This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting “988” or chatting online at http://988lifeline.org/.

A 64-year-old man from Cuba started strangling himself and saying he was going to kill himself after federal agents arrested him at the Miami immigration court on Friday morning.

Jesus Rodriguez Delgado, 64, started yelling in Spanish that he would kill himself rather than be sent back to Cuba, said Karla De Anda, a community advocate who called for help as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents struggled to remove Rodriguez Delgado’s handcuffed hands from his neck.

“It was the most horrible thing I’ve seen in my life,” De Anda said in Spanish. “Hopefully, they’ll help him because he can’t go back to Cuba.”

The man’s reaction wasn’t surprising to his partner, Elisavel Torres, who told Florida Phoenix from inside the courthouse that Rodriguez Delgado had been a political prisoner in Cuba for 28 years and had lived in Mexico for six years before coming to the U.S. De Anda added that Rodriguez Delgado had said he had been imprisoned and would be killed if deported to Cuba.

Torres wept as she said that she couldn’t understand why the judge agreed to dismiss Rodriguez Delgado’s deportation case — exposing him to expedited removal. An application for permanent residency that Rodriguez Delgado submitted in January states he entered the country under humanitarian parole in 2021. Torres said Rodriguez Delgado received a work permit in April.

“He had told me he wouldn’t go back to Cuba, that he would die first, and it will be that way,” Torres told the Phoenix in Spanish.

ICE and Homeland Security Investigations officials arrested at least seven people during the four hours that the Phoenix reporter observed activity inside the courthouse.

Reports emerged last week of arrests in immigration courts across the country after judges dismissed cases at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. Still, Rodriguez Delgado’s attempt to strangle himself was the strongest reaction advocates witnessed on Friday. Others arrested cried and some remained quiet and looked at the ground.

‘You show up and get deported anyway’: Migrants with court hearings face an impossible choice

The agents told Torres that they would make sure Rodriguez Delgado was OK and would give him a list of pro bono attorneys, but couldn’t at the time of his arrest say where he would go. Torres, a U.S. citizen, said the couple knew about the arrests but still decided to come to the hearing from Naples rather than requesting an online hearing.

“We had faith in God that we were doing everything right, so we said we would come in person,” Torres said. “What a huge mistake.”

Her tears intensified as she told Rodriguez Delgado’s daughter about her father’s arrest over the phone.

“I was born in this country, and I am ashamed to say I’m American,” Torres said, adding that there were no words to describe how she felt when federal agents placed her partner in handcuffs.

Immigrants lack legal representation

Immigration attorney Cindy Blandon told the Phoenix that she’s noticed those who end up arrested for expedited removal lack lawyers. Few people in the court on Friday morning had attorneys, with some citing money as a barrier to obtaining legal representation.

Having an ongoing asylum or permanent residency case doesn’t exempt people from expedited deportations, Blandon said.

“Being placed under an expedited removal process doesn’t mean your case is closed,” she said. “People have a right to due process. The problem is that if you don’t have legal representation and you don’t know how to navigate the situation, you will likely end up deported.”

The mood on various floors of the courthouse grew more tense as people awaiting hearings heard about or saw the arrests.

But Blandon, De Anda, and Maria Asuncion Bilbao, with the American Friends Service Committee, noted that the arrests in the court appeared much calmer compared to the mass raids, such as the one that took place in Tallahassee on Thursday.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Gov. Ron DeSantis called the investigation by a state attorney into First Lady Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida Foundation a manufactured political operation during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The governor spoke at more length Wednesday than he’d done Tuesday when the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald first reported the open investigation by State’s Attorney Jack Campbell in Tallahassee into the transfer to the foundation of $10 million from a $67 million Medicaid overpayment settlement with the state.

After signing three bills in Winter Haven, DeSantis answered questions about the Hope Florida investigation by insulting Pensacola Republican Alex Andrade, chair of the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, who launched a legislative probe into the settlement during this year’s legislative session.

“You have one Jacka-- in the legislature — I’m sorry, it’s true — who’s trying to smear her, smear good people, and just understand what happened,” DeSantis said. “He took documents and he dropped them in a prosecutor’s office that is not an organic investigation, that’s a manufactured political operation. That’s all this is: Somebody with an agenda dropped off documents, and that’s all that.”

Hope Florida Foundation steered the funds to two groups that sent a combined $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee created to oppose Amendment 3, the failed 2024 ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana. The governor’s then-chief of staff and current attorney general, James Uthmeier, chaired that committee.

