The Florida Roundup - AI campaign ads and data centers, property taxes and healthcare, FL as the ‘14th colony'

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke about the use of artificial intelligence in political campaigns with WUSF’s Megan Bowman, Your Florida team government reporter (00:00). Then, we looked at the controversy over large scale data centers (09:24). Plus, we were joined by Justin Senior, CEO of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, about how cutting property taxes might impact the state’s healthcare systems (21:56). And later, PolitiFact’s chief correspondent Louis Jacobson stopped by to tell us why Florida is referred to as the ‘14th colony’ (33:42). And we share more news from across the state including a federal court ruling on Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” (38:16), and an update on extreme heat conditions (43:46).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. It is great to have you on board this week. The candidates are real. The election is real, but the campaign ads and social media posts may not be real. This is the artificial intelligence election. Artificial intelligence is both a campaign issue and driving campaigns themselves in Florida. Candidates and supporters have used AI-generated images and videos to make their pitch to voters and to attack one another. At the same time, data centers that help power AI have become increasingly controversial. We'll be talking about how the technology is reshaping this election cycle in just a moment. Later on the program, we'll be talking about one of the defining issues for voters this fall, the fate of property taxes, and how cutting property taxes may affect some of the largest hospitals in the state.

From Memorial Health in Broward County to Sarasota Memorial, Halifax Health, and Daytona Beach, and Jackson Health in Miami, these health systems collect property taxes to help pay for health care. Now, have you received care at one of these hospitals? Maybe you work at one. How could a cut to your property taxes impact health care in your community?

Email us now, radio at theflordoroundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. The balance between a tax cut for homeowners and maybe the cost of public health care in your community. Radio at the Floridaondup.org. First, separating fact from fiction is tough enough during a usual election cycle, but this election year AI has entered the race.

Reporter Megan Bowman with our partner station WUSF in Tampa explains. Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins recently re-shared a video on X that slammed gubernatorial candidate Byron Donald's for supporting data centers. The thing is, the video he shared was AI generator, It shows Collins dressed as the Marvel superhero Captain America, knocking out data centers, abortion clinics, and Donalds. But that's what most of social media is today. A recent study from the Media and Journalism Research Center

analyzed 40,000 posts from LinkedIn and Facebook and found 90% of them were either mostly or entirely AI generated. When you open a social media app on your phone, you're immediately using AI. The algorithms working in the background use ARR. artificial intelligence to pick out what it thinks you'll want to watch. Alex Mahadavan, the director of MediaWise at the Pointer Institute, says it was easier to spot this type of content a few years ago. Now it is becoming essentially impossible to tell the difference between an AI-generated deep fake of a politician

or an actual video of that politician speaking. And it's raising alarm bells for him. I am very concerned about the information ecosystem right now. about the state of social media. All they're seeing is AI or rage bait. Mahatabon teaches AI literacy. He says as it gets harder to figure out what's real, viewers must double-check everything they see and hear.

Joshua Skacco agrees. He leads the Center for Sustainable Democracy at the University of South Florida. He says the classic negative attack ad is nothing new, like when candidates take opponents' words out of context or highlight their slip-ups. They can create essentially a false. moments and market it as if it had happened.

Florida law requires AI generated content that is knowingly false, intended to harm candidates or deceive voters to include a disclaimer saying it was created by AI. The video Colin shared does not have one. But Skacko says while the law gives the illusion of transparency, it doesn't help people understand the technology's capabilities or identify which parts of the ad used AI. He says campaign ads were the original spreaders of disinformation before social media. Part of that is free speech capability, which is that free speech covers falsehoods. What AI does is it puts it on steroids and it makes it a lot easier to do many of these things.

A new study from the Pew Research Center found half of adult Americans say the uptick in artificial intelligence is concerning. Marvin Pazos-Ravilla, a USF cybersecurity expert, says there needs to be. tighter restrictions in the law. At this point, it's advancing so rapidly that it's hard to not have loopholes. And that's including campaigning. Revia says it's important for people to know what's real and what's not. But it can be hard when short clips get posted and shared so quickly on social media. Remember the saying, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck? Well, that's not the case with AI. Alex Mahadevan says if something seems too good to be true, perfectly aligns with your beliefs or you agree 100% with it, chances are it's not real.

