Florida

Two years after Volkswagen agreed to settle an emissions cheating scandal that paid millions to states where the dirty vehicles were sold, Florida is ready to decide how to spend its $166 million.

COMMENTARY

Good riddance, Ricky.

Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosselló has finally agreed to resign, effective August 2, after protesters all but shut down the Caribbean island this week demanding he get lost.

But I’ll at least give Rosselló this: Ironically, his crass, clueless performance as governor has helped strengthen the case for what he’s always said is a key solution to Puerto Rico’s problems: statehood.

COMMENTARY

It’s a photo that makes a cry of pain slip from your throat.

Lying face down on the bank of the Rio Grande in Mexico are the corpses of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Martínez and his toddler daughter Valeria. She is tucked inside his T-shirt; her tiny arm still clings to his neck. They drowned trying to cross the river into the U.S. this week – another tragic image, another border Pietà, for America’s bitter conversation about immigration and the suffering of migrant families.

COMMENTARY

Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen was right to get worked up last week. He blasted the Trump Administration when it seemed poised to release thousands of migrants detained at the U.S.’s southern border into Broward and Palm Beach Counties each year. (The administration, which never confirmed the reports, has since backed off.)

But in his outrage, Bogen made a rather bogus assertion: “We are not a border state.”

Environmental groups are raising concern about a proposal to expand the use of antibiotics against a disease that has crippled Florida’s iconic citrus industry.

The fear is an increase in antibiotic-resistant diseases for humans.

The groups are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to deny the proposal to expand the use of the antibiotic streptomycin against citrus greening disease.

The Center for Biological Diversity delivered a petition with more than 45,000 signatures to the federal agency. Here is the organization’s Emily Knobbe.