In three rulings, the Florida Supreme Court upended expectations for the 2024 election
Florida's high court kept everyone waiting, but when they broke their silence everything we knew about the 2024 election seemed upended.
Hi, I am Antonio Fins, a politics editor with the USA Today Florida Network, and this is our recap of the week that was in Sunshine State politics.
Florida's high court kept everyone waiting, but when they finally broke their silence everything we knew about the 2024 election seemed upended.
The state Supreme Court validated the 15-week abortion ban, and paved the way for implementing an even more restrictive six-week prohibition. But ... at the same time ... the justices green-lit a way for Florida voters to ban those bans and again make abortions legal by approving Amendment 4 at the ballot boxes next November.
As such, the justices handed a W to the pro-abortion and anti-abortion camps on the same afternoon.
Reactions to the Supreme Court rulings were immediate across Florida, with mixed feelings in Polk County while in Volusia and Flagler counties those residents supportive of abortion access celebrated and those opposed to Amendment 4 vowed defeat it.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he is confident Florida voters will reject both the abortion and legalized marijuana constitutional amendments. Florida Democrats say Amendment 4, as well as another for-the-ballot constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana, will drive their rank-and-file voters to the polls in seven months.
President Joe Biden's campaign chief said she believes Florida is more competitive and that they would make Donald Trump "own every single cruel" abortion restriction.
After pitching $60 Bibles, Trump wishes a happy Easter to everyone he 'despises'
Speaking of Trump, he followed up his Holy Week sales pitch for $60 Bibles with a vitriolic Easter greeting for "those many people I completely and totally despise."
His daughter-in-law Lara Trump, now vice chair of the Republican National Committee, recorded a song meant to inspire GOP voters but she was immediately spoofed by rivals at the Democratic National Committee.
On Tuesday, Trump returned to the campaign trail — here are five highlights from his speeches in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump again lauded the U.S. Capital Jan. 6 rioters as hostages, and a Polk County man in prison for crimes committed on Capitol Hill that day wants his sentence reduced.
The former president took a loss, at least for the moment, when the federal judge overseeing his classified documents case refused to dismiss the felony charges against him.
In a show of Trump's political sway in red Florida, a Republican has stepped forward to run against Congresswoman Laurel Lee, a Tampa Republican, a little more than a week after the former president called for a primary challenge, purportedly as payback for Lee backing DeSantis for the GOP presidential nomination.
Florida number one in conspiracy theorizing, book challenges. Hmm ...
A report said Florida leads the country in conspiracy theorizing, and when it comes to political tall tales, the state's citizenry ranks as the country's most gullible, too.
The state is at the top in another survey as the American Library Association said Florida leads all 50 states in the number of challenges to books.
This Palm Beach County woke warrior pastor, parents say, took his views too far in canceling Autism Week events, calling them "demonic," at their private school.
In Sarasota, the school district is debating speaking, as in public commenting, as meetings are running late in part as members of the public demand that Bridget Ziegler resign over reports the moralizing Moms for Liberty activist engaged in sexual trysts.
DeSantis, as we've noted, has returned to governing and this week he was commiserating with Floridians stuck in roadway and highway gridlock saying "waiting in traffic isn’t good for people, particularly people that have families."
Remember those migrant flights to Martha's Vineyard funded by DeSantis dollars? A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled the Venezuelan and Peruvian immigrants can sue the plane company that transported them on flights the governor said were meant to "protect the state of Florida."
The governor and state officials have said undocumented immigrants cost Florida more than $500 million in taxpayer money for health care costs, but the state's own data fails to back up that claim.
This week we conclude with some sad news. John Passodomo, a Naples attorney and the husband of Florida Senate President Kathleen Passodomo, died this week from injuries suffered in a hiking accident in Utah leaving those who knew him in "shock."
As always, if you still want to read more, here are five more stories from the USA Today Florida Network.