Andrade responded to DeSantis’ comments on X, stating, “I can feel the love…”

The Florida House on Wednesday approved in a near-unanimous vote this year’s condominium bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized as part of his feud with the chamber’s leadership.

With a little more than a week until the scheduled end of the session, House lawmakers approved Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez’s bill, HB 913, which would allow condominium associations to open lines of credit instead of raising cash from owners to fund building repairs.

The legislation attempts to address escalating association fees following last year’s deadline for condominiums to complete studies detailing how much each needs to save to pay for roof and structural maintenance. Lawmakers passed legislation, requiring those studies and milestone inspections 30 years after the buildings’ construction, after the 2021 collapse in Surfside of a 12-story condo that killed 98 people.

“I did not come to the Florida House to become a housing expert, but here we find ourselves,” Lopez said Wednesday. “So, this affectionately known as the condo queen is prepared to continue to do the work to make sure that we have listened. I’m telling you, this is landmark legislation that finally does provide relief, the financial relief that all of our condo owners deserve.”

“The House condo bill seems to be something that favors developers and puts the interest of developers over the interests of Florida residents,” DeSantis said during an April 10 press conference at the City of Sweetwater Community Center.

The only two votes against the bill came from DeSantis allies: Republican Reps. Michael Caruso of Delray Beach and Kiyan Michael of Jacksonville.

Multiple Democrats praised Lopez on the House floor, saying she took the time during the summer to meet with their constituents about the rising condominium fees burdening elderly people on fixed incomes.

The Senate is set to take up its proposal, from Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jenifer Bradley, SB 1742, on Thursday. There are still some key differences between the two proposals. For example, Bradley’s bill would allow condominium associations to invest their funds for repairs and to pause their contributions for reserve funds for repairs for up to two years after the milestone inspection.

However, one provision that intensified disagreement between the sponsors early on is no longer a part of the House bill. Lopez originally wanted to prohibit Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state’s property insurer of last resort, from issuing or renewing policies for condominium buildings that haven’t completed their building inspections.

“We want to make sure that associations comply, but I’m also very concerned about making sure that they don’t compound their troubles by not being able to secure insurance,” Bradley told Florida Phoenix in March.

Hardening pilot program

House lawmakers also voted unanimously to extend a pilot program for grants for condominiums to take on projects that would make buildings more resilient against hurricanes. HB 393, co-sponsored by Lopez and Parkland Democratic Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, lowers the requirement of 100% approval from condo owners to 75% for the association to apply for a grant.

However, the House is not adding additional funds for the pilot other than the $30 million appropriated last year, of which $29.6 million remains unspent because of the timeline of the application process.

The Senate bill, SB 592, has passed all of its committee stops but it has not been scheduled for a floor vote.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez held his mother in a tight embrace and wept following his release from the Leon County Jail Thursday evening, where the U.S. citizen was held after his arrest for illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.”

An official with Homeland Security Investigations in Tallahassee took Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old born in Georgia, to a Wendy’s near the jail, where he reunited with his mother after spending more than 24 hours under arrest following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.

Lopez-Gomez appeared shellshocked and spoke quietly as he discussed what happened when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled over the car he was in on his way to work from Cairo, Georgia, to Tallahassee. The trooper made the traffic stop because the driver was going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone, according to the arrest report.

“I feel fine leaving that place, I felt bad in there. They didn’t give us anything to eat all day yesterday,” he told the Florida Phoenix in Spanish. He added that he had asked the trooper who made the arrest why he was being taken into custody, because he was a U.S. citizen.

His mother, also in Spanish, said the days ahead will be tough for the family and worries that Lopez-Gomez and his sisters will live in fear of deportation despite having been born in the country. She told the Phoenix she planned to sue over her son’s arrest.

“I don’t have a way to pay all the people who are helping us. People from other states have called us, and we don’t have a way to pay them; we can only thank them,” Gomez-Perez said.

The pair didn’t reunite until the evening, after Lopez-Gomez’s first court appearance earlier in the day. Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans ruled Thursday morning that she lacked jurisdiction to release him because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had formally asked the jail to hold him for 48 hours.

After Riggans’ inspection of his Social Security card and birth certificate, which an advocate waved in the courtroom, the judge said she found no probable cause for the charge.

“In looking at it, and feeling it, and holding it up to the light, the court can clearly see the watermark to show that this is indeed an authentic document,” Riggans said.

The arrest record the trooper filed states that Lopez-Gomez had said he was in the country illegally but that he had handed over his ID. There was no mention of the Social Security card on the arrest report. However, Lopez-Gomez told the Phoenix he had shown the trooper a copy of his Social Security card and Georgia state ID.

