The Florida Roundup - A Conversation With Federal Reserve Bank Of Atlanta Sen Ben Albritton And More

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke with the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta about inflation, the job market and affordability (00:30). Then, we talked about the upcoming state legislative session with Senate President Ben Albritton (20:14). Plus, we connected with Samantha Putterman with our partner PolitiFact for the latest fact-checks of the news (32:54). And later, Your Florida’s Meghan Bowman joined us to preview a new project exploring how the detention known as Alligator Alcatraz center awoke a decades-old environmental fight (37:30).

Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Great to have you along this week and happy New Year. Florida may be one of the fastest growing economies in the country, but it's also one of the least affordable states, thanks especially to the cost of housing. Today on a program, we're going to start with the economy here in 2026.

inflation, the job market, interest rates, in other words, your pocketbook. How's your household budget? Are you in the job market, hoping to buy a home, perhaps? Did you get a raise, or are you cutting back on spending? In business owners, we'd love to hear from you as well. What's your outlook for 2026? Call us now live statewide on this Friday, 305-995-1800. Or you can send us a quick email.

Our inbox is open. We are monitoring it live now, radio at the floor. Florida Roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Now, among the duties of the Federal Reserve is to set short-term interest rates in response to economic activity. And the Fed has two goals, steady prices, in other words, low inflation, and maximum employment. In other words, a healthy job market. Raphael Bostic is with us. He's the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Its territory includes all of Florida. President Bostick, welcome back to Florida. Nice to see you. It's very good to be here. Happy to see you in person. Indeed. You as well. Happy New Year. The Atlanta Federal Reserve is constantly measuring economic activity. The economy grew by more than 5% in the fourth quarter of last year. That's what the Atlanta Bank is estimating about the total economic growth. That comes after a 4% growth in the third quarter. These are wicked fast numbers for the national economy to grow. What's your assessment of the economy in

the southeastern U.S., including Florida? Well, in many regards, the southeast is a microcosm of the U.S. economy. So the strength that you're seeing nationally is also reflected in the southeast. You know, one of the things that's been very interesting has been how well businesses have been able to perform over the past year, and the economy has remained quite resilient. As consumers have really stayed active in the marketplace, particularly high-end consumers, and it's really buoyed numbers. And then we've, of course, seen investment in things like AI and technology. Do you subscribe to the K-shaped economic theory, the K-shaped meaning the high-wage earners,

the investors who are continuously doing well, and the low-wage or even middle-class, where are getting pinched further and further by lower wages or by inflation particularly? Well, in many regards, the U.S. has long had a K-shaped economy. There have been a number of households who were living paycheck-to-paycheck, very precarious. You know, we've done surveys that showed that large fraction, of the population couldn't really weather a $400 or $500 shock. So that's always been true. And of course, there have been affluent people.

I think the thing that's been interesting in this period is that in the pandemic, we saw a lot of supports that helped people at the lower end be buoyed and be stronger. And so for a while, you didn't see disparities in terms of the amount of stress that's out there. Over time, what's happened is that the extra, that the low-income folks have had has actually started to get spent down. And now they're in some cases at pre-pandemic levels again. In some cases, they're even more stressed because they had exposed themselves to payments and things during that pandemic period.

Take it on even more debt. Where they had more money. And so they are definitely facing challenges. And the thing that we are seeing is when I talk to business leaders, very different stories depending on which consumer segment they're serving. So if they're serving the high-end consumer segment, they're saying, you know, businesses can hold, can, the business demand is solid. They can keep producing. If you're at the serving lower end, which you're getting is a lot of substitution. Yeah. Where consumers are maybe moving from that mid-level restaurant

to a quick serve that's lower cost. And so there's a lot of stress and tension, depending on where you are. Jay is listening in here, President. Bostick from Orlando. He's a business owner there in Central Florida. Jay, welcome to the program. Go ahead. Thank you very much for having me. And, you know, I'm, I'm particularly concerned in terms of the small business owners who are really a bellwether for the general community, especially in Florida, Central Florida, particularly. And what we're seeing is, obviously with the inflation, with the higher cost of resources, materials, supplies, that's, squeezing a business owner, not to mention this X-factor cause of increased health care,

which now it seems to be sort of out of the reach of affordability, not just for the general public, but we're seeing it for the small business owners as well. So we're really seeing a squeeze from the top-down approach and not to mention the bottom approach. So we're really getting suffocated, and my hope is that we have some sort of policies implemented within the next couple of years that can really address this. Jay, thanks for sharing your thoughts there, owning a business in Orlando. President Bostic, you've called inflation, quote, more urgent and definitive risk to the U.S. economy. You said that just last month. You still feel that today? I definitely feel that. And, you know, the caller basically spoke to a lot of the reasons why.

