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The cost: The participating counties and municipalities are contributing to a $4bn statewide spend, including Miami Beach’s $400m Forever Bond, a $1bn stormwater plan and $250m of improvements to Broward county’s sewage systems to protect against flooding and seawater seepage. In the Keys, many consider the estimated $60m a mile cost of raising roads too expensive.

The threat: Saltwater from sea level rise is seeping further inland through Florida’s porous limestone bedrock and contaminating underground freshwater supplies, notably in the Biscayne aquifer, the 4,000-sq mile shallow limestone basin that provides drinking water to millions in southern Florida. Years of over-pumping and toxic runoff from farming and the sugar industry in central Florida and the Everglades have worsened the situation. The Florida department of environmental protection warned in March that “existing sources of water will not adequately meet the reasonable beneficial needs for the next 20 years”. A rising water table, meanwhile, has exacerbated problems with south Florida’s ageing sewage systems. Since December, millions of gallons of toxic, raw sewage have spilled on to Fort Lauderdale’s streets from a series of pipe failures.

The cost: The Everglades restoration plan was originally priced at $7.8bn, rose to $10.5bn, and has since ballooned to $16.4bn. Donald Trump’s proposed 2021 federal budget includes $250m for Everglades restoration. The estimated $1.8bn cost of the reservoir will be split between federal and state budgets.

Possible solutions

The cost: With homeowners and businesses largely bearing their own costs, the specific amount spent on “hurricane-proofing” in Florida is impossible to know. A 2018 Pew research study documented $1.3bn in hazard mitigation grants from federal and state funding in 2017, along with a further $8bn in post-disaster grants. Florida is spending another $633m from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on resiliency planning.

Wildlife and habitat loss The threat: Florida’s native flora and fauna are being devastated by climate change, with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory warning that a quarter of the 1,200 species it tracks is set to lose more than half their existing habitat, and the state’s beloved manatees and Key deer are at risk of extinction. Warmer and more acidic seas reduce other species’ food stocks and exacerbate the deadly red-tide algal blooms that have killed incalculable numbers of fish, turtles, dolphins and other marine life. Bleaching and stony coral tissue disease linked to the climate crisis threaten to hasten the demise of the Great Florida Reef, the only living coral reef in the continental US. Encroaching saltwater has turned Big Pine Key, a crucial deer habitat, into a ghost forest.

As for the Key deer, of which fewer than 1,000 remain, volunteers leave clean drinking water to replace salt-contaminated watering holes as herds retreat to higher ground. A longer-term debate is under way on the merits and ethics of relocating the species to other areas of Florida or the US.

Coastal erosion The threat: Tourist brochures showcase miles of golden, sandy beaches in South Florida, but the reality is somewhat different. The Florida department of environmental protection deems the entire coastline from Miami to Cape Canaveral “critically eroded”, the result of sea level rise, historically high tides and especially storm surges from a succession of powerful hurricanes. In south-eastern Florida’s Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, authorities are waging a continuous war on sand loss, eager to maintain their picture-perfect image and protect two of their biggest sources of income, tourism dollars and lucrative property taxes from waterfront homes and businesses.

In the devastating hurricane season just one year before, major storms named Harvey, Maria and Irma combined to cause damage estimated at $265bn. Scientists have evidence the climate crisis is causing cyclones to be more powerful, and intensify more quickly, and Florida’s position at the end of the Atlantic Ocean’s “hurricane alley” makes it twice as vulnerable as any other state.

With the other option abandoning beaches to the elements, city and county commissions have little choice but costly replenishment projects with sand replacement and jetty construction. Federal law prohibits the importation of cheaper foreign sand, so the municipalities must source a more expensive alternative from US markets, often creating friction with residents who don’t want to part with their sand. Supplementary to sand replenishment, the Nature Conservancy is a partner in a number of nature-based coastal defense projects from West Palm Beach to Miami.

benefited from 61,000 cubic yards of new sand this year at a cost of $16m. Statewide, Florida spends an average $50m annually on beach erosion.

The threat: “Climate gentrification” is a buzzword around south Florida, a region barely 6ft above sea level where land has become increasingly valuable in elevated areas. Speculators and developers are eyeing historically black, working-class and poorer areas, pushing out long-term residents and replacing affordable housing with upscale developments and luxury accommodations that only the wealthy can afford.

No study has yet calculated the overall cost of affordable housing lost to the climate crisis. Private developers will bear the expense of mitigating the impact on the neighborhood – $31m in Magic City’s case over 15 years to the Little Haiti Revitalization Trust, largely for new “green” affordable housing. The University of Miami’s housing solutions lab has a $300,000 grant from JPMorgan to report on the impact of rising seas to South Florida’s affordable housing stocks and recommend modifications to prevent it from flooding and other climate events. A collaboration of not-for-profit groups is chasing $75m in corporate funding for affordable housing along the 70-mile south Florida rail trail from Miami to West Palm Beach, with the first stage, a $5m project under way to identify, build and renovate 300 units.

