Tag: florida

DeSantis Signs Bill Increasing Penalties for ‘Swatting’ into Florida Law

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Wednesday that will increase penalties on people who make false 911 calls, commonly referred to as “swatting.”

The governor signed the bill, HB 279, at a high school in Winter Haven. Rep. Bill Partington (R-Ormond Beach) sponsored the legislation in the House, while Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) led the Senate bill.

“If you swat, you are going to get hit with serious criminal offenses,” DeSantis said at a press conference.

Swatting calls are particularly dangerous, as police responding to a supposedly emergency incident are not aware that the call is bogus. Often targeted at a specific residence, the swatter will sometimes say a person is dangerous or someone is in danger, and a gun is present.

The false report can sometimes lead to someone being killed. It can also strain police manpower and resources away from serious emergency calls.

Under the bill, a person who makes a swatting call that leads to death will be charged with a second-degree felony. A person who makes a false report that leads to serious injury will be charged with a third-degree felony.

The bill also increases penalties for repeat offenders. Moreover, a swatter will be mandated by the court to pay restitution to public safety officials and victims for any damages that occur from the false report.

DeSantis signed a bill establishing swatting penalties in 2021.

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Members Of Congress Want Federal Investigation Into Use Of Florida Medicaid Funds To Oppose Marijuana Legalization By Group Tied To DeSantis

Two Democratic members of Congress representing Florida are asking the federal government to investigate what they describe as “potentially unlawful diversion” of millions in state Medicaid funds via a group with ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). The money was used to fight against a citizen ballot initiative, vehemently opposed by DeSantis, that would have legalized marijuana for adults.

Reps. Kathy Castor and Darren Soto sent a letter on Thursday to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general as well as Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, formally requesting they initiate a Medicaid fraud investigation.

“The diversion of Medicaid dollars requires immediate investigation,” the two lawmakers wrote. “These are proceeds that rightfully belong to state taxpayers to serve the citizens who rely on Medicaid, including children, pregnant women, neighbors with disabilities and those served by long-term care.”

The two lawmakers, members of a House committee with oversight of Medicaid, emphasized that Congress is “very focused on waste, fraud and abuse of Medicaid dollars.”

“Any unlawful diversion of Medicaid dollars in Florida,” they wrote, “means that the state is less able to provide services to our neighbors who rely on Medicaid and the providers who serve them.”

The letter follows allegations that a $10 million donation from a state legal settlement was improperly made to the Hope Florida Foundation, which later sent the money to two political nonprofits, which in turn sent $8.5 million to a campaign opposing the proposed marijuana legalization ballot measure, Amendment 3.

Notably, the Hope Florida Foundation was founded by Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife.

“On October 17, Secure Florida’s Future donated $2 million to Keep Florida Clean Inc., a Political Action Committee (PAC) controlled by Governor DeSantis’s then-chief of staff James Uthmeier that was created to campaign against Amendment 3,” the lawmakers’ new letter says. “Governor DeSantis strongly opposed Amendment 3. Days later, Secure Florida’s Future sent Keep Florida Clean Inc. an additional $1.75 million.”

“On October 22, the Hope Florida Foundation wired $5 million to the 501(c)4 nonprofit Save Our Society from Drugs that proposed spending the ‘grant’ on ‘developing and implementing strategies that directly address the substance use crisis facing our communities,’” it continues, detailing the alleged impropriety. “On October 23, the next day, Save Our Society from Drugs donated $1.6 million to Keep Florida Clean Inc. Over the coming days, Save Our Society from Drugs donated an additional $3.15 million to Keep Florida Clean Inc.”

“While there are limited financial disclosure requirements associated with 501(c)4 organizations,” the lawmakers said, “records appear to show that a total of $8.5 million from the Centene settlement with AHCA went from the Hope Florida Foundation to the Amendment 3-focused Keep Florida Clean, Inc. PAC, the same PAC that also donated funding to the Republican Party of Florida and the Florida Freedom Fund. ”

“Hope Florida had raised only about $2 million during its three years of existence,” they pointed out, “but in one fell swoop, received $10 million from a Medicaid settlement, which was immediately funneled through other nonprofits to a PAC directed by the Governor’s Chief of Staff.”

