed into the area. The bill would require that 24 hours before anticipated hurricane impacts, all hoisting equipment would have to be secured to comply with manufacturer recommendations, which could include removing advertising, laying down fixed booms and setting towers in a "weathervane position."
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Forget about DOGE: Florida and U.S. go on a migrant crackdown spending spree
In America today, we pump billions of dollars into arresting, detaining and deporting migrants, the majority of whom have no criminal convictions. We — taxpayers — spend millions in Florida to hastily build a tent structure in the middle of the Everglades, where, our president has suggested, alligators and snakes will take care of migrants who try to escape. To build such a facility, we use emergency powers declared and extended for dubious reasons to address 'the large influx and number of illegal aliens' coming to the state, many looking for work we Americans are willing to give to them at construction sites, restaurants and farms. These are our tax dollars at work, being spent on a counterproductive immigration crackdown orchestrated by the same leaders in Florida and Washington, D.C., who complain about government overspending. They created DOGEs — first, a federal one, then a Florida version. They slashed humanitarian aid to other countries under the guise of America First. Yet, they cut money to help feed our own people who rely on food stamps, and then labeled that move as the One Big Beautiful Bill. They also took health care from Americans who need it the most, with 10 million expected to become uninsured thanks to Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office. President Trump's signature bill also gave ICE the largest budget of any law enforcement agency in the federal government, doubling its capacity to hold detained immigrants, CBS News reported. Meanwhile, the law also is expected to add $3.4 trillion to the federal budget deficit — partly because of extended tax cuts that help high earners the most. Yet, the same Republicans who say they want a leaner government signed off on it. If Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis deported every single undocumented immigrant from the U.S. and Florida, that wouldn't fix the state's homeowners' insurance crisis, lower housing prices or solve stubbornly high prices at the grocery store. In fact, the lack of migrant labor could make some of our problems worse, as Trump himself seemed to acknowledge when he floated the idea in June of protecting farmworkers, who are essential to our food supply, from immigration raids. What else could Florida do with the $450 million that Alligator Alcatraz is expected to cost annually? Florida expects that money will be reimbursed by the federal government, but that's still our tax dollars being spent with little oversight. The Trump administration has said each bed at the detention camp is expected to cost $245 a day, roughly the same price of one night at the Intercontinental Miami hotel, the Herald reported last week. The DeSantis administration already has committed more than $200 million to private contractors at Alligator Alcatraz, according to the Herald. That's what it has cost so far to assemble a small city in eight days and run it. It is an eye-popping amount when you consider the facility opened just a month ago, with early reports from detainees about giant bugs and toilets that did not flush. What else could DeSantis accomplish if he applied the same political and financial will to other issues, such as the need for aggressive homeowners' insurance reform and for more housing that's affordable to middle and working class Floridians? DeSantis, who's using the Florida DOGE to probe spending by Broward County and other local governments, has proven less than frugal when it comes to his political priorities. Take the millions of dollars he spent in 2022 flying migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard just to prove a point to the Biden administration. To be clear, former President Biden's mishandling of the Southern border helped Trump convince Americans that anything goes when addressing illegal immigration. We're paying a high price, both in tax dollars and in communities being torn apart.