The HSI agent who took Lopez-Gomez to Wendy’s directed questions to a spokesperson, who didn’t respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment or questions as of this publication.

After the reunion with his mom, Lopez-Gomez returned to the parking lot of the jail, where 30 protesters had been demanding his release. They met him with cheers and hugs.

Lopez-Gomez will have to return to the Leon County Courthouse on May 6. He was charged under a recently passed law that a federal judge has temporarily barred the state from enforcing, further calling into question the validity of his arrest, the charge, and detention.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 4-C into law on Feb. 14, and U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams blocked its enforcement on April 4.

The law makes it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants over age 18 to “knowingly” enter Florida “after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.”

Two other men who were in the car with Lopez-Gomez, the driver and another passenger, also made their first appearances on the same charge on Thursday. The driver was also charged with driving without a license.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

Florida nursing students are passing the national licensure exam at higher rates than in the past decade, but the rates remain the worst in the country, according to a report published Monday.

The state’s 2024 pass rates for registered nurses and practical nurses to get their licenses (84.9% and 80.78%, respectively) are well under the national average, which was 91.16% for RNs and 88.38% for PNs, according to the annual report from the Florida Center for Nursing.

The gap between the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) Florida scores and the national average are the closest they have been in 10 years, having rebounded after 2020 and 2021, when the gap neared 18%.

Passing the national exam is one of the steps toward becoming a licensed nurse, determining how many people can enter the workforce. Although a higher rate of candidates passed last year, the number who passed remained the same because more people took the tests in 2023. More than 16,000 students passed the exam.

The report focuses on scores of first-time takers.

“We’ve been looking at our test takers in Florida and the length of time from graduation until they take the test, and those that take the test within one to two months have a greater likelihood of being successful on the first attempt compared to those who take the test later,” said Rayna Letourneau, executive director of the Florida Center for Nursing.

Those who took the test a month after graduating had the highest passing rate, 94.32%. More than 800 students took the exam more than a year after finishing their program and their passing rates dwindled to 48.61% at the one-year mark.

Letourneau pointed to the decrease in test-takers from programs that closed or that the Florida Board of Nursing had shut down — 433 students in 2024 compared to 1,051 in 2023.

Florida is investing millions into bolstering the nursing workforce. During last year’s legislative session, then-Senate President Kathleen Passidomo spearheaded legislation increasing Florida’s investment in the health care industry.

For the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the state put $5 million toward grants for nursing programs to increase their capacity. However, only programs with at least a 75% passing rate on the licensure exam can apply for the funds.

Letourneau is scheduled to present the findings of the report to the Florida Senate on Wednesday and the House on Feb. 19. “There’s not a single solution. It really is a complex problem,” Letourneau said.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his appointment to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees of a political scientist who claims that encouraging women to prioritize their careers has led to the decline of family life.

In speeches, essays, articles, and interviews Scott Yenor details his views against same-sex relationships, including that LGBTQ+ practices bring “dreaded diseases,” and labeling career-oriented women as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.”

Lost donors, calls for action: An in-depth look inside Boise State’s Scott Yenor firestorm

But DeSantis claimed during a press conference Friday that he wasn’t familiar with Yenor’s views that women should put motherhood first, which he first garnered criticism for after his remarks at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021 and has since repeated in other writings and interviews.

“I’m not familiar with that. I mean, obviously, I think if you look at the state of Florida, we probably have a higher percentage of women enrolled in our state universities than we do men, and that’s probably grown under my tenure,” DeSantis said during the Jacksonville press conference in which he talked about the results of his education policy. “But what I don’t do, what I don’t like is cherry-picking somebody saying this, and then trying to smear them.”

Democratic Sen. Lori Berman of Palm Beach County called Yenor’s opinions troubling and said nominating someone like Yenor to the board was counterproductive.

“I find the whole thing shocking,” she said. “I think it’s a throwback to an age that is in the past and belongs in the past. We have seen that women have been part of the workforce now for many many years, and it’s been very successful. We’ve had women advance in business, in politics, in nonprofits, and education, and all of these careers because they went to college.”

Most notably, Yenor is a political science professor at Boise State University and was a fellow at conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.

In a 2023 interview with the First Things podcast, published by a journal of religion and public life of the same name, Yenor described how honor and shame were the most effective tools to deal with declining birth and marriage rates.

“But what the effect of that large number of single, never-married females, and childless females are going to have on our politics, on our regime, on our political culture is something that — because it’s historically unprecedented — it’s something that we don’t really have a great grasp on,” Yenor said in the interview.