Florida has long been plagued by political leadership more in thrall to the interests of big industry than the environment. As governor from 2011 to 2019, Rick Scott, now a US senator, slashed $700m from Florida’s water management budget, rolled back environmental regulations and enforcement, gave a free ride to polluters, and flip-flopped over expanding offshore oil drilling. The politician who came to be known as “Red Tide Rick”, for his perceived inaction over 2018’s toxic algae bloom outbreaks, reportedly banned the words “climate change” and “global warming” from state documents.

Last month, state legislators approved the first dedicated climate bill. It appears a promising start for a new administration, but activists say more needs to be done. In January, the Sierra Club awarded DeSantis failing grades in an environmental report card, saying he failed to protect Florida’s springs and rivers and approved new roads that threatened protected wildlife.

The cost: Florida’s spending on the environment is increasing. The state budget passed last month included $650m for Everglades restoration and water management projects (an instalment of DeSantis’s $2.5bn four-year pledge) and $100m for Florida Forever. A $100m bridge project jointly funded by the state and federal governments will allow the free flow of water under the Tamiami Trail for the first time in decades.

Florida has woken up to the threat of climate change but it is not yet clear how effective the response will be. The challenges are innumerable, the costs immense and the political will to fix or minimize the issues remains questionable, despite recent progress. At stake is the very future of one of the largest and most diverse states in the nation, in terms of both its population and its environment. Action taken now will determine its survival.

A high vaccination rate was especially important in Florida, which trails only Maine in the share of residents 65 and older. By the end of July, Florida had vaccinated about 60 percent of adults, just shy of the national average

Had it reached a vaccination rate of 74 percent — the average for five New England states at the time — it could have prevented more than 16,000 deaths and more than 61,000 hospitalizations that summer, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet.

in Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before.

Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.

The governor had early success in following his instincts. In 2020, the state supplied its nearly 4,000 long-term care homes with Covid tests and isolated Covid patients, avoiding New York’s mistake of releasing Covid patients from hospitals to nursing homes where they infected others. Florida’s death rate in the pandemic’s first year, adjusted for age, was lower than all but 10 other states’.

Florida was also one of only four states to require schools to hold in-person classes in the fall of 2020, a move that Mr. DeSantis has said defied the nation’s public health experts

In fact, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a federal infectious disease expert on former President Donald J. Trump’s task force, said repeatedly that summer and fall that schools could open safely with the right precautions. Nonetheless, facing strong opposition from teachers’ unions, nearly three-fourths of the nation’s 100 largest school districts offered only remote learning that fall.

At the same time, though, the governor was embracing more extreme views, including those of Dr. Scott W. Atla

Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya argued that people who were not at risk of severe consequences should not face Covid restrictions. If they were infected, they would develop natural immunity, which would eventually build up in the population and cause the virus to fade away, they said.

Many public health experts were alarmed by this strategy, which was articulated in a document known as the Great Barrington Declaration. They said it would be impossible to ring-fence the vulnerable, or even to clearly communicate to the public who they were. Besides older Americans, as many as 41 million younger adults were considered to be at high risk of severe disease if infected because of underlying medical conditions like obesity.

Dr. Atlas, however, argued that the virus was not dangerous to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya said the Covid death rate for everyone under 70 was very low. Dr. Atlas claimed that children had “virtually zero” risk of death.

As of this summer, more than 345,000 Americans under 70 have died of the virus, and more than 3.5 million have been hospitalized

The disease has killed nearly 2,300 children and adolescents, and nearly 200,000 have been hospitalized.

Mr. DeSantis gave him a platform at a series of public events in Florida at the end of the summer of 2020. He would go on to echo Dr. Atlas’s views, sometimes in modified form, throughout the pandemic.

Mr. DeSantis subsequently promoted the shots in 27 counties. Florida offered the vaccine to everyone 65 and older, an eligibility system simpler than an early one recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and adopted by many states, that prioritized essential workers and those over 75.

But his enthusiasm for shots waned fast, tracking the growing hostility toward them among the party’s conservative activists. In late February, when Mr. DeSantis hosted a gathering of such activists for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, he boasted that Florida was an “oasis of freedom” in a nation led by misguided health authorities.

By the time all adults became eligible for the vaccines in April of that year, Mr. DeSantis was rarely promoting them.

“Some are choosing not to take it, which is fine,” he said in March, at a 100-minute public event on Covid in which he did not once urge people to get vaccinated. In dozens of appearances on Fox News in the first half of 2021, he was carefully neutral about shots, except for those over 65.

“Younger people are just simply at very little risk for this,”

A few months later, he told Fox News that he had concluded early on that Covid “was something that was risky for elderly people,” but that it posed minimal risks for people “who were in reasonably good health, who were, say, under 50.”

The data-driven governor also turned away from Covid case data.

In May 2021, Florida closed its 27 state-run testing centers. The next month, on orders from the governor’s office, the Health Department halted daily reports on infections and deaths, switching to weekly reports that drew less attention.

Both polls and political events showed that Republicans were not as excited as Democrats about the shots. At an Alabama political rally that August, Mr. Trump recommended the vaccine — and was booed. When a reporter asked Mr. DeSantis later that year if he had gotten a booster shot, he responded that he had gotten “the normal shot.”