You know, we do a lot of surveys. And one of the things that we've seen in our surveys of businesses is a split in terms of the amount of stress that's being reported based on the size of the business. And so, if you know, if you're a small business owner, many of them, they don't have large bank accounts and large extra buffers and they don't have 17 different suppliers for goods. They have very specific ways that the business works. And they may not have lines of credit coming out the door from community banks or national banks. Exactly right. So as the underlying conditions get more difficult, their options are very limited and they can be stressed. And so I've worried about that. You know, I've been talking about this split in terms of

businesses. And we know that for many communities, small businesses are an important engine of activity and also employment. So it's definitely something that we're watching. It's one of the reasons why I do think that it's really important that we get inflation under control. So, you know, to Jay's kind of point, he's hoping for policies that can address inflation. Are you clear today here in early 2026 about what are the stubborn drivers of inflation? So there are a number of them. And it is more complicated. You know, a lot of the narrative through 2025 was tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, but a lot of the actual cost pressures are happening outside of tariffs.

So the caller today talked about health insurance. Right. And other types of insurance. We were in Florida. We know insurance costs have gone up. We've got a couple emails about property insurance. Considerably. And so the cost pressures are actually much broader than just the tariff space.

And so what we, what you're going to need is, I actually. actually think there's not one silver bullet to solve. It will be in the various segments, there will be solutions that help. For me, I think one of the issues that we are watching closely is pressure in terms of finding workers, particularly in segments that had a lot of foreign-born workers. We're starting to hear that there are some stresses happening there, which could have implications for wages in those sectors as well. Those implications would be presumably higher wages, which could circle back around and feed higher inflation. Well, either feed higher inflation or smaller margins, right?

Smaller profit margins for companies, less investment. And one of the challenges we have is, for some businesses, if they're serving a certain segment of the population that can't take on any more price, then it is a margins issue. And so it really is this much more nuanced and complicated environment. We're speaking with the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Rafael Bostick. His territory includes Florida 305-995-1800. Great opportunity to speak to a central banker live here in Florida, 305-995-1800. Let me ask you about employment.

In Florida, state unemployment in November jumped to 4.2 percent, highest in four years, still well below 5 percent, which generally is thought to be full employment. We saw the national unemployment numbers come out today on this Friday. 4.4% with 50,000 new jobs. What's your read on the southeastern job market? So I think the job market is definitely cooler than it has been for the last three or four years. For me, I think there are two questions. One is, does cooler mean weak? I think the answer there is not necessarily. And then the second is, are we expecting the cooling to accelerate and turn into something that looks much more like a crisis.

And I think the answer there is no as well. When we talk to business leaders, when I talk to business leaders through our surveys, everyone is in no hire but no fire mode. People are very much cautious. There's so much uncertainty in the marketplace in terms of policy, in terms of where economies are going to be. And there's uncertainty in terms of technology. So, you know, everyone has been reporting about how some of the new technologies,

generative AI and others, have the potential to reduce the need for businesses to hire people. Are you seeing any of that actually play out on the ground? So we're not seeing it at scale. You know, what we are seeing in terms of AI-type investments, all firms are looking at it. They're all trying. Most that we are talking to have not said that they found the silver bullet and that they are, as a consequence, reducing their workforce by particular amounts. but more and more they're incorporating into their standard processes

and starting to learn about where it can make a difference and then think about what the implications are. One thing I've been asking as I go around is, do you think that AI and other technologies will be labor replacing or labor enhancing and supplementing? Today, most say enhancing and supplementing, but I can't get out of the back of my mind. If they really figure it out,

it might actually wind up being replacing as well. The jumps that we've seen in the economic growth in late 2025, how much of that do you attribute to artificial intelligence as it really the spark turned into a real wildfire of activity? So I don't know what I can say artificial intelligence specifically, but I do know that businesses have been looking to find ways to create more efficiencies in their processes. Some of it will be with the AI type stuff.