But he says there are some ways to help you swim through the slop. Open that image and zoom all the way in. You can look for inconsistencies in like the horizon. Maybe a road disappears where it's not supposed to. Or you can zoom really, really close into someone's buttons. And maybe that button has like three holes. And then the other ones have four holes. You can also do a reverse image search on Google or a,

other applications to see where the picture originated or just use common sense when watching ads like the one Collins posted. Reporter Megan Bowman is with us now. So Megan, how prevalent is this AI generated content, this election cycle here in Florida? Well, I think Alex Mahatavan from the Pointer Institute says it best. He's extremely nervous about the information ecosystem online right now. There's a lot of AI generated content on social media, and because it's advancing so rapidly, it's hard to even pinpoint what its capabilities will be in the upcoming election. And the thing is, it won't just come from the candidates themselves, also from groups or possibly even other countries trying to influence our votes with misinformation. So this is why it will be so important to double check everything we see and hear this cycle. It floods the zone, right? because it's not just from the campaigns or their interest groups or their advocates.

It could be from the person across the street, down the block from some foreign government. We just don't know it's going to flood the zone of our social media particularly. But Florida law, there was a statute that was passed and signed into law that prohibits the use of deep fakes, which are images and videos generated by AI and political communications. But some campaign TV ads feature these deep fakes. So what's to give here? Right. So this law is a little tricky. So it requires any AI generated content that is knowingly false or intended to harm candidates or deceive voters to include a disclaimer saying it was created by AI. So on every video that includes it, it has to say, quote, created in whole or in part with the use of generative artificial intelligence.

And that's all well and good. But Joshua Skacco, who leads Center for Sustainable Democracy at USF, you know, says it gives this illusion. of transparency because here's the reality. You watch a video at the end the required AI statement appears and remember it said in whole or in part so which parts were real which parts were AI right no one will know except the person who produced it and let's say a deep fake goes viral a whole group will see that and may have no clue it's actually fake now if someone makes a correction video or tries to clarify it there's no way to make sure all the people who saw the original deep fake will all also see the correction. And how the algorithms work, there's a pretty good chance they won't see it.

Also, what's the enforcement mechanism for any of this if this, if, if, if, AI generated videos used by a campaign, an advocate or somebody and doesn't include that boilerplate language? Well, now states have tried to regulate AI, but it's a little difficult because free speech, you know, the First Amendment covers falsehoods. And as Rivia said, because AI is advancing so rapidly, it's hard not to have these huge loopholes in it. So apart from advertisements for politicians or policies, how else is AI being used for political campaigns? Well, Ravilla says AI is shattering our previous conceptions of things

and not just campaigning. I mean, it's changing the entire approach. AI can now automate things like email, documents, and everyday productivity tools. So now it can separate data and messaging much quicker than people can manually do it. You know, before you had to bring people in, spend millions on the campaign and its ads, and now AI is cutting that cost. But all this to

say, right, AI is not inherently evil. I mean, it is doing some good, especially in things like DNA research. But, yeah, Rivia says it's got to be more regulated for it to advance society in a responsible way. Reporter Megan Bowman covering artificial intelligence and this election campaign cycle. Megan, thanks so much. Hey, thanks, Tom. While candidates and their supporters might be using AI, community efforts to push back against AI data centers in Florida have been increasing. According to Reporting by Politico, at least 20 local governments across the state have talked about or approved moratoriums on building data centers. Florida usually is seen as a very friendly climate for businesses and development.

Just this week, Palm Beach County Commissioners directed their staff to prepare an ordinance that would temporarily stop data center developments. But there's one project that won't be impacted by any pause in Palm Beach County to large-scale data centers. It's called Project Tango. It's a big data center plan that Palm Beach County commissioners are due to decide next week. Wilkin Brutus is a reporter in Palm Beach County with our partner station, WLRN. Wilkin, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. First, describe what is Project Tango?