Will UWF become the new New College?

The governor’s office announced DeSantis tapped Yenor and four others to the UWF board on Monday. The university in Pensacola has 14,300 students and 2,400 faculty and staff, according to its website. The Board has 13 members and the Florida Senate must confirm all appointments.

“You can have people get appointed who have flagrant left-wing backgrounds, and that’s just swept under the rug,” DeSantis said. “You never hear legacy media trying to highlight any of that. So I don’t play those games. The proof is going to be in the pudding about what they’re willing to do.”

DeSantis also said during the press conference that there would be changes coming to UWF, referring to the institution as highly politicized. The shakeup of the board mirrors the governor’s overhaul two years ago of the board of New College of Florida in Sarasota.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Broward County Rep. Hillary Cassel announced Friday her decision to leave the Democrats and join the GOP, becoming the second state lawmaker to do so this month.

Cassel, who ran unopposed for her second term in November, in a post on X bashed the Democratic Party over what she called a lack of support for Israel and said she believes Republicans offer a better vision for Florida.

“As a proud Jewish woman, I have been increasingly troubled by the Democratic Party’s failure to unequivocally support Israel and its willingness to tolerate extreme progressive voices that justify or condone acts of terrorism,” she wrote. “I’m constantly troubled by the inability of the current Democratic Party to relate to everyday Floridians. I can no longer remain in a party that doesn’t represent my values.”

The Friday afternoon announcement means that House Democrats have lost four seats going into the 2025 session — two in the election and two from lawmakers disavowing the party.

Hillsborough County Rep. Susan Valdés announced on Dec. 9 that she had joined the Republicans, handing them the largest advantage in the history of the chamber. House Speaker Danny Perez on Dec. 17 appointed Valdés vice chair of the powerful budget committee.

Fellow Broward Rep. Michael Gottlieb, a Democrat and leader of the Florida Legislative Jewish Caucus, lamented the party’s loss of Cassel and said that while he didn’t understand her decision he respected it. But Gottlieb also defended the party’s support toward Israel.

“I’m not so sure that I agree with that,” Gottlieb told the Florida Phoenix, referring to Cassel’s criticism. “In fact, I traveled this summer to Israel with Rep. Cassel, and we heard that the administration was supporting Israel.”

Florida House Democrats also have shown support for Israel, Gottlieb said.

“As leader of the Florida Jewish Legislative Caucus and a Democrat, I feel that we do strongly support Israel and Jewish causes and Jews throughout the diaspora,” he said.

For the session starting in March, Cassel has filed a bill, HB 13, requiring Citizens Property Insurance, the state’s insurer of last resort, to make windstorm coverage available to any homeowner and condo association. She also filed that bill for the last session, but it died without a hearing.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Florida is one of about a dozen states considering allowing chaplains to provide support services to students in public schools. The trend stems from a first-of-its-kind law the Texas Legislature passed last year authorizing schools to pay for religious figures to work in mental health roles.

The Texas law went into effect in September, requiring more than 1,200 school districts to vote by March 1 for or against allowing chaplains to be employed or accepted as volunteers in counseling roles. The forced vote has escalated culture wars in Texas school boards, but many have chosen to approve chaplains as volunteer in a limited capacity only, according to Florida Phoenix partner The Texas Tribune.

“It appears that these bills in other states including Florida are following this example of Texas, even though I would say it has not been a big success in Texas because many, many school districts have looked closely at what the legislature authorized and decided to reject the idea of chaplains in public schools,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel to the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

The committee organized a letter against the law signed by more than 100 Texas chaplains who work in military or health-care settings.

Requirements for volunteer chaplains

In the states that looked at the matter since last year, the standards to which the chaplains would be held vary. For example, in Indiana, chaplains could provide only secular advice and would need to hold a master’s degree in divinity, theology, or religious studies. But in most of the states pushing to bring chaplains to public schools, the only requirement would be that they pass a background check. Florida is one of those.

GOP proposals allow ‘patriotic’ orgs and chaplains in public schools; will it mean indoctrination?

The lack of additional requirements is a good thing in the view of groups supporting the bills, like the Florida Family Policy Council.

“When it comes to religious freedom there is a danger when the state begins to impose certain criteria for what constitutes proper training and proper guidelines and who meets what standards, because that can end up being unintentionally discriminatory towards certain religious sects and groups,” Aaron DiPietro, the group’s legislative affairs director, said in an interview with the Phoenix.