Some of it is just making, sure that you understand all of your processes and where you have policies perhaps that might be slowing things down, impeding your workers, and with some of the cost pressures, there's been an increased urgency for businesses of all sorts to try to reduce any kind of inefficiencies so they can keep their margins as much as they can. A source of mine runs a warehousing transportation here in South Florida, and I was out there several months ago. And he's just a source of mine runs a warehouse, showed me this new AI conveyor belt with 3D cameras where they scan really small packages. Generally, they're using like big international shipping cargo areas, but these are really small

packages. And he's been able to increase, hasn't impacted his headcount, same number of people, but his throughput, right? The volume now has just skyrocketed because of the technology. And that's where, what I think everyone is hoping that they're going to find. Enhancement. And if they can do that, you're going to get more revenue with the same amount of workforce. And what's interesting also in this is that a lot of these AI technologies are actually not super expensive.

You don't have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to incorporate them. And so that is potentially another reason why we might expect these things to be game changes. So I'm going to go back to this inflation and employment, that dual mandate that you and your Federal Reserve colleagues have. have steady prices on inflation and maximum employment. It sounds like unemployment, you're pretty comfortable with kind of where the job market is now cooling off, but not cold by any stretch, where inflation you're still pretty worried about. You're worried about its defiance to come down.

Yeah, so look, our inflation target is 2%. Right. Most measures today have it somewhere around 2.8 to 3%. That is 50% higher than our target. Yes, it is. And that is a lot. Yeah. And, you know, the thing I worry about is people losing confidence that we are going to actually get to 2%.

So I want to set this up, right? Because you've got a meeting coming up in a few weeks where you're going to sit around a big table in Washington, D.C., with all of your Federal Reserve Regional President, colleagues, as well as the Board of Governors, where you decide the direction of short-term interest rates, among many other things. Now, you will have a seat at the table. you don't have a vote this year on interest rates, but what are you going to be telling your colleagues about the direction of interest rates? Yeah, so for me, I think a couple things.

So one, inflation is too high. We've got to get it into control. And we need to be laser focused on making sure that everything we do is contributing to that. We definitely need to look at labor markets because we do have a dual mandate. Today, I feel like the two mandates are somewhat intention that if you want to address one, you're going to exacerbate the other one. But today we have one target that's 50% above, one metric that's 50% above target, one that is kind of at full employment, has been migrating higher, but the signs we have

are not that it's accelerating. And so this is the time, I think, to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that even though labor markets have gotten cooler and more people are expressing concerns, that we still have this big concern around inflation. and we know that consumers across the spectrum are feeling the pressures of high prices. And that has the potential to become mutually reinforcing and then weaken the economy in ways.

They'll be harder for us to address. As we've seen your colleagues in the Federal Reserve lower its target interest rate, we've seen borrowing rates move down, particularly mortgage rates. And we've seen that ignite interest and provide some stability to the housing market here in Florida, particularly on the condominium market,

which had gone through lots of different iterations over the past couple of years in no small part because of the reforms put in place after the surfside collapse, which killed 98 people in 2021. How does that figure in as you are considering your thoughts and your contributions to that decision in three weeks? Well, housing is certainly important. And I cut my teeth as a housing economist and understand how important housing is for families. and also for creating stability so that families can do all the things that they want to do with terms of finding schools and finding jobs and the like. I do think that a lot of the housing affordability challenges are about more than just financing. And there's a supply and demand issue that has persisted in many major markets.

I know Florida has this issue. And the pandemic in many regards exacerbated. So many people moving to the state when they could work remotely. and hitting on that. So I think certainly financing is one piece to this, but it's not the only one. And we definitely need to get everything in order if we want to make sure that people can buy housing.

Because I would say this, if food is too expensive or high cost, if clothes are high cost, if medicine is high cost, then the ability for families have down payments to get into a house and then be able to support living in the house, goes down. And I'll just say just on this one more thing.

When I bought my first house, the thing I had not really internalized is that's the beginning. You're going to have to replace roofs. You're going to have to do floors. You're going to have to do pipes. All those sort of things. So you need to have excess capacity.

And the other costs that you face really makes that more difficult. I want to squeeze one call in here. John and O'Call has been listening in Central Florida. He wants to talk about President Trump, who's announced a couple of different tactics that the president says are aimed at housing affordability. One of those announced on Thursday would have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage

giants, owned by the federal government, by $200 billion of mortgage bonds. John, you are on the radio. Go ahead, sir. Hi, thank you for taking my call. My question is, there's been a lot of discussion about privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What are your thoughts on that? And secondly, how do we do that and prevent the fraud and scrupulous lending practices we had back in 2008 and 2000? Thank you for taking my call. Thank you, John. Well, those are very good questions, John. And I would say this, the devil will be in the details in terms of privatization because to the extent that the market and mortgage markets involve government guarantees, there's always a potential for risk.

risk-taking. And so we'll need to make sure that to the extent that Fannie and Freddie do operate as private entities, that they bear some of the cost of that risk so that they have an incentive to make sure that they take steps to underwrite in a measured way. But to do that will really require a lot of rule writing, a lot of structure, and we'll have to see how that plays out. I want to squeeze in one more question here in our final 30 seconds, President Bostic. Monica in Tampa as she's retired military, existing unlimited income, a modest neighborhood in Tampa. I'm not sure how the Federal Reserve Bank is going to have any real influence on making significant changes to making our lives more affordable in Florida.