New York Post
10 hours ago
- New York Post
Miranda Devine: Biden abused his authority by turning FEMA into a far-left political machine
The Biden administration abused its power by turning the entire mechanism of the federal government into a Democrat voter mobilization campaign, according to newly unearthed White House documents viewed exclusively by The Post. The worst offender was FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under the Department of Homeland Security, which was controlled for four years by Biden's Machiavellian border buster Alejandro Mayorkas. When responding to an emergency or a natural disaster, FEMA employees were directed to make voter registration a 'key priority.' They politically targeted vulnerable people in their hour of need instead of focusing on providing federal assistance. Left-wing NGOs were brought in to 'educate' FEMA staff about 'equity and voter access for individuals affected by disaster,' says a Trump administration official. 'FEMA's job is to make sure Americans who have suffered catastrophic loss due to some disaster in their community [can access] food, water and shelter . . . Under President Biden, FEMA, like every agency, produced a plan on how they would leverage these crisis situations for political [purposes]. I can't think of anything more disgusting.' FEMA snubbed GOP FEMA employees were so fixated on voter outreach that, when they visited hurricane-ravaged Florida last October, they didn't even bother knocking on the doors of houses that had Trump signs in the yard. Instead of assisting Hurricane Milton survivors, they were instructed to 'avoid homes advertising Trump,' according to an Office of Special Counsel complaint. FEMA supervisor Marn'i Washington was fired as a scapegoat after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called foul on the scam and The Daily Wire reported that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags had been skipped by FEMA and denied the opportunity of qualifying for federal assistance. It stands to reason that if FEMA's priority was getting out Democrats to vote, the last people they would want to visit were Trump supporters. The Florida scandal came on the heels of the Biden administration's sluggish response to Hurricane Helene in Trump-supporting rural areas of North Carolina and Tennessee. Whether it was Hurricane Helene, the Maui wildfires, Hurricane Ian, or the East Palestine train derailment, FEMA always came up short during the Biden years. The agency's inadequate performance is more understandable when you realize that providing actual disaster relief to victims had become simply a side dish to the partisan political priorities of the Democratic Party. Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here! It began the minute Joe Biden came into office, when he concocted a fake voter registration crisis by leveraging the same racial discord that he had exploited during the George Floyd riots the previous summer, claiming that 'many Americans, especially people of color, confront significant obstacles to exercising the fundamental right' to vote, including 'difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.' This was not true. In fact, voter turnout in the 2020 election of 67% was the highest recorded in the 21st century, according to the Census Bureau. Voter registration, likewise, was at a record high in 2020. 'Equity' and 'access' were euphemisms for policies designed simply to increase Democrat voter turnout by targeting demographics that traditionally vote Democrat. Biden launched his federal government-wide voter recruitment program with an Executive Order on March 7, 2021, to 'promote equity in voter access.' The date was chosen deliberately to fall on the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday to invoke the civil rights legacy of fighting voter suppression against black Americans. Biden announced the scheme at a breakfast in Selma, Ala., absurdly tying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to what he claimed was a renewed struggle for voting rights. Fed turnout machine A federal lawsuit filed by nine states last August claimed that his order was drafted by progressive racial activist group Demos, which 'monitors implementation and advocates that federal agencies do more.' The EO was executed by Susan Rice, Biden's assistant to the president for domestic policy, whose primary focus was making 'equity' central to every arm of government. In 2021, she commanded all federal agencies to dream up ways to re-engineer their activities to prioritize voter turnout, especially in 'marginalized communities.' The Department of Energy, for example, targeted low-income households that qualify for federal weatherization assistance with voter registration paraphernalia before the 2022 midterm elections. The Department of Labor enlisted state workforce agencies to designate American Job Centers as voter registration agencies and coordinating exclusively with leftist 'voting rights' groups. The Department of Health and Human Services instructed federal health centers to engage in voter turnout, including 'encouraging patients to register to vote, assisting patients with completing registration forms, sending completed forms to the election authorities.' HHS also encouraged voter registration by ineligible illegal aliens who had access to health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, according to an expose by Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky. DHS went above and beyond. A FEMA 'Strategic Plan for the Implementation of Executive Order 14019, Promoting Access to Voting' dated Sept. 10, 2021, and sent to Rice by Katherine Culliton-González, DHS officer for civil rights and