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Chris Hansen Busts BLM Activist in Child Sex Sting

Cameras were rolling when veteran predator poacher Chris Hansen and his team busted a Black Lives Matter activist who was allegedly attempting to procure a child for sex.

Joining Fox News’ Jesse Watters, the “To Catch a Predator” star commented on his recent capture of Aston Mack, 35, a Florida activist who participated in and led several George Floyd protests in 2020.

Footage shows sheriff’s deputies raiding Mack’s residence and tackling him after he fled on foot.

“Can you grab my shoe?” the activist asked as he was hauled away, with officers denying his request.

“35-year-old Aston Mack, BLM activist, worked with challenged children in Orlando, claimed to me that he had the sex trafficking hotline number on his phone in his pocket and was just gonna help this girl out,” Hansen explained to Watters.

“But the texts tell a very different story,” Hansen added.

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Florida Rejects Controversial Encryption Backdoor Bill

Legislators in the US state of Florida have shot down a bid to introduce a law that would have mandated encryption backdoors.

The outcome of the effort – known as SB 868: Social Media Use by Minors – means that the backdoors would have allowed encryption to be weakened in this fundamental way affecting all platforms where minors might choose to open an account.

As the fear-mongering campaign against encryption is being reiterated over and over again, it’s worth repeating – there is no known way of undermining encryption for any one category of users, without leaving the entire internet open and at the mercy of anything from government spies, to plain criminals.

And that affects both people’s communications and transactions.

Not to mention that while framing such radical proposals as needed for a declaratively equally large goal to achieve – the safety of youth online – in reality, by shuttering encryption, young people and everyone else are negatively affected.

If anything, it would make everyone online less secure, and, by nature of the world –  young people more so than others.

And so, Florida’s Senate on announced that SB 868 is now “indefinitely postponed and withdrawn from consideration.”

The idea behind the proposal was to allow law enforcement access to communications on a social platform – by forcing a company to build in backdoors any time law enforcement came up either with a warrant – or merely a subpoena.

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Florida Lawmakers Again Failed To Regulate Hemp Products This Session

A year ago, members of Florida’s hemp industry were lobbying Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to veto a bill regulating hemp-derived THC products that many claimed if signed into law would be a devastating blow to their livelihoods.

Their mission was accomplished when he did in fact veto the proposal last June.

That won’t be required this year; the Legislature failed to pass anything on hemp before unofficially ending the legislative session on Friday night (although they are expected to return to Tallahassee later this month to deal exclusively with budget-related matters).

The central problem appeared to be the substantive differences between the Senate bill sponsored by Polk County Republican Colleen Burton (SB 438) and the House version (HB 7027) sponsored by Panhandle Republican Michelle Salzman.

The two measures would have capped the potency of hemp-derived THC products, placed advertising restrictions, and required hemp to be tested by a certified medical cannabis laboratory. But there were some big differences: The Senate bill (like its 2024 version) called for the outright ban of synthetic cannabinoids like Delta-8 and said that the newly popular hemp-infused drinks could only be sold through a retailer holding a liquor license.

Salzman’s bill in the House did not ban Delta-8. Neither did it call for retailers to have a liquor license, but it did include a 15 percent excise tax on all hemp purchases. Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, said the House bill was better for his industry than the Senate’s version, and said he appreciated the work that Rep. Salzman devoted to trying to find the right balance.

“In its final form, we said that it wasn’t perfect, but it was a significant improvement on the Senate bill and so in the end nothing passing was better than the Senate bill passing,” Miller said. He’s “hopeful,” he said, that between now and next year’s legislative session “people will realize that the House version is the model to start working from and hopefully produce something that really both protects farmers and consumers at the same time.”