Well, I actually think we can do quite well. If we have policies that can get inflation under control, then that will affect what the price levels are. And if inflation is down, as people get earnings, as their cost of living will improve, then their lives will be easier. They'll be less stressed and they can just really enjoy themselves and not worry about what the prices are. Sounds like you may be describing your own retirement coming up in a couple of months.

President Rafael Bostic of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. Thank you so much for your time and congratulations on your retirement. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to the next chapter. Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org. This is the Florida Roundup.

I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being here. Next week on our program, author Brad Meltzer will be our guest. Now, Brad grew up in Florida. He's a best-selling author. He is the guy who helped find the American flag that flew over Ground Zero after the terrorist attack in 2001. He's also had one of his books banned by a school district here in Florida.

We'll talk with Brad about free expression in Florida, banning smartphones in school and finding mystery in a world full of artificial intelligence-generated information. Yeah, he's got a new thriller out. Author Brad Meltzer will be here. So send us your questions. Email us, radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org.

That's next week. Florida lawmakers begin their annual law writing session on Wednesday, and already Governor Ron DeSantis wants them to hold a special legislative session in April. He wants them to redraw political. boundaries for Florida's congressional districts. Our population has changed so much in the last four or five years. We need to get a portion properly and people deserve equal representation. And so we look forward to being able to work with the legislature to get that across the finish line. Democrats, including House Minority Leader Fentress Driscoll, believe the governor's only goal is to draw

maps that favor Republicans who already hold 20 of the state's 28 congressional seats. No matter what DeSantis says, this is an illegal partisan gerrymander happening because Donald Trump asked for it. Trump wants to rig the midterm elections to prevent the American people from holding his administration accountable. Redistricting is just one of the big issues lawmakers will have to deal with in the weeks and months ahead. We spoke this week with Republican State Senator Ben Albright. He's the president of the Florida Senate. Mr. President, welcome back to our program. Let's start with redistricting. Do you support the governor's call for a special session? in April for redistricting? The answer is yes.

There's really one important reason why I support that is that we're waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on a case on a voting rights act claim. However, that comes down either way, it's going to provide a huge amount of clarity on redistricting and the way those processes should happen. Allow me to ask the bigger question then, Mr. President. Do you believe that congressional districts here in Florida need to be redrawn this year? Yes. as long as certain things are met, the first would be, of course, the clarification we get from the Supreme Court would go a long way to showing that there are districts in Florida that at that point in time would not adhere to law.

And fixing that would make some sense. We are not assembling maps in the Florida Senate. We are just wanting to see what that court decision yields and then what the plan field looks like at that point. One of the other justifications the governor's talked about for his desire to redistribute. is the population changes that have happened since the most recent census in 2020. Do you believe the population changes are a justification for redistricting here in the middle of the decade? Well, the growth that Florida has seen over the last two or three years has been substantial. And by relative terms, I think on a percentage basis, one of the, if not the largest influx of people moving to Florida that we've ever seen.

And if that is the case, and I believe it is, and the data shows that, then they're a pretty good reason for looking at how these things are distributed anyhow in what the impact of that population growth has been. You're certainly aware of efforts in other states to redraw congressional districts, successful ones in Texas, California, an unsuccessful effort in Indiana, for instance. The effort there was called transactional by one Indiana Republican senator. Do you believe that in Florida this is going to be a transactional debate about whether or not to redraw political boundaries? Yeah, look, I'm not going to use that word and I'm not going to ever be a participant in a process that operates that way. No, I do not believe that that is anybody's goal, but I know this.

I can speak for me. That is not my goal in the state of Florida. The redrawing had been a regular schedule every 10 years after the census. Ought that schedule then perhaps be reformed? That's going to be what four years from now, and the new districts would be normally drawn six years from now. Look, I'll tell you this, I don't know if it has any bearing or not. I'm not going to be here.