After the highly contagious Delta variant began spreading in Florida that summer, Mr. DeSantis insisted that his approach had worked. Younger adults were driving the surge but “they’re not getting really sick from it or anything,” he said, adding: “They will develop immunity as a result of those infections.”

But they were getting sick. And vaccinations, which Mr. DeSantis suddenly began recommending again in late July, took weeks to confer protection

With hospitalizations rising, he began a campaign to offer monoclonal antibody treatments — a triage response to the pandemic’s frightening resurgence.

The drug cost vastly more than shots and required more medical staff to administer. Within about six weeks, the state had administered more than 90,000 treatments and probably kept 5,000 people out of the hospital, Dr. Rivkees said.

Mr. DeSantis accused the media in early August of “lying” about Covid patients’ flooding hospitals. Two weeks later, Mary C. Mayhew, head of the Florida Hospital Association, said: “There can be no question that many Florida hospitals are stretched to their absolute limits.”

“Our patients are younger and sicker,” Mr. Smith wrote. Of 17 patients on ventilators in intensive care on Aug. 13, 2021, more than half were younger than 55. Only one was vaccinated.

“People say that the decision about vaccination is a personal one and it doesn’t affect anyone else,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Tell that to the kids who lost their mom.”

When shots became available last year for children under 5, Florida did not preorder them because, Mr. DeSantis said, he did not consider them “appropriate.” Florida’s vaccination rates are well below the national average for children under 5. The state also trails in booster shots.

After Dr. Ladapo issued misleading claims about the risks of Covid shots for young men, the heads of the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration sent a scathing four-page rebuttal. Such misinformation “puts people at risk of death or serious illness,” they said.

While the pandemic waned, leaving more than 80,000 Floridians and 1.13 million Americans dead, the governor continued to push policies that kept him at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conversation. A new state law, signed by Mr. DeSantis in May, bans government agencies, businesses and schools from requiring Covid testing, vaccination or mask wearing.

“Everything involving Covid — I think there needs to be major, major accountability,” he said in Iowa this month. “Because if there’s not, if you don’t have a reckoning, they are going to do it again.”

If passed, the amendment would give Florida the highest minimum wage among Southern states and impact an estimated 2.5 million workers. 

There are seven other states already on track to hit $15 in the coming years, but those tend to be blue states with liberal labor policies.

Some proponents also say passage of Amendment 2 could help the push for a $15 wage floor at the federal level, especially if Democrats win the White House and control of the Senate.

“If $15 passes in Florida, it will send a clear message to the incoming [Biden] administration that raising the minimum wage is not just good policy but also good politics.”

But despite the general popularity of minimum wage hikes ― most have sailed through on the ballot in recent years ― the Florida proposal is by no means a sure thing.

“I think we feel good, but we need to turn out every single voter in the state,” said Stephanie Porta, the executive director of Organize Florida, a progressive group that supports the referendum.

Florida voters last approved a minimum wage increase in 2004, when they voted to raise it to $6.15 per hour. The current minimum wage is $8.56 thanks to inflation adjustments included in the 2004 referendum, but progressive advocates say that still falls far short of a living wage,

A single adult with no children would need to make more than $12 an hour to earn a living wage in Florida, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The increase to $15 would boost pay for about a quarter of the state’s workforce, according to the Florida Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.

A third of Florida’s female workers would see a raise; 38% of women of color in the workforce would receive a pay increase, the institute says. 

Florida has a $3.02-per-hour “tip credit” for business owners. It’s what allows Johnson to pay a server $5.54 before gratuities, rather than $8.56, under the current minimum wage. That $3.02 credit would stay under the new law, but it would have less impact over time.

“Any restaurant that’s on the bubble right now, especially with COVID ― when they have those additional costs, I don’t know if they make it through,”

Much of the financial backing for the amendment has come from the law firm of John Morgan, a high-profile Florida attorney who represents workers in class-action lawsuits.

a 2005 study that found “no empirical evidence” that Florida’s last, more modest minimum wage increase caused employers to lay off workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person organizing efforts, especially in the lower-income communities that would benefit most from the wage increase, and progressive groups and the Florida Democratic Party fell short of their voter registration targets.

We need to turn out every single voter in the state. Stephanie Porta, executive director of Organize Florida

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $15, and Democrats and progressives in Florida hope that support for Amendment 2 could boost his chances of defeating President Donald Trump in the crucial swing state.

In 2018, Florida voters said yes on a referendum to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions, a major progressive priority, even as Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott won narrow victories in the state’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, respectively. 

“I’m sure the legislature will try to screw with it,” Porta said. “They always try to go against the people ― that is their M.O. But we will be ready to fight.”