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Florida Lawmakers Kill Medical Marijuana Expansion Bills, Including One To Let Military Veterans Register For Free

Several bills to expand Florida’s medical cannabis program have stalled out for the year, including a measure to exempt military veterans from patient ID card registration fees that was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives.

HB 555, from Rep. Alex Andrade (R), was one of a handful of marijuana-related measures withdrawn in recent days. Unlike the other bills, however, it had passed out of the chamber where it was filed, with House members voting 110–0 in favor. Nonetheless, the Senate indefinitely postponed it and withdrew it from consideration without a vote.

The Senate action occurred on May 3. Florida lawmakers have voted to extend the legislative session into early June, though they’re expected to focus mostly on budgetary matters after returning to Tallahassee.

Other bills that have been set aside without votes include proposals to allow patients to cultivate marijuana at home, expand the list of qualifying conditions for the program and protect employment and parental rights of people who use medical cannabis.

As originally filed, HB 555 would have made significant changes to the state’s existing medical cannabis program, for example allowing home cultivation as well as reciprocity for out-of-state patients. But a House committee amendment replaced its language with a two-page substitute that would make only small adjustments to the medical program.

First, the bill would change how often patients need to renew their medical marijuana cards, from the current annual process to once every two years.

Second, it would waive the $75 registration and renewal fees for veterans, specifying that the state “may not charge a fee for the issuance, replacement, or renewal of an identification card for a qualified patient who is a veteran.”

Sponsor Andrade didn’t respond to multiple requests from Marijuana Moment for comment on the bill’s withdrawal and any possible future action.

Kevin Caldwell, Southeast legislative manager for the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), said that whether or not lawmakers find a way to revive HB 555 during the extended session, “it has been a dismal session for cannabis policy reform in Florida.”

“There were a plethora of good cannabis policies submitted for debate,” he said in an email, “but as has been the case in most legislative sessions in the past few years, the legislature simply doesn’t want to even talk about cannabis policy.”

As for the newly withdrawn measure, Caldwell said lawmakers “whittled HB 555 down from a bill that would have created a much more robust medical cannabis program to a bill that would extend the lifespan of an ID card and waive fees for veterans.”

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‘Bright Line In The Sky’: Florida Passes Bill To Ban, Criminalize Geoengineering

The Florida House of Representatives last week passed a bill to ban and criminalize geoengineering and weather modification, Newsweek reported.

The bill makes it a third-degree felony to release any chemical, substance or apparatus into Florida’s atmosphere to affect the weather or climate.

It imposes a penalty of up to $100,000 for any person or corporation and up to $5,000 and five years in prison for an aircraft controller or pilot involved in such releases.

It also requires Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop protocols to investigate reports of geoengineering and directs the department to send the reports to other state agencies, including the health department, when appropriate.

The bill has cleared both the House and the Senate and awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’ signature.

“There is a lot of unauthorized activity that is currently not regulated, both at a federal and a state level, and this is where we wanted to start,” Sen. Ileana Garcia, who introduced the bill, told members of the Senate.

GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji praised the bill on his Substack. “Florida has drawn a bright line in the sky: It will not allow corporate interests, climate interventionists, or covert operations to tamper with its atmosphere or pollute its environment.”

Since the bill was introduced, the Florida Legislature has received more than 100,000 emails demanding action on geoengineering, Ji reported.

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With Florida Marijuana Legalization Measure Circulating, DeSantis Signs Bill Making It Harder To Qualify Ballot Initiatives

Fresh changes to Florida law on ballot initiatives will create new hurdles for advocates aiming to put legislative proposals before voters—including, potentially, the renewed effort to legalize marijuana in the state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday signed a measure into law that tightens requirements around citizen-initiated measures. Among other requirements, it mandates that supporters post a $1 million bond before commencing signature gathering, prohibits the use of out-of-state and noncitizen petitioners and narrows the window during which which signatures must be submitted to election officials.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R), contends the ballot initiative process “has been taken over by out of state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests intent on buying their way into our Constitution.”