Still be a Floridian, I would presume. Okay, I'll still be a Floridian. And, okay, so I'll do a best. I can't answer that based on being a Floridian, not a senator or a senator president. The fact of the matter is that any government systems that we feel like, based on data, based on outcome metrics and not output metrics, outcome metrics, any system that government has that we identify through reasonable, thoughtful, accountable measurement is flawed, should be fixed. Let's move on to property taxes.

Is cutting or eliminating most local property taxes a priority for you in the Senate this session? I want to give the governor huge credit for bringing this issue to light and having the stimulating, really, the public discussion about it, good on him. Also, the speaker for putting together what they did over there. This is Speaker of the Florida House, Daniel Perez. Yes, sir, that's right. I applaud the Speaker for doing that. Meanwhile, we're continuing to do what we do, and that is contemplate all. all of that, try to understand the implications of every decision. Do I think when you go back and look

at what local budgets have grown to over the last few years, and you look at what inflation has been, although inflation is high, the growth in these budgets have been substantially higher. Now, you've got to look closely, so you have to understand, is that just spending growth? Is there, are there federal funds that are part of those budget numbers that are part of that growth? And those grew, but it really wasn't the local. You know what I'm saying? You've got to really understand it. But what it appears to me is there is a valid opportunity to be able to give relief.

And this, look, this is about Floridians. And I'm a supporter of home rule. Make no mistake about it. This is about Floridians. It's about everyday Floridians, not elected officials. And specifically Florida homeowners. Homeowners. Yes, sir.

Florida homeowners. And they deserve this robust conversation. And ultimately, they deserve to have a choice to vote on something that provides some savings for them. But let me also say this now. This is an important point to make. There's no doubt in my mind, those homeowners want to make sure their garbage is getting picked up. The local services, those taxes pay for. You bet.

When they call 911, somebody's coming. That's important. So part of our internal conversation in the Senate is, where are those thresholds? We've done a huge amount of work to try to understand. And education. Same deal. Education. This isn't as simple as just waking up one day and saying, okay, it's this amount and we're going forward and God bless America.

Let's get it done. Okay. Then maybe you make a mistake doing that. So we're trying to measure a lot, time. Some of the proposals that are getting air and getting some oxygen over in the Florida House are making exceptions, right? So it wouldn't cut the taxes for local public school districts or local governments would not be able to cut law enforcement spending if property tax revenue, for instance, changes. What are your priorities for property tax reform as it works its way through the process in the Senate? Let me be very clear, and I don't mean to sound trite or anything like that.

I'm not the king of the Senate. The Senate operates as a member-driven process. But you do have one vote in the Senate of the 40 senators. Sure. Okay, my vote is I want to give meaningful tax relief through property taxes to homeowners in Florida that allows all those other things to be protected. Sure. Yes, sir.

And I don't mean to sound like a smart butt when I say it. Like, that's what I'm looking for. But let's go back for a second note, Tom. I want to hear, but my role is not to dictate what happens. So let me ask it to Senator Allbritten, not President Allbritten, though, to win your vote, what are you looking for in a proposed constitutional amendment to become a referendum to put in front of Florida voters next fall? Okay, I got you.

The first thing is it starts with what I think would be a single ballot amendment that is well constructed, of course, that's easy to understand. So that for me is the first threshold that we really need to be thoughtful about it. And I think it needs to be concise, it needs to be specific, it needs to be clear. Secondly, once we get through that, we've got to figure out the magical spot in my estimation. Senator, forget, homeowner being all Britain. All right? Okay. The magical spot for this is that I get reduction that's meaningful to my bottom line as a homeowner, and I don't have to worry about whether or not the services of my local government are cut.

I have an expectation that I'm just going to have potholes on my road. In October, we spoke with the House Speaker, Danny Perez, about property taxes, and he told us this. I would have to assume some of these very, very small counties rely on their property taxes. and look, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Should some of these counties not exist? Do we have too many counties? Should some of them maybe be combined?

I don't know. I have no idea. I'm not saying yes or no, but those are the questions that I'm asking, and it's something that we need to figure out. Are you open to asking such questions about small counties and whether or not they should continue to exist? Regardless of what some of your listeners or others around the state may view that,

I don't view that as a shot at me from the speaker. I just want to be clear. Understood. And I appreciate you saying that. Yeah. And that's not, I didn't ask the question to start a fight. I'm really curious about philosophy. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. No, and I didn't receive it that way. Look, and I say this in response to that, am I open to looking at it? Sure. But I would also say there are also lots of counties. And this is so interesting because it's applicable on both ends of the spectrum. There are lots of counties that have a huge number of municipalities and duplicating

services of government. I mean, I'd be open to that conversation. We're having a conversation about some of the big counties, getting rid of some municipalities and doing some consolidation of government there, because it ultimately is the same philosophy. Jacksonville did that. They've created a very efficient process up there and good on them. And there's a lot of people involved on either end of that spectrum, whether it be a rural community or a large county, there's a lot of people that are impacted by those decisions.