From aiming to register hundreds of thousands of new voters to earlier and better on-the-ground canvassing, and from investing millions of dollars in recruiting local organizers to more finely focused outreach efforts on a sizable Hispanic and African American communities, Democrats are going all out to reverse the notion that Florida is unassailable Trump country

There was a great sense of dissatisfaction amongst a lot of Democratic voters after the primary. A lot of them stayed home, a lot of them voted for Trump as a protest, so you look at the turnout and adjust it for population growth, it’s one of the lowest turnouts we’ve ever had

We can’t make that mistake again. Vote for who you want in the primary, but come together afterwards

party leaders agree it will take more than just the unquestioned loyalty of existing supporters to turn Florida blue. New voters are needed, lots of them, and in May the party announced a “monumental” $2m investment to register 200,000 statewide before the 2020 election

Florida is one of the seven key battleground states targeted by Democrats nationally as part of their Organizing Corps 2020 campaign launched earlier this year

In Palm Beach county we have passed 400,000 Democrats for the first time ever. We are out-registering the Republicans and pulling away. And that’s a blue county. The Republicans are making an effort there

For those already knocking on Floridians’ doors, the key issues are clear. “The first thing is healthcare, then affordable housing and jobs and the economy,” said Melanie McRae, a Miami-based electoral field organizer for New Florida Majority, an independent political action and advocacy group that works mostly with “marginalized and excluded” communities.

A study published in April by the Miami Urban Future Initiative, a collaboration between Florida International University and urban researchers at the Creative Class Group, found that there were stark racial dimensions to the city’s high rate of poverty.

14.3% of Miami residents lived in poverty, affecting African Americans at two and a half times the rate of white Americans and Hispanics at twice the rate of whites.

McRae, who organizes small teams of canvassers knocking on up to 100 doors a day in Miami’s ethnically diverse neighborhoods, stresses that her organization is non-partisan. “We are not the Democratic party, we are not politicians, so we don’t come to ask for your vote. We’re here year-round motivating, educating and advocating for a better Florida,” she said.

many of New Florida Majority’s ideals – including racial and social equality, criminal justice reform, care of the environment and tackling the climate crisis – are shared by most Democrats and will be huge motivating factors for voters in next year’s election

What I’m getting from voters is anger, disgust, a little bit of hopelessness, which we’re trying to use as fuel to get them out,” she said. “We’re not preparing for 2020. 2020 is already here.”

Educating voters so they know the issues is going to be critical. Healthcare is number one for Floridians and Republicans are attempting to wipe out the Affordable Care Act. The environment is another huge issue where Democrats are full of positive change, while the Trump administration wants to have offshore drilling off Florida.

Ultimately, as in so many recent elections, the result in Florida is going to be a simple numbers game. The party that engages and recruits more supporters will carry off the state’s 29 electoral college votes, and with them probably the White House.

Lockdowns and school openings are suddenly a new measure for voters to hold governors and other elected officials accountable, a sign that the politics of the pandemic could open an uncertain chapter for many holding public office. He will be among the governors putting his record to the test when he runs for re-election next year.

He is not facing a potential recall like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, under investigation like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or being second-guessed for lifting a statewide mask mandate like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

The unemployment rate in Florida is 4.8 %, according to the latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to 6.8% in Texas, 8.8% in New York and 9% in California.

Florida has recorded about 9,204 cases per 100,000 people and about 150 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. Across the country overall, there have been about 8,969 cases per 100,000 people and 163 deaths per 100,000 people.

Still, comparing one state to another is complicated and often counterproductive, said Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida College of Public Health who maintains his own Covid dashboard. For example, he said, the humidity of Florida and the density of New York City offer entirely different scenarios for fighting coronavirus

He added: "It's not always about doing well relative to your peers. It's how can we prevent as much morbidity and mortality from the virus while keeping an eye on what's happening with our economy."

Here in Florida, where beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and on Gulf of Mexico are crowded this week in ways not seen for more than a year, the complete story of the pandemic has yet to be written, as President Joe Biden inherits the challenge and has accelerated vaccines here and across the country. Yet health experts and local officials worry that a parade of spring break vacationers could contribute to a spike in Covid-19 cases.

After businesses were allowed to open after being shuttered for several weeks late last spring, Golden said he recalls having mixed feelings about the balancing act of keeping the economy alive and protecting the public's health.

Molly Minton, who works as a laboratory supervisor, said she recalls being dispirited as she drove home from work and saw crowded bars and restaurants. Looking back, she said, she is glad many small businesses were able to stay open and believes Florida was simply lucky in many respects.

"Right now," DeSantis wrote, "my state of Florida is one of the only states that said no to oppressive lockdowns and has become an oasis of freedom for Americans."

The number of @_FloridaMan’s followers is 270,000.

But is the Florida Man who Accidentally Shoots Himself With Stun Gun While Trying to Rob the Radio Shack He Also Works At truly more wacky than, let’s say, an Arkansas Man or New Jersey Man?

Longtime observers insist that he is.Take the Florida Man whose surgically amputated leg was found in a hospital Dumpster. “The leg has a name on it,” said the best-selling author and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, who has wisely peopled his novels with fictitious(ish) Florida Men. “If this is New Jersey, the leg does not have a name on it. In Miami, the leg has a name on it, and it’s the name of the person who owns the leg.”

“There is always an extra twist of weirdness at the end of the Florida story,” Mr. Hiaasen said. “Weird stories happen everywhere, but they usually come to a logical conclusion. There is always one more shoe that drops in Florida.”

