Latest news with #FentriceDriskell
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Dems' flight to stymie GOP redistricting wouldn't work in Florida
Attempting to thwart a Republican move to draw more GOP districts, Democratic lawmakers in Texas fled the state for Illinois. That maneuver, however, wouldn't work in Florida if Gov. Ron DeSantis called lawmakers in for a redistricting session, to redraw the state's congressional district lines. Florida's constitution only requires a simple majority for a quorum for the Legislature to conduct business, and Democrats comprise a superminority in the House and Senate. 'In Florida … the rules are different so leaving the state wouldn't help Democrats stop a mid-decade redistricting cycle here,' House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, a Black Democrat from Tampa, said. Instead, Driskell said Democrats will lean on public opinion to prevail upon Republicans not to pass a partisan gerrymander. It was the public, with 63% of the vote, that passed the anti-gerrymandering Fair District amendments to the state constitution in 2010. 'We will do everything that we can to make sure that the public is aware and so that they can also put public pressure on their elected officials,' Driskell added. More: What is redistricting? Will Florida redraw maps to give Republicans more House seats? Part of the Fair District amendments were weakened by the recent Florida Supreme Court ruling upholding the current congressional districts. The court ruled the map preferred by the plaintiffs, which kept intact a district that stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, would have been unconstitutional because it was drawn for racial reasons. The district was previously held by former U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat from Tallahassee. Related: Former US Rep. Al Lawson of Tallahassee eyes Florida governor race in 2026 The ruling, though, stopped short of completely erasing the Fair District amendments. The other provisions banning drawing district lines to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent still apply, as do the requirements for lawmakers to stick to municipal, county or geographic boundaries for the lines where possible. If lawmakers stick to those rules if DeSantis calls them in for a redistricting session, it could be difficult to add more reliably Republican districts. DeSantis, though, doesn't think the Fair Districts amendments are constitutional and is likely to push the Legislature to pass maps to directly undermine them. 'The way (Fair Districts) was done, many people believe runs afoul of the federal constitution,' DeSantis told reporters July 30. 'If that's the case, then I think the Florida Supreme Court's position would likely be, well, this is just it's unenforceable at this point because it's constitutionally defective from a federal perspective. I happen to share that view.' Trump's re-drawing push Redistricting is usually only done once every ten years, following the national census. But Texas is moving ahead with their mid-decade redistricting after President Donald Trump said the GOP-led state could gain up to five seats for Republicans by redrawing the map. Such a move would help keep the U.S. House in Republican control. The GOP has a 220-212 advantage over Democrats in the chamber. Three Democrats have died in office since March. If Democrats hold those seats in special elections, they would need to net three districts in the November 2026 elections to take control of the chamber. In Florida, Republicans have a 20-8 edge on Democrats in the congressional delegation. Democrats, who pushed for a federal anti-gerrymandering law in 2021 that Republicans opposed, have said they will fight GOP attempts at mid-decade redistricting by doing their own redrawing in states under their control. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he'll find a way to work around his state's independent redistricting commission. DeSantis has said his office is reviewing the Florida Supreme Court's ruling and is considering calling a special session on redistricting. There could be another court case, though, that affects any redrawing session. The U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 1 issued a short order calling for briefs over a lawsuit involving Louisiana's congressional district maps, which raise the issue of 'whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,' the order states. That case could further erode section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which erased state laws that inhibited or blocked Black people from voting. A major decision in that case could be a firmer basis for redrawing Florida's maps than Trump's partisan reasoning. 'Depending on how the Court rules, the U.S. Constitution may compel the Legislature to revisit its current districts,' said Michael Morley, faculty director of Florida State University's Election Law Center. 'Thus, it would be prudent for the legislature to wait until after the Court rules in the pending VRA case before engaging in further redistricting efforts.' The prospect of the VRA being undermined is particularly jarring for Driskell. 'To use the Equal Protection Clause (of the Fourteenth Amendment) to undermine section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which effectively is what gave Black Americans the right to vote in 1965 - less than 100 years ago - to me is such perverse interpretation of both the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause and it could have devastating impact on what both the Texas and Florida legislatures are allowed to get away with,' Driskell said. Effectively stopping Republicans from pushing through new districts, though, will be difficult. Unlike when lawmakers fled to Georgia in 1891 (over a U.S. Senate seat election) and in 1931 (over gas tax distributions), high-footing it to another state wouldn't disrupt the Legislature's proceedings. Democrats could still kick up a fuss. In 2022, when the Legislature was poised to pass DeSantis' maps, House Democrats' raucous demonstration on the floor delayed its passage for several hours. Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@ Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Texas Democrats' redistricting tactics won't work in Florida politics