I open to talking about it, sure. But as long as everybody's in the room and has a voice that's impacted by, representation, then sure, I'm good with that. Rural Renaissance has been your stated priority since becoming president of the Senate. You worked on that legislation. Last year, you've got a package this year that aims to expand education, health care services, modernize commerce, among other targets, also just road repair and transportation. Estimated cost, I think, is about $200 million. Is that about right? It's a little more than that, but that's all work. Okay. What's the return on investment for Floridians, if you're

able to get this legislation passed and the governor to sign it? Well, that's an incredibly fair question. What I have seen over the years is that there are 32 rural counties, there are 29 fiscally constrained counties. And just to be clear, and I'm not asking the whole world to care, but the truth is that if you live in one of those counties that's fissly constrained, what it means is you're not having a conversation about whether you're going to choose the chicken or the egg, you don't. don't have either. You don't have either. And their millage is pretty much maxed out just to

provide for basic governmental services in those communities. And what I would say is that investing in that part of the state helps in various ways. I think it helps them be sustainable. Every part of our state matters and every Floridian matters. And my hope is what this does is it provides for opportunity in rural parts of the state that haven't had it in the past because here's the deal, regardless of your party registration, regardless of whether you're a man or a woman, regardless of the color of your skin, everybody needs hope. And the fact is that my goal in the rural Renaissance is to bring a new level of hope.

Mr. President, thank you for your time. I appreciate the conversation. Thank you. Ben Albritten is the president of the Florida State Senate. And I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to The Florida Rondup from your Florida Public Radio Station. Every couple of weeks, we connect with our partner, Politifact, to put claims by public officials to the test of truth.

And you can send us a claim that you want us to fact check by just emailing Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Samantha Putterman is the Florida Reporter with our part. partner, Politifact. Happy New Year, Sam. How are you? Hi, happy new year to you. Doing good. Big news this week, of course, was foreign policy news, the military operation

that captured Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro brought him to the United States to face terrorism and drug trafficking charges. Florida here, Sam, as you know, has plenty at stake. We are home to the largest Venezuelan diaspora community in the United States. And then also the governor, Governor Ron DeSantis, announced this week

that the state may pursue charges against the former Venezuelan dictator. Maduro was in and he is the head of a drug cartel, and he was releasing people from his prisons and sending him to our southern border under the Biden administration. So President Trump made similar claims during the 2024 presidential campaign as he talked about immigration, this claim that Maduro was sending Venezuelan prisoners to the southern border with the United States. Sam, did Maduro do that?

Not that we have found. We rated this claim false and previous claims. also false. We found no evidence, right, that he has purposely freed Venezuelan prisoners, sent them to infiltrate the U.S. and, you know, groups that track Venezuelan prisons say that they really remain overcrowded. The claim really became viral in the U.S. after a 22 Breitbart article that reported citing an unnamed source that a DHS intelligence report had directed border patrol agents to be on the lookout for criminals who it said Venezuela was deliberately releasing from prisons. But that article provided no link to any such report. And the DHS had told other fact checkers at the time that the article's assertions were not verified.

Yeah, a fascinating history of this claim. President Trump made a lot of comments this week about this story. He said the capture of Maduro will lead the United States to taking control of much of Venezuelans oil industry and oil reserves. We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend big. billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. So, Sam, as we're sitting here today, almost a week after this military operation, are there commitments in place by U.S. oil companies like Exxon, Conoco-Philips, and others to invest in

the oil business in Venezuela? Not that we have seen. You know, it's not really, as far as we're aware so far, as simple or straightforward, as Trump makes it sound. For instance, the American Petroleum Institute, which is the industry's leading trade association, told us that they were closely watching developments in Venezuela. But they said that energy companies, you know, they make these types of investment decisions based on stability, rule of law, and long-term operational considerations. And the price of oil is a big piece of that, of course, a decision, yeah. The president also said the takeover by America, Venezuelan's oil industry is a return to its rightful owners.