Despite these differing approaches, critics are united in their concern that the idea would cross a constitutional boundary in promoting religion in a government-sanctioned setting. The Florida bills allow chaplains to have any or no religious affiliation, and Florida lawmakers in favor of the proposal have pointed out that places like Congress and the military have chaplains.

Additionally, both the Florida House and Senate open floor sessions with prayers, either from invited clergy people or the chambers’ members.

This argument doesn’t hold up for Charles Russo, director of the educational leadership PhD program at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He holds law and divinity degrees.

“I don’t see this passing any reasonable test,” he said in a phone interview with the Phoenix.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 ruled in favor of the Nebraska Legislature’s use of chaplains, Russo said, that was on the narrow grounds that the practice had enjoyed a long history in Congress; the chaplain had been in that position for 20 years; and because the participants involved were adults. There’s no longstanding tradition of public schools employing or accepting chaplains as volunteers, Russo said.

“To say that Congress, a bunch of adults, can have a chaplain to lead a ceremony of prayer is not the same as saying chaplains can come in and provide psychological counseling advice to kids when they’re not prepared to deal with issues kids may be confronting,” Russo said.

Shortage of school counselors

Although the Florida proposals don’t explicitly say volunteer chaplains would be fulfilling the role of mental health counselors, the sponsor of SB 1044, Republican Sen. Erin Grall, has expressed support for that aspect of the bill. Ultimately, school districts would create their own guidelines for the services chaplains would provide.

“I think that this can be viewed as an alternative to school counselors for some families. … There is an opportunity for some children to intersect with a different type of counseling than maybe professional mental health counseling, and that’s what this seeks to fill,” Grall said during a Senate Committee on Education PreK-12 meeting on Feb. 6.

Staff analyses of the bills point to a shortage of school counselors in the state: During the last school year, 6,754 certified school counselors served nearly 3 million students — one counselor for every 425 students. Florida school counselors must hold a master’s degree, according to the Florida Department of Education.

While it may not be outlined in the Florida bills, supporters are touting that the chaplains could provide both religious and mental health help.

“We have a mental health crisis, whether it’s social media interaction, whether it’s just the pressures on young people to attain or to have a certain appearance or to please their peers,” DiPietro said, “and I think more now than ever, our children need resources and support, especially when we’re talking about volunteer chaplains that are already in communities,”

Hollman stressed that chaplains wouldn’t hold the same qualifications as school counselors.

“We would caution strongly against the idea that chaplains can provide some kind of support services and programs that are any way appropriate in a public-school setting where the public schools are, by definition, designed to take care of all students without regard to religion, and are in no way tasked with the spiritual direction and leadership and care for the public-school students,” Hollman said.

Parental consent

Additionally, the bills going through the Florida Legislature would only allow chaplains to be volunteers. Parents would have to provide consent for chaplains to meet with their children. DiPietro sees a double standard because chaplains would be held to the parental consent standard but school counselors are not.

“This legislation actually is paramount in placing parental rights and parental oversight over the volunteer chaplains that are providing these services,” he said.

“In many cases, school guidance counselors and these mental health counselors are going around parents and are not being subjected to parental oversight and parental consent in many cases. And it’s just concerning on that front. I think a lot of mental health counselors and the school guidance counselors are doing great work, and I believe the school chaplain volunteer programs would be a tremendous asset.”

A difference between the House and Senate proposals is that Grall, who represents five counties around Fort Pierce, amended her bill to remove a provision requiring school boards to vote to approve the volunteer chaplains by Jan. 1, 2025. The House proposal, HB 931, has gone through two committees and is pending a floor vote, whereas SB 1044 still needs to clear more committees. The other states contemplating similar proposals include Alabama, Iowa, Georgia, Maryland, Utah, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

Florida public school students start learning about communism in 7th grade. That’s too late for some Republicans in the Florida House, who want teachers to instruct students as young as kindergarteners on concepts such as “cultural Marxism.” But what is it?

The House bill moving in the Legislature doesn’t provide a definition for the term, raising questions about how little kids could understand cultural Marxism.

The Senate version of the bill doesn’t include cultural Marxism in its legislation.

Nevertheless, HB 1349, passed in a House committee on Feb. 1. The bill analysis says that starting in the 2026-27 school year, the history of communism must be included in instruction in grades K-12 in Florida’s public schools. (Currently, there are no standards for the history of communism from kindergarten to 6th grade.) The legislation would include “the philosophy and lineages of Communist thought, including cultural Marxism.”