“The bill seeks to root out the problem and provide assurances that only those with a stake in our Constitution can change it to that end,” she said at a hearing in March.

DeSantis, for his part, said on social media over the weekend that the bill will “combat petition fraud and prevent the special interest-abuse of our constitutional amendment process.”

Changes under the new law will also prevent Floridians with felony convictions from collecting petition signatures unless they’ve gone through the process of restoring their voting rights.

Residents will also have to provide personal details—including their driver’s license number, voter ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number—in order to fill out a petition. The form itself will then become a public record, raising potential privacy concerns.

Campaigns also have less time to return petitions to election officials, and they’ll face harsher fines for errors.

The new obstacles to placing a proposal on the statewide ballot come on the heels of two contentious constitutional amendments that went before voters last year, including one—Amendment 3—that would have legalized marijuana for adults 21 and older, and another on abortion rights.

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Recipients of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Had Higher Mortality Than Those of Moderna: Study

Florida adults who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine were more likely to die following vaccination than Moderna COVID-19 recipients, according to a new preprint study that was co-authored by Florida’s top health official.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, and other researchers identified nearly 9.2 million Florida adults not living in institutions who received at least two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine less than six weeks apart between Dec. 18, 2020, and Aug. 31, 2021.

They narrowed the group to nearly 1.5 million, half who received Pfizer’s vaccine and half who received Moderna’s vaccine, by matching them based on criteria such as age and sex. They then analyzed the records to see which group had the higher risk for all-cause mortality, or death from any cause, in the 12 months following vaccination.

That analysis found that more Pfizer recipients died, with 847 deaths per 100,000 recipients, compared to 618 deaths per 100,000 for Moderna recipients. Pfizer recipients were also more likely to suffer heart-related deaths and COVID-19 deaths.

Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.

The study was published as a preprint, which means it has not been peer reviewed, on the medRxiv server on April 29.

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Reports: Castro Regime Propagandist Living in Florida Thanks to Biden Parole Program

Narciso Amador Fernández Ramírez, a known propagandist of Cuba’s communist Castro regime, is allegedly living in the United States thanks to the Biden-era “Humanitarian Parole” program, Cuban-American journalist Mario Pentón reported on Thursday.

The outlet Cubanet described Fernández Ramírez, 65, as a former deputy director of Vanguardia, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the central province of Villa Clara, who also served as columnist for the state propaganda outlet Cubahora. 

The communist propagandist is known in Cuba for vehemently insulting the Cuban diaspora in the United States, branding its members as “rats,” gusanos (“maggots”), and “mercenaries.”

Most notably, Fernández Ramírez appears listed as the author of two pieces published on the official website of late murderous dictator Fidel Castro. One such piece, dated 2019, in which Fernández Ramírez is listed as an author refers to the veterans of the Bay of Pigs liberation attempt as “rats.” In another piece, dated 2017, Fernández Ramírez praised late murderous communist dictator Fidel Castro and claimed that Castro is “seated, vigilant, next to [Cuban founding Father Jose] Martí, in the sacred Olympus of the heroes of the Homeland.”

Pentón reported that Fernández Ramírez has resided in Homestead, Florida, since March 2024 after he became a beneficiary of “humanitarian parole,” a now-extinct and fraud-riddled program launched in 2023 by the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden that allowed up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitiaians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans per month to request entry to the United States by means of a “sponsor,” granting them legal stay and work permits for a period of “up to two years.”

“He is waiting for a green card to apply for benefits such as Social Security and Medicare. He, who was the most unconditional communist in Villa Clara, is now enjoying his old age in the country he despised so much,” a source told Pentón on condition of anonymity.

According to Pentón, Fernández Ramírez presently lives in Homestead with his wife Elizabeth Leal and their daughter, who already resided in the United States.

“A simple Google search was enough to know that this man was a propagandist for the Communist Party of Cuba. That makes him ineligible for immigration benefits,” Florida-based immigration attorney Ismael Labrador told Pentón.

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