Venezuela, unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars. What's the Cliff Notes version of history here, Sam? Yeah, so it definitely needs some context. In the early 20th century, Venezuela's long-serving dictator Juan Gomez allowed foreign companies practically exclusive access to the country's oil resources. But in 1975, after decades of seeking greater control of its. resources. Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, resulting in several U.S. companies, you know,

losing billions and assets. They were compensated at the time a billion dollars each and didn't push for more at the time. But in more recent years, they have claimed that they wanted to recruit more money. And there's been filing of lawsuits to just that end and some lawsuits that continue to be ongoing. Sam, Putterman, our follower to reporter with Politifax. Sam, thanks for doing the truth checking with us. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. We'll talk in a couple of weeks. We've got more to come here on the Florida. and you're listening to our program from your Florida Public Radio Station. Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation,

working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Great to have you along. This week, Governor Ron DeSantis boasted that immigration enforcement in Florida has led to more than 10,000 arrests since April. He claimed close to twice that number of total arrests were made all of last year by all federal state and local efforts here in Florida to enforce immigration laws.

So there's no other state that has been able to do anything approaching what the state of Florida has been able to do. The governor was at the so-called deportation depotation depot in northeast Florida making that statement. That's one of two immigration detention centers that opened last year here in the Sunshine State. the other was alligator alcatraz. Now it got its name from its location on a small airport in the middle of the Everglades. A federal judge ruled in August the center should be closed

because of environmental concerns. An appeals court has allowed alligator alcatraz to remain open as the legal challenge continues, but it is not the first time this land among the water has been at the heart of an environmental controversy. Megan Bowman, with our York Florida state government reporting team,

explores the story of how the detention center awoke a decades-long environmental fight in a new report entitled Defending the Everglades again. In the Everglades, the water crawls through thigh-high sawgrass and the skies open up. It's also where a detention center houses thousands of immigrants from all over the country. Along the Tam Miami Trail and Big Cyprus National Preserve, about 55 miles west of downtown Miami, water and sewage tanks are trucked in and out. Buses filled with detainees come and go.

Elise Bennett is with the Center for Biological Diversity. She's one of the lead attorneys in the lawsuit to shut down the facility. So we have significant concerns about ongoing construction-related damage. But there's also ongoing harm that continues just via the operation of the site. But the controversy started back in the 1960s. In 68, the Beatles song, Hey Jude, was not. number one. Richard Nixon was president. Clean air, clean water, open spaces. These should once again be the birthright of every American. You could still smoke on airplanes. And officials began

building a giant airport in Big Cypress Swamp, the Everglades Jetport. The National Park Service says it would have been the largest in the world, five times the size of JFK in New York. Everybody was so excited about this airport. not everybody. Clyde Butcher's been photographing Big Cyprus and the Everglades for 40 years. People in Miami, all politicians, wow, this is going to be great. We're going to have an airport out in middle nowhere, so it won't hurt anything. Butcher says building on the land was wrong, then and now. He says the Everglades saved his life after his son died in an accident, and he spent years working to keep it pristine. It's frustrating in so many levels. Butcher and the late environmental advocate,

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shared a passion for protecting the ecosystem, also known as the Guardian of the Glades, Douglas founded Friends of the Everglades in 1969 to oppose the airport project. The representative here of the National Audubon Society came to me to tell me that he needed help to fight a proposed jet port out on the Tamiami Trail with its industrial development that would have polluted all the Everglades Warmer. The same group she founded is now one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the detention center. The battle to stop the jet port wasn't all bad. It did have a few silver linings, like Big Cyprus receiving its National Preserve status

and new environmental regulations in laws, including one lawyer Elise Bennett, is using now to fight Alligator Alcatraz. The law we filed the case under is the National Environmental Policy Act, which is this common sense look before you leap kind of law that's intended to make sure federal agencies don't take actions that have horrible consequences that they can never take back. That law is thanks in part to a 1969 report by the late Dr. Luna Leopold. Leopold and his team researched potential effects of building the airport in the Everglades and found development there would destroy the South Florida ecosystem.