And there is so much more of it in Florida, he added. “It’s not just shooting fish in a barrel,” Mr. Hiaasen said, “but shooting mutated, deranged, slow-moving fish.”

Some examples:Florida Man Tries to Walk Out of Store With Chainsaw Stuffed Down His Pants.

why Florida breeds or inspires its own brand of crime and criminals. He said it is partly the polarized nature of the state — very poor to very rich, very liberal to very conservative

It is partly the state’s cavorting culture — South Beach, spring break, half-naked people, late-night clubs

And it is partly the legions of immigrants from Cuba, South America, Central America and Haiti who sometimes import their old-country vendettas. “Where else do you get retired torturers from Argentina?”

California’s kumbaya vibe is absent here, and so is Texas’ ideological fervor. With so many transplants, allegiances lie elsewhere

“That’s the most common misconception about Florida — that we are a melting pot,”

“We are more akin to a TV dinner, where sometimes the peas spill over into the mashed potatoes.”

Drugs and the weather are also culprits. The steaminess adds to the seaminess

“As they say,” Mr. Corben remarked, “Los Angeles is where you go when you want to be somebody. New York is where you go when you are somebody. Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else.”

"The heart and soul of this country's at stake right in Florida. It's up to you. You hold the key," Biden told a diverse group of voters. "If Florida goes blue, it's over. It's over."

No swing state looms larger than Florida, prized for its 29 electoral votes and its role as a national barometer.

Trump won those three Midwestern states by less than a percentage point in 2016, and Biden's kinship with the blue collar voters who live in working class towns like Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he lived as a young boy, was one of the major selling points to Democratic primary voters

While Trump has campaigned, both in 2016 and 2020, as a voice for the "forgotten men and women" who live in those communities, Biden has argued that the President ignored their needs while helping his wealthy allies

A key facet of Biden's success in 2020, however, is that he has cut into Trump's margins with White voters who do not hold a college degree -- a trend he hopes to accelerate in the closing days of the campaign as he tends to those key Midwestern states.

Trump predicted the US would see "the greatest red wave" in history on Tuesday.

Biden's visit Thursday was preceded by events in recent days featuring former President Barack Obama, who won the state twice.

They say the fact that he has nobody at all show up is because of Covid. No, it's because nobody shows up," Trump said to laughter in Tampa. "And I think that's the ultimate poll. And based on the numbers that we're getting, we're going to do really well on Tuesday."

he tried to push back throughout the day on the President's false claims about rampant voter fraud and what he views as Trump's efforts to suppress the vote, particularly in Black and Brown communities.

"He knows if you vote, he can't win. He knows when America votes, they reject people like him,"

Trump renewed his efforts to cut into Biden's margins within the diverse community of Latino voters in Florida. At this late stage of the race, Biden is struggling to win over Latinos at the same level that Clinton did as Democratic allies worry that time is running out, and both candidates made their cases to voters of Cuban, Venezuelan and Puerto Rican descent on Thursday.

The President's last minute effort in Minnesota, which Clinton won last cycle, appears to be even more of a long shot. Biden held a double-digit lead over Trump last month in the Washington Post/ABC News poll there

One of the perils for Trump in Florida is his sliding support among seniors, which has been driven in part by broad disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus and the fact that older voters have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19.

the President downplayed the fall surge in coronavirus cases during his huge rally in Tampa

The push by the two Trump allies to curtail the number of tests coincided with a precipitous drop in testing in Florida, according to CNN reporting, and the state is now grappling with the fall surge.

Trump claimed that the smaller attendance prescribed by the Biden campaign is driven by a lack of enthusiasm.

The two candidates will cross paths again on Friday when they both campaign in Wisconsin and Minnesota,

"Donald Trump just held a superspreader event here again. He's spreading more than just coronavirus. He's spreading division and discord," he said hours later in Tampa.

"Millions of people out there are out of work, on the edge. Can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and Donald Trump has given up," Biden said.

What’s perhaps most significant about the early vote, though, is that a group of new African-American voters have been energized: of the Black voters in Florida who’ve already voted, about 15 percent of them did not cast ballots in 2016 or 2018.

ne thing I’ve learned in my years of whining about Florida’s unsustainable trajectory in the climate era is that most Floridians don’t care.

especially if they’re newly retired to Florida. They’re here to enjoy the warm weather in a state with no income tax, not to build a better tomorrow for future generations.

Usually, it’s just nice. It’s certainly way nicer than Boston or Brooklyn, or Michigan or Minnesota, in the winter.

DeSantis has risen to national prominence behind a very Florida form of now-mine-more messaging, proclaiming this the “free state” of Florida, where you don’t have to worry about public-health scolds telling you to wear a mask or get a vaccine, or pointy-headed planners telling you where to build your house or when to water your lawn. He’s selling irresponsibility as a virtue. Worrying about consequences is for losers.

My insurer went bankrupt last month, one of six to go under in Florida this year, and the state took over my policy, as it surely did for thousands of Floridians who will now file claims. But the Republican leaders who have assumed for the past quarter-century that the feds will bail us out after the Big One were probably right. We’ve gotten too big to fail.