Yahoo
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida's disaster pipeline funnels millions to politically connected contractors
ORLANDO, Fla. — In a matter of days, a detention camp for undocumented migrants state officials have dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' rose out of the mosquito-infested Florida Everglades in time for a visit from President Donald Trump on July 1. The rapid mobilization of workers and materials was made possible by Florida emergency rules that allow Gov. Ron DeSantis to suspend state laws, building codes and the public, competitive bidding process to award millions of dollars from an account he alone controls. The governor has used this same disaster pipeline for years to funnel billions of dollars to contractors with political ties to himself and the GOP. Some of those contractors won jobs again when his administration moved quickly this summer to build a detention center in the Everglades. 'It's not Alligator Alcatraz. It's Gator Grift,' said state Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Tampa, leader of the Democrat minority in the House. The state's emergency rules gave DeSantis the power to commandeer an airport owned by Miami-Dade County and deploy more than a dozen contractors to erect a tent city that has so far cost taxpayers about $240 million, according to available public records. State officials said it will cost $450 million a year to operate what is supposed to be a temporary detention facility. Florida law allows the governor to declare a 60-day emergency, and he has done that after hurricanes, tornadoes and floods and then awarded contracts to companies on a preapproved vendor list — to repair roads and bridges, clean up debris, and provide food, medical care and temporary shelter to victims. DeSantis also has the power to renew those orders every 60 days as long as he deems an emergency exists. And since 2023 he has stretched the meaning of an emergency to include rounding up immigrants and sending them to Martha's Vineyard and California, deploying Florida National Guard troops and state law enforcement officers to the Texas-Mexico border, intercepting people trying to get into Florida by boat, and evacuating Florida residents from Haiti and Israel. 'If you ask the every-day Floridian what is an emergency, they would say a hurricane or flooding, not immigration,' Driskell said. The authority to build the new detention center comes from an executive order DeSantis signed in January 2023 declaring an immigration emergency and renewed 15 times since. Under state law, the auditor general is supposed to review all expenditures issued under an emergency order that is more than a year old, but to date no such audit has been conducted. CDR Health, a longtime state contractor, won a $17.5 million contract to provide medical facilities at the camp. It has contributed nearly $4 million to Republican candidates over the years, and gave $500,000 to a political committee associated with DeSantis in March. IRG Global, a spinoff of ARS Global, which has provided millions in hurricane recovery services over the last four years, got three contracts totaling $6.6 million including for shuttle operations, airfield ground control transportation and a flight control manager. IRG donated $3,000 to Attorney General James Uthmeier's political campaign and $10,000 to the Republican Party of Florida around the same time it got its contracts. IRG, ARS Global and its officers have contributed nearly $400,000 to DeSantis and the GOP. The biggest contract for Alligator Alcatraz is $78.5 million to Critical Response Strategies for staffing, including $260,000 for a warden, $160,000 for a camp manager and $8.7 million for an unspecified number of corrections officers. Those positions were advertised on CRS has previously done around $70 million in business with the state. Will Adkins, a manager of CRS, donated $240 to DeSantis in 2021 and 2022. DeSantis and his administration have touted the quickly built detention center as a model for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use in other states as it works to fulfill the president's orders to deport thousands of undocumented immigrations. 'Within a week we had this facility set up,' DeSantis said. 'Florida set the standard for doing this swiftly, defying expectations of what the government can do.' It's hard to understand the full scope of the work on the 39-acre site that was a former airport strip because of inaccuracies on a public contract database. One contract in the database, for example, said $36.8 million was awarded to Loving Touch Services — a defunct hair salon in Boynton Beach. It was actually a contract for Longview International Technological Solutions, which was awarded it to build roads and fences, among other things. The state fixed the error after an Orlando Sentinel reporter pointed it out. The reporter also pointed out other irregularities. For instance, the Longview contract includes a line item of $5.95 million for Lemoine CDR, an affiliate of CDR Health. One of two contracts originally listed for CDR Health also included a $21.1 million line item for Gothams, a technology company that gave $50,000 to a political action committee associated with DeSantis. The Division of Emergency Management did not answer questions about those inaccuracies but removed more than a dozen contracts from the public site. The lack of transparency and the bypass of competitive bidding makes it difficult to know if citizens are getting the most bang for their buck, said Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg-area Republican and former state senator who started his own think tank after leaving the senate in 2022. 'I have no doubt that we are not getting the best price,' said Brandes, who has made a reputation for himself as an expert on prison reform. 'This facility will cost eight to 10 times what it costs to have a typical inmate in a Florida prison.' DeSantis and his allies have defended the project, saying the federal government did not have the manpower and facilities to process so many undocumented immigrants. 