Abortion ban restored, drinking water warnings, and record numbers of fleeing Cubans

It’s Monday, July 11, and the election year is in summer lull. In Washington, D.C. this week, a marble statue of educator and civil-rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune will replace the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith in the National Statuary Hall.

And on Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis is scheduled to speak to a gathering of the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty in Hillsborough County. Down the road, the Florida Democratic Party will hold its annual “Leadership Blue” conference to showcase its candidates.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Abortion ban temporarily restored: First, the court volley over Florida’s 15-week abortion ban continues. The ban was temporarily halted and then quickly restored last week after lawyers for the state appealed a Leon County circuit judge’s injunction.

Circuit Judge John C. Cooper said he was bound by precedent set by the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in 1989 that Florida’s constitutional right to privacy protected the right to an abortion. The injunction was in effect less than an hour, however. The state quickly appealed the ruling and Attorney General Ashley Moody requested that the case go quickly to the state Supreme Court.

DeSantis’ intentional silence: The governor’s silence about what Florida will do next on restricting abortion is not ambiguous, it’s calculated, political scientists said last week. Advocating for the outlaw of abortion before the midterms would require a special legislative session and could create a backlash to his gubernatorial reelection effort, said Michael Binder, faculty director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida.

“It would add some uncertainty,” he said. “If you’re winning, why would you do that?”

McConnell’s abortion ban: Remember when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that Republicans could pursue federal legislation to ban abortion everywhere? The statement has now become potent political ammunition for Democrats’ midterm campaign strategy.

Oysters’ toxic water warning: As if you didn’t have enough to worry about, there’s a new report that asks: Is South Florida drinking water contaminated with potentially harmful chemicals known as PFAS?

That is the question researchers at Florida International University are posing after finding that oysters in three coastal Florida areas — Miami-Dade, Tampa and Naples — were contaminated with the potentially harmful chemicals. Their new study warns that the contaminated oysters are indicators of the safety of fresh drinking water pumped into household taps.

Especially worrisome for South Florida residents, however, is the finding that the region’s tap water had the highest levels of PFAS compared to central and southwest Florida. In some spots, they were several times higher than EPA safety guidelines suggested.

Monkeypox on the rise: Monkeypox cases in Florida, especially South Florida, have surged since late May, part of a worldwide epidemic of more than 6,000 cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 73 Florida cases as of Thursday, the third most of any state, after California and New York. And South Florida is the epicenter of the state’s outbreak.

What to know: Monkeypox can spread from person to person through contact with the infectious rash, scabs or body fluids of someone who is infected with the virus. Here’s what to look for and how to get tested.

WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT

Silenced in Cuban jail: Today is the one-year anniversary of the July 11 protests in Cuba, the largest anti-government demonstrations in Cuba in several decades. Also today, hundreds of people — including many opposition leaders — still remain detained, waiting for trials or in prison for chanting pro-freedom slogans..

The uprising brought increased international scrutiny over the government’s record on human rights but the economic situation has only worsened. Thousands are fleeing the island, including many of the dissidents, artists, entrepreneurs, academics and journalists that had contributed in recent years to organizing a civil society movement advocating for civil and political freedoms in the country.

Cuban exiles exceed Mariel numbers: The U.S. Coast Guard has stopped at sea over 3,000 Florida-bound Cuban migrants since October, surpassing the Mariel exodus of 1980 when 125,000 Cubans departed from the Port of Mariel near Havana.

Haiti’s mystery remains: It has also been a year since Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated inside his bedroom on July 7, 2021. Three people have been charged in the US, but the public is no closer to knowing who masterminded the attack or fired the fatal shots. U.S. agents who are running a parallel investigation have been tight-lipped, but are clearly building a murder conspiracy case that could link suspects in South Florida to the Haitian perpetrators.

Newsom v. DeSantis: We’re not even through the mid-terms and ambitious politicians are already trash talking each other for the next contest.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom started the latest spat, launching a television ad in Florida markets on the 4th of July in which he claims: “Freedom, it’s under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.”I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight — or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”

DeSantis’ supporters responded eagerly on Twitter. The governor used a news conference to push back too, listing his well-honed talking points, including “keeping the state open” during COVID. He quipped that growing up in Florida he “rarely, if ever, saw a California license plate” and “you now see a lot them. I can tell you if you’re in California, you’re not seeing a lot of Florida license plates.”

DeSantis’ out-of-state campaign: Meanwhile, Florida’s governor is not letting his re-election campaign interfere with his national campaign tour. He spent Independence Day out of the state, in Montana. Next week, he’s headed to Utah, for a private , big-donor fundraiser, CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reported.