But in 2020, more than 2.1 million Democrats cast mail ballots, compared with roughly 1.4 million Republicans, largely because of a Democratic push to vote remotely amid the pandemic and Mr. Trump’s false attacks on the practice. (The former president and his family, however, voted by mail in Florida in the June 2020 primary.)

And the G.O.P. effort carries risks: Was the Democratic surge in mail balloting a sign of a new normal for the previously Republican-dominated voting method, or a blip caused by the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic?

“So what’s the problem that we’re trying to fix?” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic representative from Orlando, asked rhetorically. “Oh, here’s the problem: Florida Democrats cast 600,000 more vote-by-mail ballots.”

Other Republican legislators echoed language used by Mr. Trump and his allies during their challenges to the 2020 election.“I believe that every legal vote should count,” said Travis Hutson, a Republican senator from Northeast Florida. “I believe one fraudulent vote is one too many. And I’m trying to protect the sanctity of our elections.”

The bill was not without criticism from notable Republicans inside and outside the Legislature. D. Alan Hays, a conservative Republican who had previously served in the State Senate for 12 years and is now the election supervisor in Lake County, told his former colleagues at a legislative hearing last month that their bill was a “travesty.”

“Members, I’ve got no evidence for you on the chupacabra, and I got no evidence for you about ballot harvesting,” Ms. Driskell said. “But what I can tell you is this: that our system worked well in 2020, by all accounts, and everyone agreed. And that for so many reasons, we don’t need this bad bill.”

For its study, the corps focused on storm surge — the rising seas that often inundate the coastline during storms — made worse lately by stronger hurricanes and higher sea levels. But that is only one concern.

South Florida, flat and low-lying, sits on porous limestone, which allows the ocean to swell up through the ground. Even when there is no storm, rising seas contribute to more significant tidal flooding, where streets fill with water even on sunny days.

“What you realize is each of these problems, which are totally intersecting, are handled by different parts of the government,” said Amy C. Clement, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami and the chairwoman of the city of Miami’s climate resilience committee.

The dramatic $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention

The price tag for all that needs to be done, however, is in the billions. The estimate for Miami-Dade County alone to phase out some 120,000 septic tanks is about $4 billion, and that does not include the thousands of dollars that each homeowner would also have to pay.

“We were, like, ruh-roh,” said Ken Russell, the Miami city commissioner whose district includes Brickell. “The $40 billion in assets you’re trying to protect will be diminished if you build a wall around downtown because you’re going to affect market values and quality of life.”

To some critics, the plan harks back to more than a century of dredging and pumping of the Florida Everglades, which made way for intensive farming and sprawling development but disregarded the serious damage to the environment that the state is still wrestling with.

In fact, when local governments have asked the public how they would like to tackle climate change, residents by far prefer what is known as green infrastructure: layered coastal protection from a mix of dunes, sea grasses, coral reefs and mangroves, said Zelalem Adefris, vice president for policy and advocacy at Catalyst Miami, which works with low-income communities in the county.

On a recent afternoon along the stretch of Brickell Bay Drive where a wall might go, Rachel Silverstein, executive director of Miami Waterkeeper, an environmental research and activist group, stood next to high-rises built right up to the water

“Instead of seeing this beautiful water, you would see a gross wall,” she said.

"If you're President of the United States and if you vote in Florida, and you can't be there, you should be able to send in a ballot," he said last week at a factory in Michigan.

"The President is, after all, the President, which means he's here in Washington; he's unable to cast his vote down in Florida, his state of residence," press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said. "So, for him, that's why he had to do a mail-in vote. But he supports mail-in voting for a reason, when you have a reason that you are unable to be present."

Early voting in the county began on March 7, and lasted through March 15, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections confirmed to CNN on Wednesday. Polls were open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

In the past, presidents have used a mix of in-person and absentee voting to cast ballots while in office. President Barack Obama, who sought to use his appearances at polling locations to inspire Americans to vote themselves, voted early in Chicago during the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. He voted absentee in other contests. His wife, Michelle Obama, is headlining an effort this year to expand mail-in and early voting.

In the statement, McEnany did not accurately describe the voting system in Florida. According to the Florida Division of Elections, people can vote by mail without offering an excuse -- a more expansive definition than "absentee voting."

While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person's gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, critics have said the language of "biological sex," as used in DeSantis' proclamation, is overly simplistic and misleading.A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found "no direct or consistent research" on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, at any state of their transition, and critics say postures like DeSantis' will only add to the discrimination that trans people face, particularly trans youth.

So far this year, Iowa and South Dakota have approved legislation banning transgender women and girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender at accredited schools and colleges. And last year, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia enacted similar sports bans, infuriating LGBTQ advocates, who argue conservatives are creating an issue where there isn't one.

Florida’s dashboard was created in part by Rebekah D. Jones, a state data scientist who was fired for insubordination in May 2020, a conflict that she said came to a head when she refused to manipulate data to show that rural counties were ready to reopen from coronavirus lockdowns.

