Florida

In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are restricted. The effort to chip away at those rights is rooted in the concept of fetal personhood — that a fetus has equal and, in some cases, more rights than the woman sustaining it.

Florida lawmakers approved significant new guardrails Friday for the multibillion-dollar emergency fund that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration used to construct and operate the sprawling immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The House on Thursday passed a bill (HB 991) on a 77-28 vote along party lines, imposing new identification requirements on voters, but it doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2027.

The House on Thursday passed bill (HB 697) that includes a stopgap measure to restore cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program through June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

State legislators won't complete the budget by Friday, requiring talks on the spending plan to move beyond the scheduled end of the regular session, House Speaker Daniel Perez said Monday.

As public health experts work to investigate the already reported infections, the virus continues to spread throughout the state.

The popular visa program, established in 1990, allows U.S. employers to hire foreign professionals with highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor’s degree. More than 500 foreigners were employed as of last year at Florida public and private universities under the program.

A stolen boat, with 10 people aboard, loaded with weapons, departs the Florida Keys but gunfire erupts before reaching Cuba. The explanation, according to the Cuban government, is the men aboard were terrorists who wanted to infiltrate the country.

Cuba says two of the ten Cuban expats captured after a shootout with its coast guard were already on the regime's terrorist list — and in a recent video, one of them urged "cowardly" exiles to die to free the communist island. Meanwhile, it emerged that the boat used by the expats may have been stolen from a home in the Florida Keys.

A Colombian legislator joined local clergy and immigrant advocates on Sunday in demanding Alligator Alcatraz be closed and detainees released to end what they describe as a "national and international" human rights crisis.

The schools on the complaint against Step Up For Students say they have cut education programs their students rely on in the face of delayed voucher payments that have affected their operations — programs critical to their students with disabilities.

Step Up For Students, the entity being sued, managesr half a million vouchers for students across the state. The dramatic increase in a short period of time resulted in some delays in distributing funds to students, families and schools. The schools, the lawsuit says, can't penalize families for being late to pay tuition, suspend services or withhold access to school "without... jeopardizing educational continuity."