civil liberties, summarized what DHS was doing to comply with Biden's EO by using disasters and emergencies to harvest voters: 'DHS has planned and begun implementing a variety of internal and external activities to promote access to voting.' The plan included 'key messaging and . . . resources to promote equity in voter access through their training preparedness initiatives for individuals impacted by a disaster or emergency event.' Also included were novel ways of harnessing 'internal resources, and points of public interface to promote equity in voter access before, during, and after a disaster or emergency event.' Registration drive Another arm of Mayorkas' empire, the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was enlisted for the turnout effort, with a plan to 'build up its existing efforts to facilitate voter registration for new citizens at the end of naturalization ceremonies, in coordination with governmental and nongovernmental organizations.' At 2,100 naturalization ceremonies for new Americans, DHS embedded 'voter-registration outreach,' inserting 2 million voter registration forms in 'welcome packets' and inviting only partisan left-leaning groups. Another White House document covering 'Partnerships and Outreach' showed that DHS signed 'Memorandums of Understanding' with the League of Women Voters in October 2022 and NALEO Educational Fund in February 2023, for naturalization 'ceremony support.' Another DHS outfit, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, co-hosted 'Your Vote Your Voice 'cyber-hygiene webinars' with another NGO, the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). Taxpayer resources allocated by DHS for voter turnout in 2022-2024 included 12 full-time USCIS employees, $1.9 million in print contracts, and 'costs absorbed' for a dedicated five-person team from FEMA's Individual and Community Preparedness Division. President Trump issued a new executive order in March this year to reverse Biden's subterfuge, calling on every federal agency to ensure the voter outreach schemes are dismantled. The cost of this Sovietization of the federal government is incalculable. But let's hope FEMA and the other agencies can get back to their day jobs.
CBS News
17 hours ago
- CBS News
Another Alligator Alcatraz? Florida plans on building a second immigration detention center
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ' administration is apparently preparing to build a second immigration detention center, awarding at least one contract for what's labeled in state records as the "North Detention Facility." The site would add to the capacity at the state's first detention facility, built at an isolated airfield in the Florida Everglades and dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." Already, state officials have inked more than $245 million in contracts for that facility, which officially opened July 1. Florida plans to build a second detention center at a Florida National Guard training center called Camp Blanding, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southwest of downtown Jacksonville, though DeSantis has said the state is waiting for federal officials to ramp up deportations from the South Florida facility before building out the Camp Blanding site. "We look forward to the increased cadence," of deportations, DeSantis said last month, calling the state "ready, willing and able" to expand its operations. Civil rights advocates and environmental groups have filed lawsuits against the Everglades facility, where detainees allege they've been forced to go without adequate food and medical care, and been barred from meeting with their attorneys, held without any charges and unable to get a federal immigration court to hear their cases. President Donald Trump has touted the facility's harshness and remoteness as fit for the "worst of the worst," while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said the South Florida detention center can serve as a model for other state-run holding facilities for immigrants. The Florida Division of Emergency Management, the state agency that built the Everglades facility, has awarded a $39,000 contract for a portable emergency response weather station and two lightning sirens for what's been dubbed the "North Detention Facility," according to records in the state's public contract database. The equipment will help enable "real-time weather monitoring and safety alerting for staff." The contract comes as the state approaches the peak of hurricane season, and as heavy rains and extreme heat have pounded parts of Florida. Immigrant advocates and environmentalists have raised a host of concerns about the Everglades facility, a remote compound of heavy-duty tents and trailers that state workers and contractors assembled in a matter of days. Last week, FDEM released a heavily redacted draft emergency evacuation plan for what the document called the "South Florida Detention Facility." Entire sections related to detainee transportation, evacuation and relocation procedures were blacked out, under a Florida law that allows state agencies to make their emergency plans confidential. Despite multiple public records requests by The Associated Press, the department has not produced other evacuation plans, environmental impact studies or agency analyses for the facility. Questioned by reporters on July 25, FDEM executive director Kevin Guthrie defended the emergency response agency's plans for the makeshift facility, which he says is built to withstand a Category 2 hurricane, which packs winds of up to 110 mph. "I promise you that the hurricane guys have got the hurricane stuff covered," Guthrie said. ___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