The bill involves a task force — the governor would appoint the members — to come up with age-appropriate curriculum and academic standards for K-12 instruction of the history of communism and its dangers. The task force would report its findings no later than July 1, 2025, and it “must also make recommendations to the Legislature regarding the creation of a Florida Museum of Communist History,” according to the legislative staff analysis.

The House proposal, from Republican Reps. Chuck Brannan and James Buchanan, gained enough support last week to move forward in the Legislature. But Democrats criticized the inclusion of cultural Marxism as one of the things students will learn about. Brannan represents North Florida counties and a part of Alachua, and Buchanan represents part of Sarasota.

From terrorist manifesto to K-12 curricula

Democratic lawmakers pointed to far-right groups’ usage of cultural Marxism in relation to antisemitic beliefs.

“If you look up the term cultural Marxism, what comes up is the term cultural Marxism refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory, so that’s also concerning to me,” Palm Beach Democratic Rep. Katherine Waldron said during the Choice and Innovation subcommittee meeting last week. “I’m all for kids learning about government and political systems. But I would be against this very specific terminology in training or in trying to educate them on this.”

Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with ADL’s Center on Extremism, said in a statement to Florida Phoenix that antisemites also use the term to reinforce their longstanding antisemitic trope that communism is “Jewish.”

“‘Cultural Marxism’ is a term, typically used by right-wing ideologues, to attack an array of ideas and concepts they oppose, including multiculturalism, globalism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights, among others. The term often functions as an antisemitic dog whistle or codeword,” Mayo wrote in the statement.

“Promoters of the term often invoke a conspiracy theory that falsely claims such progressive ideas originated with the so-called Frankfurt School, a leftist intellectual collective active in Germany between the two World Wars. Exploiting the fact that a number of the Frankfurt School intellectuals were Jewish, antisemitic versions of this conspiracy theory link the Frankfurt School, and thus ‘cultural Marxism’ itself, to Jews, claiming that Jews seek to subvert and weaken Western (and Christian) society by imposing their left-wing and politically correct (or ‘woke’) views.”

Over the years, cultural Marxism has gone from being linked with the far-right through terrorists’ manifestos to seeping into the vocabulary of mainstream politicians, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said he views wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.

“Most of the most violent, the deadliest acts of hate, perpetrated against Jewish people especially in the United States in the last 10 to 15 years have been by far-right extremists. We don’t have cultural Marxists shooting up synagogues. If it were the case, then we should talk about it, but it isn’t,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “You have white supremacists, anti-government extremists who are embracing antisemitism. Of course, antisemitism is on the far-left as well. There has been a rapid, marked increase in antisemitic rhetoric coming out of the far-left as well.”

The terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 and another who killed a woman in the attack at the California Chabad of Poway synagogue in 2019 left manifestos denouncing cultural Marxism’s effect on Europe and blaming Jews for coming up with it, respectively.

Groups like the Proud Boys have also used cultural Marxism as a catch-all term for anyone they view as an enemy, Lewis said.

“What we’ve seen in recent years has been an intentional effort, by far-right extremists to launder antisemitism, launder white supremacy, launder anti-LGBTQ narratives and hate speech against everyone who’s not effectively in this in-group, which is largely white, largely Christian,” he said.

Dangers of communism

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a 45-page report in 2022 about how cultural Marxism threatens the U.S. In it, the think tank states cultural Marxists have infiltrated the country through college campuses and public schools. They also credit DeSantis for showing a path to dismantle cultural Marxism.

“Today’s cultural Marxists believe that the reason economic, social, cultural, academic, and health outcomes (to name just a few) show persistent racial disparities is because of a pervasive, systemic racism that can only be eliminated by smashing the system itself,” the report states.

Subcommittee chair Republican Rep. Alex Rizo of Miami-Dade, last week defended the bill, stating that students don’t learn enough about communism.

“When we talk about antisemitism I equate antisemitism a lot with communism. … I love that this bill will come up with some sort of curriculum to start teaching what communism really does other than an economic theory that was brought up by Marx and Engels, two philosophers, and I use that term very loosely, in the 19th century. Because we do have curriculum in almost every single grade level K through 12 that talks about the sins of slavery, that talks about the horrors of the Holocaust, but does not yet really address the over 100 million people who were victimized, murdered, displaced in about 100 years worth of communism in our society,” he said.

The Florida Department of Education standards related to communism include the evaluation of economic systems in seventh grade and the identification of political ideologies (communism and totalitarianism) that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy in high school.

Lawmakers also discussed last week how the material would be taught in an age-appropriate manner to younger students. Republican Rep. Thad Altman of Brevard said his wife, a first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, teaches kids through hands-on simulations.