The report was the first of its kind in Florida. It prompted President Richard Nixon to say. sign the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, into law in 1970, and spurred the Everglades pact, an agreement between the U.S., Florida, and Dade County to stop the project. All that remains today is a single runway. It's been used for decades to train thousands of pilots each year. Eve Samples now leads the Friends of the Everglades, the same organization founded by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. Marjorie would be outraged. She would be giving hell to the powers that be. I have no doubt. It's such a striking tale of our origin story at Friends of the

Everglades, like in the late 60s, early 70s, it was an environmental awakening. And now all of those protections are being tested. And it's happening again in the Everglades. As part of the Pact, the federal government monitored pollution at the jet port after construction stopped. Airlines were able to keep training there as long as it posed no threat to the environment. The agreement expired in the 1980s. Now the lawyers alleged the detention center could harm the entire ecosystem. Governor Ron DeSantis moved quickly to open it last summer. The facility was up and running in eight days. DeSantis says since the runway was already there and the site was remote, it was a prime spot for the immigration facility. Meanwhile, he's invested about $8 billion to restore the Everglades

since 2019. We're going to continue our support for Everglades restoration and all we've done to be able to promote conservation and water quality in the free state of Florida. The governor marked his 80th Everglades restoration event last fall. I mean, he wants to be known for helping to save the Everglades and here he's destroying it. As lawyers head back to court this year, advocates like Clyde Butcher and Eve samples say they won't stop fighting to shut the detention center down. There's no other Everglades in the world. This is it, folks. Megan Bowman in Tampa. And I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Rondup from your Florida Public Radio Station. Reporter Megan Bowman Jones is now from our partner station, WUSF in Tampa.

Megan, what is the status of the environmental lawsuit against alligator Alcatraz that helped reignite the environmental activity and activism? Yeah, so oral arguments are scheduled to start the week beginning April 6th. The Center for Biological D. Diversity Attorney Elise Bennett told me yesterday that groups challenging the detention center filed their responses in court this week, but the groups also filed a motion to add new information. So they're saying the state and federal governments withheld from the court, like emails showing the state was awarded more than $600 million in federal funds. And that's important because had that been known by the courts, the project would have been considered

a federal one. And so in that case, an environmental impact study would have been required before construction began, but there was no study done. And just to note, the reason they're having to even pick this case back up again is because a judge paused proceedings in October due to the government shutdown. So the bigger picture here, you talked a little bit in your reporting about the legacy of the efforts to build that massive jet port, which was not built except for a runway and some other concrete aprons in this Everglades, which became Alligator Alcatraz. What are some of the legacies that folks still have with us today?

So there really is so much that came out of this battle at the Jetport. We've actually been calling them the silver linings. In the late 60s, a senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, testified before Congress that, you know, he was opposed to the Jetport Project. Months later, he organized the very first Earth Day, and that's continued for 55 years every April. Yeah. You know, and past that, thanks to Dr. Luna Leopold's research. Former President Richard Nixon signed that landmark law, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, in 1970.

That law created state and federal agencies like the Council on Environmental Quality, which still exists today. It also led to the Everglades Pact, an agreement between governments, federal, state, and local, that actually ended the construction of the jet port. So that battle also spurred the formation of some regional planning councils across the state. One of the earliest was the South Florida Jetport Council, which formed in 1969. It's now called the South Florida Regional Planning Council. So these kinds of groups, they've become key vehicles for managing growth, economic development, and, you know, access to state and federal programs. You know, Marjorie Stoman Douglas, Art Marshall, Joe Browder,

some of these biggest environmental names of the time were involved in fighting this project, including guys like Nathaniel Nat Reed. Yeah, tell us a little bit more about him. Yeah, he was a huge factor in a lot of these silver linings that I talk about. You know, he was involved at both the state and federal levels. So Florida's governor in 1960s. Clawed Kirk hired Reid for just $1 a year after taking office.

So I thought that was a very interesting point. That's when there was when a dollar really was a dollar in 1960s. You could really stretch a dollar, you know what I mean? But it's also important to note that Kirk was the first Republican to actually hold the office since Reconstruction. That's the period after the American Civil War. So initially Kirk supported the Jet Port, but Reed used all this data and research to sway his opinion. Eventually, the two head up to D.C., and they do the same to Nixon. They convince him to sign NEPA. So, you know, long story short, Reed was an advisor to six Florida governors

and also worked under Nixon and Gerald Ford. Yeah, fascinating threads of history as well as the contemporary part today. There's so many little intertwines, Tom. So many. Well, Megan's reporting, you can find it defending the Everglades again. You can see it all online. WUSF.com. O-R-G-Everglades. Megan, thanks so much for sharing your reporting. Thanks. It is our program today, produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Denise Royal. WLRN's vice president of radio is Peter Merritt.

The program's technical director is M.J. Smith, engineering help each and every week with Doug Peterson, Harvey Bressard, and Ernesto J. Our theme music is provided by Miami Jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at Aaron Leibos.com. Send us an email. Let us know what's happening in your slice of Florida. the address is radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening, and above all, supporting public radio here in Florida. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.

Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org.