Ms. Jones’s firing became a flash point as Mr. DeSantis, a close ally of then-President Donald J. Trump, touted Florida’s early success in battling the virus — a victory lap that turned out to be premature at the time and led to a disastrous summer. State officials insisted that her claims about hiding virus data were false.

In December, state police agents with guns drawn raided Ms. Jones’s home in Tallahassee to execute a search warrant in a criminal investigation, after police said a breach at the Florida Department of Health was traced to her computer. She denied having anything to do with the breach.

Ms. Jones’s dashboard generally shows a higher number of cases than the number reported by the state.

It allows the courts to modify the original criminal sentences to "no longer require completion" of things that were originally required. Under that law, money owed can be waived or lowered, and other requirements like community service hours can be reduced.

In counties under Democratic control, more people are getting their voting rights back. And in counties under Republican control, many potential voters are missing out.

"You can't have two classes of voters — people who can afford their right to vote and people who can't," Warren said. "At this point it's really just a determination that once someone has an inability to pay off their fines and fees, then they're eligible to have their right to vote restored."

The lack of participation in Republican-leaning Florida could be a political liability later this year, especially if local Republicans don't take efforts to help restore voting rights for white and Latino voters, said DePalo-Gould, the FIU professor.

"If they're missing out on those votes, you know — we have very close elections in the state of Florida," she said. "This could mean a huge difference going into 2020."

Mr. Biden is also poised to become the first Democrat in 20 years to carry older adults, the voters who are most at risk with the coronavirus.

But the president is facing an even larger gender gap in the Hispanic community than he is over all: Latinas favor Mr. Biden by 39 points.

Mr. Biden’s performance across the electoral map appears to put him in a stronger position heading into Election Day than any presidential candidate since at least 2008

His strength is most pronounced in Wisconsin, where he has an outright majority of the vote and leads Mr. Trump by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat.

Should Mr. Biden’s lead hold in three of the four states tested in the survey, it would almost certainly be enough to win, and if he were to carry Florida, he would most likely need to flip just one more large state that Mr. Trump won in 2016 to clinch the presidency.

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Biden has a modest advantage in Florida, where he is ahead of Mr. Trump by three points, 47 percent to 44 percent, a lead that is within the margin of error.

The numbers on new voters represent a setback for the president, whose advisers have long contended he would outperform his polling numbers because of the support he would receive from infrequent or inconsistent voters

Mr. Trump has continued to hold onto most of the coalition that elected him in the first place, made up chiefly of rural conservatives and white voters who did not attend college.

More broadly, Mr. Trump is facing an avalanche of opposition nationally from women, people of color, voters in the cities and the suburbs, young people, seniors and, notably, new voters. In all four states, voters who did not participate in 2016, but who have already voted this time or plan to do so, said they support Mr. Biden by wide margins.

In Wisconsin, voters who did not cast a ballot in 2016 favor Mr. Biden by 19 points. They have a similarly lopsided preference in Florida, where Mr. Biden leads by 17 points. His advantage with people who did not vote in 2016 is 12 points in Pennsylvania and 7 points in Arizona.

While that advantage has varied over time, and has differed from state to state, he has at no point slipped behind Mr. Trump in any of the swing states that are likeliest to decide the election.

Mr. Trump’s apparent weakness in many of the country’s largest electoral prizes leaves him with a narrow path to the 270 Electoral College votes required to claim victory, short of a major upset or a systemic error in opinion polling surpassing even the missteps preceding the 2016 election.

The margin of error is 3.2 percentage points in Wisconsin and Florida; 3 points in Arizona and 2.4 points in Pennsylvania.Mr. Biden has consistently held the upper hand over Mr. Trump across the electoral map in polling conducted by The Times since late last spring.

Amid that bleak outlook, the president has continued to baselessly cast doubt on the integrity of the election. On Saturday in Pennsylvania, he told supporters that the nation could be waiting for weeks to learn of a winner and that “very bad things” could happen as ballots are counted in the days after the election.

Many of the those who said they did not vote in 2016 said they had already voted this year. In Florida and Arizona, more than two thirds of nonvoters in 2016 who were identified as likely voters this year said that they had already cast a ballot. That figure was 56 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Pennsylvania.

Based on the poll, however, it seems that Mr. Biden rather than Mr. Trump could be the beneficiary of record-busting turnout.

If the president is defeated, the most obvious explanation may be his weakness with women. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by double digits among female voters in each of the four states, and in some states the advantage was so significant that it offset Mr. Trump’s strength among men.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years ago.

President Trump has baselessly claimed that widespread voter fraud is rampant in both in-person and mail voting systems, without providing any evidence. His challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has accused Trump of eroding confidence in U.S. democracy, and has stoked fears about whether Trump will actually leave office if voted out.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years ago.

“We don’t expect Chris or our other moderators to be fact-checkers.”

of the election, a subject on which the two candidates have divergent views. President Trump has baselessly claimed that widespread voter fraud is rampant in both in-person and mail voting systems, without providing any evidence. His challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has accused Trump of eroding confidence in U.S. democracy, and has stoked fears about whether Trump will actually leave office if voted out.