“I think these kids understand capitalism and communism more than a lot of college students, especially if they go to an Ivy League,” he said.

Other things students would learn about through the House bill or analysis include atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism, the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, the communist policies of Cuba, and the spread of communist ideologies throughout Latin America.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

The Florida House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday easing child labor restrictions to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work the same hours as adults. Democrats tried several times to modify the proposal but were unsuccessful.

The measure comes as GOP-controlled state legislatures have moved to roll back child labor laws in industries such as food and roofing.

Under existing law, 16- and 17-year-olds can work up to eight hours per day and 30 hours a week. Employers have to provide them with breaks every four hours.

That would also change under HB 49, which would hold teens to the same break standards as adults. But in Florida, there would be no legal requirements for breaks in the workplace.

Those 16- and 17-year-olds could work more than six days in a row if the bill becomes law. Republicans have pitched the move as an avenue to give children opportunities for career development.

“I can’t believe that taking away the 30-hour requirement is such a gigantic ordeal. It’s not. I would say 99% of the kids probably won’t ever work past 30 hours in a week. They have other things to do; they have their social lives, their school, time with parents and friends. But our kids are not victims,” Republican Rep. Jeff Holcomb of Hernando and Pasco counties. “They can defend themselves, and guess what? They can talk to their parents if they have issues. They’re gonna learn time management, work ethic, and they’ll learn the value of a dollar.”

Democrats warned the bill would hinder students’ school performance and expose them to exploitative practices.

“Our children are not merely small adults ready to bear the burdens of life toils; they are dreamers, thinkers and the very embodiment of our state’s future promise. At every corner of our state children are finding their passions, honing their skills, and learning the values that will define their character,” said Orange County Democratic Rep. Lavon Bracy Davis. “They are deeply engaged in educational pursuits and extracurricular activities that spark joy and ignite flames of lifelong interest. To place the weight of labor upon their shoulders is to extinguish these flames, to snuff out the spark before they can ever truly catch fire.”

FL child labor bills: Women farmworkers worry about kids working longer hours in fields

Failed amendments

None of the nine amendments from Democrats garnered enough support to change the proposal. Some of those amendments would have required employers to give minors work breaks every five hours, create provisions to prevent heat illness, and keep a record of sexual harassment incidents in the workplace.

“We as a legislative body talk so much about protecting children, and yet here we are opening up the possibility that children will be exploited as cheap labor. They deserve so much more. I wrote an amendment that would protect them from deadly heat exposure, and yet it was voted down,” Orange Democratic Rep. Rita Harris said.

The sponsor of the bill, Republican Rep. Linda Chaney of Hillsborough and Pinellas, insisted that even with the changes, Florida would offer more child labor regulations than the federal government. Federal regulations on child labor haven’t changed since the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

“Yes, we are aligning ourselves with federal labor laws, but we still are more restrictive. I am yet to hear one person go to Washington and say we need to change the federal labor laws,” Chaney said.

She said that employers would not exploit minors because it costs more to hire a new employee than to retain staff.

“This bill is about choice and opportunity for families. I trust that our families and that teens will make the right choice for them in their own individual situation. This is a very competitive market. As a small business owner … if we do not treat our employees in the way that they want to be treated, whether it has to be breaks, or hours, or days that they work, they leave,” Chaney said.

“It is much more costly and inconvenient, as a business owner, to hire, recruit, train an employee versus keeping an employee. So, the employee is in the driver’s seat. I reject the premise that a 16 and 17-year-old is not capable of understanding that. They communicate with each other. They’re going to gravitate to the employers that treat them the way they want to be treated.”

The Senate’s version

While the Senate is also looking to change the hours children can work, the chamber is taking a narrower approach than the House. SB 1596, which was heard for the first time earlier this week, still would bar 16- and 17-year-olds from working more than 30 hours per week. Republican senators are looking to allow students to clock in at 5:30 a.m. and clock out at midnight.

Another bill, sponsored by Sen. Corey Simon, who represents North Florida counties, would roll back child labor restrictions in the construction industry. That proposal has been changed to remove provisions allowing teens to work on commercial and residential roofs.

Democratic Reps. Anna Eskamani of Orlando and Angie Nixon of Jacksonville called out the crackdown on undocumented immigration last year, which they said was linked to labor shortages.

“We know that SB 1718 last year also exacerbated the labor shortage here; that anti-immigrant bill basically ground the agricultural and construction industries to a halt and now, again, here we are trying to exploit our children,” Nixon said.

Immigrant rights advocates and farmworkers have expressed concerns about immigrant children working instead of focusing on their education because of the bill.