'They asked us for help on that,' DeSantis said at a news conference earlier this week. The most recent accounts said there were about 750 detainees at the Everglades camp, which will eventually be able to house up to 4,000 people. DHS has started moving in 'a significant number of people, and starting to deport people too,' DeSantis said Thursday in Jacksonville. The Everglades camp is designed to be a way station for detainees, a 'quick processing center, with a runway right there to send people back to their home country.' DeSantis said his goal is to fill the Everglades facility before starting work on a second detention center at Camp Blanding, a military base southwest of Jacksonville that's used as a training camp for the Florida National Guard and once housed 4,000 German POWs after World War II. In contrast to the no-bid contracts issued for the Everglades camp, DeSantis said the state requested proposals for the Camp Blanding one. 'I believe there are a number of bids from people.' He did not explain why the Camp Blanding project would be done differently. Most of the money for Alligator Alcatraz comes from a $500 million emergency fund first approved by the Legislature in 2022. The money was agreed to despite misgivings from several Democrats and some Republicans about the lack of specificity about its purpose and a lack of fiscal oversight. And when Sen. Jason Pizzo, a former Democrat, asked if immigration initiatives would fall under that fund, bill sponsor Sen. Danny Burgess, a Republican from Tampa Bay, gave a noncommittal response. 'I am not going to speculate about the myriad of disasters that are out there,' Burgess said. The Legislature has continued to give DeSantis his $500 million a year emergency fund, in addition to hundreds of millions more when he's run through that allotment. He also has a $14.6 billion rainy day fund to tap into for emergencies. In the past, contractors with political ties also got state work, with ARS Global, for example, signing a contract in 2023 to provide migrant relocation services, six months after donating nearly $100,000 to DeSantis' reelection campaign. 'We watched as Republicans gave DeSantis whatever he wanted … as he built a national profile as he prepared to run for president,' Driskell said. 'Now we see the governor use this slush fund with no oversight to pay for these political stunts.' With the money spent to build the Everglades detention center, the state could end its teacher shortage, pay for storm-water improvements, fix the property insurance crisis or solve housing affordability, she added.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
FSU students come to Capitol with asks following campus shooting
Simon Monteleone, a student at Florida State and intern for Rep. Mitch Rosenwald, speaks n April 22. 2025, during a news conference with Rep. Fentrice Driskell and other FSU students who were on campus during the April 17, 2025, campus shooting. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix) Florida State University students, joined by House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell, are calling for policy change following a campus shooting within walking distance of the chambers where laws are made. A group of students gathered at the Capitol Tuesday only days after they barricaded themselves in classrooms Thursday when a shooter opened fire on campus, killing two and wounding six. 'As a leader, I carry the weight of this moment and turn it into purpose. We owe it to the victims, not just here at Florida State University, but across Florida and across our nation to make sure that this doesn't happen again,' said Andres Perez, president of the FSU chapter of Students Demand Action. The suspected gunman, step-son of a Leon County sheriff's deputy, according to law enforcement, used her retired service weapon. Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil said it was not surprising 20-year-old Phoenix Ikner would have access to weapons. He was involved with LCSO, including training with the department and sitting on a youth board advising the sheriff. Madalyn Propst, president of FSU College Democrats, called on FSU to put locks on classroom doors, train professors to respond to shootings, and increase financial support for mental health intervention and advocacy. She said the shooting 'was both senseless and preventable.' 'Although it is not a political issue when a mass tragedy happens, it becomes political when it is enabled by poor policy,' Propst said in the Captiol rotunda. 'Because of a lack of proactive planning and poor policy on the hands of our legislators, there are two people who are dead who shouldn't be, six people in the hospital who shouldn't be, thousands of students who no longer feel safe on campus, and a community that is still reeling from a senseless act of violence, and no amount of thoughts and prayers is going to fix that.' Propst called on Congress to reinstate the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, and on the Legislature to expand safe storage laws to apply to any house that someone who cannot legally handle a gun lives in. 'Shooting after shooting, we're told to wait, and all we hear are 'thoughts and prayers.' And I'm sensitive to not politicizing an issue but, year after year, we file good, common sense bills to help make our community safer and, unfortunately, they don't even get a committee hearing,' Driskell said. A Senate bill, SB 814, allowing students to carry guns on Florida campuses, lost steam earlier this session, and eyes are on the same chamber to see if it will pick up the House-approved bill, HB 759, to lower the age to buy long guns to 18. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'I'm disgusted with my Legislature and the people that I know some of my friends and my family voted for,' Propst said. 'The fact that they are able to sit in this place and prioritize weapons over my life, my friends' lives, and the lives of my community around me is deplorable.' The House bill would reverse in part a 2018 package addressing school safety passed just weeks after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. A response as quick as happened in 2018 does not seem so certain this year. 