President Trump has baselessly claimed that widespread voter fraud is rampant in both in-person and mail voting systems, without providing any evidence. His challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has accused Trump of eroding confidence in U.S. democracy, and has stoked fears about whether Trump will actually leave office if voted out.

President Trump has baselessly claimed that widespread voter fraud is rampant in both in-person and mail voting systems, without providing any evidence. His challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has accused Trump of eroding confidence in U.S. democracy, and has stoked fears about whether Trump will actually leave office if voted out.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years ago.

“We don’t expect Chris or our other moderators to be fact-checkers.”

Trump’s and Biden’s records The Supreme Court: This issue has gained new importance with the announcement of Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. COVID-19: Daily cases are on the rise in nearly half of U.S. states. The economy: Expect this to be closely tied to the pandemic. Race and violence in U.S. cities: The framing of this topic has drawn criticism, but protests against racism and police brutality are ongoing around the country. The integrity of the election: See the latest on election security from NPR here.

Trump’s and Biden’s records The Supreme Court: This issue has gained new importance with the announcement of Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. COVID-19: Daily cases are on the rise in nearly half of U.S. states. The economy: Expect this to be closely tied to the pandemic. Race and violence in U.S. cities: The framing of this topic has drawn criticism, but protests against racism and police brutality are ongoing around the country. The integrity of the election: See the latest on election security from NPR here.

Biden’s 2019 tax return shows taxable income of $944,737 and a federal tax bill of $299,346. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, reported $3,018,127 in taxable income and paid $1,185,628 in taxes.

Biden’s 2019 tax return shows taxable income of $944,737 and a federal tax bill of $299,346. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, reported $3,018,127 in taxable income and paid $1,185,628 in tax

Biden’s 2019 tax return shows taxable income of $944,737 and a federal tax bill of $299,346. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, reported $3,018,127 in taxable income and paid $1,185,628 in taxes.

The New York Times reports that Trump’s tax returns show millions of dollars in losses and that Trump paid only $750 in income taxes in each of 2016 and 2017, and in 10 of the last 15 years paid no income tax at all. The report also raised questions about questionable tax deductions made by Trump that could run afoul of tax law.

The New York Times reports that Trump’s tax returns show millions of dollars in losses and that Trump paid only $750 in income taxes in each of 2016 and 2017, and in 10 of the last 15 years paid no income tax at all. The report also raised questions about questionable tax deductions made by Trump that could run afoul of tax law.

almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years ago.

There are five weeks to go until Election Day, but almost a million ballots have already been cast in this election, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Election Project, which tracks voting. That’s up from less than 10,000 early votes cast at this time four years ago.

Many new residents cite cost of a living as a key factor behind their moves, but home insurance costs are rising faster there than the national average, meaning homeowners should brace for sticker shock.In Florida, the average home insurance premium in 2019 was $1,988. Today, it’s $2,714 — an increase of $726.

The risk is highest in the Sun Belt region, which is experiencing rapid growth, yet Americans are moving directly into areas of danger. Hurricane Ian alone killed more than 150 Floridians, knocked out power for 2.6 million residents and left Florida with a bill of nearly $113 billion in its wake.

Those states are also experiencing extreme weather: Hurricanes like Ian, Nicole and Fiona, as well as record heat, ice and snow storms, wrought billions of dollars of destruction in 2022 and killed nearly 500 Americans.

California bucked the trend in several ways. Despite being battered by wildfires and extreme storms in recent years, home insurance rates there grew by only 25 percent, below the increase in other coastal states. California lost 343,230 residents, accounting for a 0.3 percent dip, last year.

In South Dakota, 8,424 new residents moved into the sparsely populated state in 2022, while insurance costs have jumped 39 percent since 2015. In dry, sunny Arizona, where nearly 71,000 new residents flocked in 2022, costs grew 28 percent

Florida grew by more than 318,000 new residents in 2022, accounting for a population increase of 1.9 percent last year — the largest uptick in the nation. Texas, with more than 230,000 new residents, was right on its tails.

The standards have been in place and uncontested for 38 years.

Pediatric heart experts appointed by the state to look out for children with heart defects took exception.

Jacobs recommended the hospital stop performing heart surgery on babies younger than 6 months

Those babies had surgery at St. Mary's, but when their health spiraled downward, they were transferred to other hospitals.

In 2013 and 2014, Tenet contributed $50,000 each year to Let's Get to Work, Scott's political action committee. The next largest Tenet contribution those years to a state candidate's PAC was $25,000.

Doctors outside the state said they were surprised that Florida would move to repeal its own safety standards for children

An internationally renowned cardiac expert agreed that the standards are necessary

In December, a judge ruled in the state's favor and said the standards for pediatric heart hospitals could be taken off the books.

The event is the brainchild of EMPOWER, the Woman's March youth branch, and will take place exactly one month after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It's scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in every time zone and last for 17 minutes -- one for each victim who lost their life in the massacre.

Students who survived the shooting in Florida are speaking out in hopes that no more schools face a similar tragedy, and they're planning to protest in Washington, D.C. on March 24 at an event organized by March For Our Lives. Another national walkout is slated for April 20, the nineteenth anniversary of the Columbine shooting in Colorado.