The differences will make it more difficult to combine the bills if the Senate approves SB 1596. Originally, the House bill also removed restrictions that only allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work between 6:30 a.m. and 11 p.m. The version that passed the floor on Thursday allows minors to work as early as 6 a.m.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

Florida House Republicans approved a proposal Monday that would require health insurance companies providing gender-affirming care for transgender people to also cover therapies to affirm a person’s sex assigned at birth — otherwise known as conversion therapy.

The sponsor of HB 1639, GOP Rep. Douglas Michael Bankson representing parts of Orange and Seminole counties, said he doesn’t intend to make anyone choose to reverse transition procedures but that he wants to make that choice more accessible.

The legislation mainly focuses on mandating coverage of detransition treatments to reverse the process of gender-affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy. However, Bankson also plans to swap gender for sex assigned at birth in state driver’s licenses and IDs.

“We want to make sure that those who have not found the answers that they’re looking for, have the opportunity to go back and detransition and seek the wholeness that they’re looking for,” Bankson said during the bill’s hearing Monday on the Select Committee on Health Innovation.

What is conversion therapy?

Bankson backed away from using the term “conversion therapy,” but Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani pressed him, saying conversion therapy has been widely debunked.

The American Psychiatric Organization stands against such therapies that don’t respect the identities of people with different gender expressions. Instead, Bankson said gender dysphoria is a new challenge. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines conversion therapy as the use of any of various methods in an attempt to change a person’s gender identity to correspond to the sex the person was identified as having at birth.

LGBTQ lawmakers, advocates vow to resist repressive legislation this session

“We’re in the beginnings of this challenge, and there are those that debunk the debunkers. And we go back and forth and that’s part of the problem. We’re fighting in this area, rather than allowing individuals to pursue that which they believe is the best route for them to pursue,” Bankson said.

This is what the bill states: “A health insurance policy that is delivered or issued to a person in the state may not prohibit the coverage of mental health or therapeutic services to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex, as defined in s. 456.001, is inconsistent with such person’s sex at birth by affirming the insured’s sex.”

Although he claimed his proposal is aimed at helping people get coverage to detransition, Bankson said no one had told him they had problems doing so. In fact, the only person testifying during the Monday meeting who said they had detransitioned spoke out against the bill as did multiple members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community. Only one community member testified in support of the bill.

‘Potentially dangerous’

Lilith Black said they started to transition as a trans woman when they were young before understanding their gender expression as nonbinary. They said that they were able to use gender-affirming care to get back to a place where they felt comfortable with their body.

“First of all, it’s dismissive of our entire community that we are not even remotely being considered in legislation that directly affects us. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I have been here before and we’ve seen similar bills passed despite lengthy debate on whether or not they’re even constitutional,” Black told Florida Phoenix. “So, it’s just overall extremely unfortunate that so much work is being done without considering people that it defects.”

They continued: “Expansion upon the need for conversion therapy for detransitioners is not only unfounded, but it’s potentially dangerous.”

Lawmakers’ definition of sex

Republican Rep. Chase Tramont, representing parts of Brevard and Volusia counties, introduced an amendment to the bill defining sex as either male or female designation based on reproductive role, as indicated by sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones and internal and external genitalia present at birth. The amendment passed.

Community members also bashed Bankson for referring to reproductive or sexual anatomies that don’t strictly align with what is considered to be female or male as anomalies. “For those who deal with anomalies within their body, there’s a clear medical choice that is made,” he said.

“I would also like to mention that my transition saved my life. I do not need to detransition to be whole. Now, when I am living as my most authentic self I am whole. As an intersex person, I am not an anomaly; as a trans masculine person, I am not chemically castrating myself,” Kyle Moore testified during the committee meeting. “Saying that someone isn’t whole because they are seeking to transition or because they have transitioned and calling someone who is biologically intersex an anomaly is disgusting and dehumanizing.”

Democrat Michele Rayner, representing parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, pointed out flaws within the bill including that the Florida Legislature has previously shut down coverage mandates for insurance providers and that it has no Senate companion bill. There is, however, another House bill (HB 1233) trying to do some of the same things as Bankson’s proposal.

“The concern that I have is that even yet and still in the face of the very people that are being harmed, we are not taking a beat. We’re not stopping. … I still am yet unclear about what is the compelling state interest. There’s a lot of things I can abide by, but what I cannot and will not abide by is an attack on the transgender and nonbinary community,” Rayner said. “I cannot. y’all know this about me. I cannot, and I won’t abide by it.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.