Crist releases housing plan: DeSantis’ potential rival, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a Democrat for governor, released his proposal to address Florida’s housing crisis and laid the blame for Florida’s lack of affordable housing on Wall Street investors and DeSantis. Crist said he would a appoint a state “housing czar” and work to set limits on the number of single-family rental properties an investment firm can own in a given market. He also wants to impose taxes on properties purchased by investors and left vacant.

Anotonacci - new top elections cop: DeSantis named Pete Antonacci, a former prosecutor and onetime supervisor of elections, to be the first head of the controversial new Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office, championed by DeSantis, will have authority to independently launch investigations into purported elections wrongdoing.

Antonacci, 73, previously worked for former Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, and has since had a long history of being a go-to advisor to Republican governors. Under former Gov. Rick Scott, he was named executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, president of Enterprise Florida, Palm Beach state attorney and Broward supervisor of elections.

Border patrol cleared: Remember that video showing U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback and appearing to use their reins to strike or whip Haitian migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas last September? According to an internal review from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection published Friday, investigators found “no evidence” that agents actually used their whips against the migrants.

The final report did find that several Border Patrol agents acted “inappropriately” during the high-profile incident at the Texan town of Del Rio. Four agents could be disciplined over their roles in the event, although the department said in a statement that the disciplinary process is still underway and that proposed actions are “pre-decisional.”

Patient brokering over marijuana? The number of Floridians approved to use medical marijuana is rising, but some providers are increasingly frustrated by the lack of regulation of what they allege are bad actors in the cannabis industry.

Among the complaints: online companies that attempt to make it easier for people to qualify for medical marijuana by connecting patients and doctors through telehealth. The companies then share the fees with the doctors, in what some allege is akin to patient brokering.

Latvala agrees to settlement: Former state Sen. Jack Latvala has reached a proposed ethics settlement, admitting to “technical violation of state law” and “poor judgment” in a relationship with lobbyist that drew a sexual harassment complaint.

The harassment allegations prompted the Senate in 2017 to hire a special master to look into the claims. As the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017-18, legislators and lobbyists described a Tallahassee culture that created conditions ripe for sexual exploitation. Testimony from the lobbyist led the special master to recommend a probe into whether Latvala had violated state corruption laws by seeking sexual intimacy from the lobbyist in exchange for legislative favors. The language in the proposed settlement agreement with the Florida Commission on Ethics states there is “no evidence that this affected his official actions in any way.”

Will Passidomo push reform? The special master found probable cause to support allegations that Latvala groped a Senate aide and engaged in a pattern of making unwelcome remarks about women’s bodies. A Senate committee unanimously passed a bill to make sexual harassment in government offices a crime, but the bill died and the measure never resurfaced.

A year later, the Senate settled the case of the Senate aide for nearly $1 million and all talk of reform stopped. If the ethics commission signs off on the proposed settlement, the matter will be forwarded to the full Senate for further action. There, it will be up to incoming Senate President Kathleen Passidomo to decide if Latvala should face a public censure and reprimand. She could also decide to pursue the reforms proposed but dropped by her male predecessors.

Legislation could doom Al Capone’s house: For more than a year, preservationists had been making steady headway in an uphill, high-profile battle to save gangster Al Capone’s estate on Miami Beach’s Palm Island from possible demolition. And then the state of Florida stepped in.

A new and little-noticed state law of mysterious origin, signed by DeSantis and in effect as of July 1, just happens to prohibit local authorities from stopping the demolition of low-lying houses in designated flood zones — including Palm Island.

Citing the new rule, the city of Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board abruptly canceled a long-awaited hearing set for July 12 that would have helped finally determine the fate of the 1922 Capone house.

Levine Cava reorganizes: For the second time in a year, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has shuffled the senior leadership overseeing the police, fire department and other public safety operations last week. Levine Cava didn’t explain the timing of the reorganization, but the release announcing the changes emphasized the need for oversight in Corrections.

Suarez reports crypto investment: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who promotes Miami as a growing crypto hub, invested in cryptocurrency in 2021. But, according to his financial disclosure, it wasn’t anything close to his investment in Miami real estate. His cryptocurrency account had about $10,761. His real estate holdings: about $700,000.

Thank you: Miami Herald Capitol Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas curates the Politics and Policy in the Sunshine State newsletter. We appreciate our readers and if you have any ideas or suggestions, please drop me a note at meklas@miamiherald.com.

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