'I think the only difference [between 2018 and now] is that it seems like the governor is desensitized to this. I mean, we saw the comments from President Trump, that, to me, was such a slap in the face to these students and to everyone in this community who's been impacted by this gun violence,' Driskell. Gov. Ron DeSantis released a video to X the day of the shooting and ordered flags flown at half-staff. President Donald Trump said, 'I will always protect the Second Amendment,' and, 'These things are terrible. But the gun doesn't do the shooting, the people do,' CBS News reported. According to FSU, following the shooting it offered mental health assistance to more than 1,300 students Thursday through Sunday, including 604 on the day of the shooting and 520 on Sunday. The university continues to provide services through this week. The school canceled classes on Friday and resumed classes Monday with optional attendance. The semester ends May 2. Rep. Christine Hunchofsky, mayor of Parkland during the 2018 shooting, reflected on the FSU shooting during a media availability Monday. 'If you haven't been through something like this, it's very hard to understand the level of trauma that people who have been through this are experiencing and, if that doesn't get addressed early enough, it's something that can become debilitating in the long term. And so, it's so important to make sure that everyone has what they need,' Hunchofsky said. Minutes after the shooting on Thursday, Hunchofsky presented HB 1403 to the House Education and Employment Committee, a bill that would address school safety measures. It passed unanimously. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Controversial gun bill moves through Florida legislature following deadly FSU shooting
The Brief Several state lawmakers said now is the time to rethink a controversial gun bill that's moving through the legislature. It comes as students, staff and families continue grieving the victims of Florida State University's on-campus shooting. Supporters of the new bill said last month lowering the age limit to 18 is a matter of consistency and giving people the right to defend themselves. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - As Florida State University students, staff and families grieve following a deadly on-campus shooting, several state lawmakers said now is the time to rethink a controversial gun bill that's moving through the legislature. The Florida House Democratic Caucus leaders held a virtual news conference on Monday, devoting a major portion of their remarks to the shooting at FSU. RELATED: Florida State resuming classes on Monday, days after tragic shooting on campus "There isn't a community in Florida that hasn't been impacted by gun violence," said Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Hillsborough County. The backstory The comments come after a gunman opened fire on FSU's campus, killing two people and wounding six others. Days before the shooting, a bill passed through the Florida House of Representatives that would lower the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18 years old. Follow FOX 13 on YouTube Big picture view The bill would undo a bipartisan law passed after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that raised the minimum age to 21. Democratic leaders believe the law has helped reduce the number of shootings. "What we don't want to do is add fuel to the fire. What we don't want to do is try to exacerbate situations like what we just saw at Florida State," Driskell said. The other side Supporters of the new bill, however, said last month lowering the age limit to 18 is a matter of consistency and giving people the right to defend themselves. "We are either an adult at 18 or we're not. It's legitimately that simple. That's the basis of this argument," said Rep. Danny Alvarez, R-Hillsborough County. MORE: Lakeland student describes suspected FSU shooter "If you are treated as an adult to defend our country and to vote in our country, we must not infringe upon your constitutional rights," added Rep. Judson Sapp, R-Putnam County. What's next A related bill in the Florida Senate was proposed and would need to pass. At the moment, however, it has not been discussed in committees. The Source The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Aaron Mesmer. It also contains previous FOX 13 News reports on the shooting at Florida State University. WATCH FOX 13 NEWS: STAY CONNECTED WITH FOX 13 TAMPA: Download the FOX Local app for your smart TV Download FOX Local mobile app:Apple |Android Download the FOX 13 News app for breaking news alerts, latest headlines Download the SkyTower Radar app Sign up for FOX 13's daily newsletter
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida gun age proposal may be quashed following FSU shooting
Days after the deadly shooting at Florida State University, the state Senate appears poised to scuttle a proposal to allow people under the age of 21 to buy rifles and other long guns. Last month, the Florida House approved the repealing of a law that prevents 18-20-year-olds from buying guns for several weeks. Senate President Ben Albritton had been noncommittal about whether a vote on the measure would be taken in the upper chamber. That vote seems less likely after a gunman killed two people on campus and inured six others on Thursday. House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, was hopeful that the Senate would not advance the bill. She says more gun control is needed now, not less. 'I'm sensitive to not politicizing this issue, but year after year, Democrats in our caucus file good, common sense gun laws. They are reforms that would help to make our communities safer. Unfortunately, the Republican majority refuses to even give them a hearing,' Driskell said. Other gun legislation that would have allowed students to carry concealed firearms on college campuses died last month after it was not approved by the Senate criminal justice committee. A House version of that bill was never heard in committee. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