Project Tango is a massive AI data center project that is being proposed to be built in the Central Park Commerce Center in the western part of Palm Beach County. What's actually on the table here is a massive expansion request from the developer PBA Holdings. They are asking the county for the green light to almost double their development footprint. They want to bump it up from about 2 million square feet to a whopping 3.6 million square feet. Now, to be fair, they technically already have an old approval from back in 2016 to build a standard data center on that property. No one is trying to take that away, but this upcoming vote is in about. about their older project. This is about a massive sprawling hyper-scale AI campus. They're calling Project Tango, along with the bunch of industrial warehouse space. That's a completely different

beast, and it's exactly why the community is so fired up about it. So we've got developers kind of responding to the market in 2016, artificial intelligence and the demand and possibility and fear nowhere near what it is today in 2026, a decade later. So it's next week, I think it is, July 15th that Palm Beach County Commissioners have this on the agenda, this development. What is exactly up for a vote? The County Commission will decide whether they want to move forward with changing the zoning plan to increase the square footage of the actual data center project. In fact, they've actually suspended the potential vote twice already. And so the zoning commission voted against it. The county commissioners will decide whether they want to move forward.

despite the public protest. Yeah, so to set up this dynamic here, the zoning commission, which is where these decisions usually sit first, right? These are the experts about land use and neighborhood appeal and those kinds of things. They said no. They said, no, this is not the right development in this area, this hyperscale artificial intelligence data center power plant. But yet, the county commission still can vote, yeah.

So why did the zoning commission reject it? The zoning commission voted unanimously, actually, six to zero. against recommending the project, completely flipping the script on the county's own planning staff, who had initially said to approve it. And it really boiled down, Tom, to a massive identity crisis over what an AI data center actually is. We see on paper our old local codes classified data centers as light industrial, basically just treating them like a quiet office building is full of computers, which it would have been back in 2016.

But the board and the public looked at that actual reality. A hyperscale AI campus requires 24-7 power grids, millions of gallons of water, and endless rows of massive industrial cooling fans. That's not light industrial. That's actually, it actually acts as a heavy industrial manufacturing plant. So ultimately, the board ruled that this project completely fails the county's compatibility standards. They made it clear that putting a heavy impact industrial facility right next to families in the Arden community, which housed about 2,000 homes, and literally down the street from Saddleview Elementary School

is just inappropriate for some folks. So this is interesting, right? You don't have to be a lawyer to appreciate the difference between a light industrial zoned area and a heavy industrial zoned area. And the zoning commission thinks that this hyperscale artificial intelligence data center

is heavy industrial. You think of kind of coal plants or big manufacturing plants or, you know, something like that, not necessarily a computer server farm serving up image generation and phony videos. Absolutely. And typically, a lot of folks who are attending these hearings are afraid of not only the increase of their electricity bills, but they're increasingly afraid of the humming frequency sounds that comes from these major projects.

And so, yeah, it's not people who are just complaining about the fact that it's being built. In fact, most people who attended the hearings were saying they are pro-innovation. They are just pro-regulation of that innovation. So there's several of these proposed or approved data centers already in several counties. Some canceled, some delayed. There was one in Polk County where residents in Fort Meade in that county filed a lawsuit against their own city after it was approved. What are the Palm Beach County opponents planning if the county commission approves some version of this AI data center to move forward? I think while they haven't filed a lawsuit yet, since the final vote hasn't even happened,

they are organizing fast, packing hearing rooms, and putting major pressure on county commissioners ahead of the July 15th vote. And if commissioners ignore the zoning board's rejection and improve this anyway, the community is already laying the groundwork for a legal battle. During the last meeting, retired attorneys made sure to read specific hard evidence of the project's noncompliance directly into. the official record. And so, Tom, that's a crucial legal step. The governor, Ron DeSantis, has been critical of building out artificial intelligence data centers in Florida. How have the

politics played a role with these local policies or these local efforts that you're, you've seen here in Palm Beach County? Yeah, I've reported on DeSantis's position many times. In fact, it runs in contrast with President Donald Trump's position, who was against some of this regulation. Florida's zoning laws are totally outdated when it comes to AI. Let's call it what it is. Even state leaders, including Governor DeSantis, have sounded the alarm about how these energy hogging facilities could strain our electric grid and drive up utility bills for everyday citizens across districts, regardless of you're a Republican or Democrat. And that political pressure is giving local boards and a backbone to push back. We've already seen a massive $13 billion data center project get completely derailed in St. Lucie County due to public outcry and looming state regulations.

And so local politicians are finally waking up to the fact that rubber stamping these massive tech footprints carries heavy political cost. And especially when our infrastructure is already feeling to squeeze. Well, Ken, as you've talked to these opponents and have sat through these public meetings, I'm wondering how much of these cases are cases of NIMBY, right? It's not in my backyard idea that we hear around real estate development in Florida. folks not wanting these AI data centers in their own backyard or in their neighborhoods, but they're still using the services that these data centers spit out, right? They're still using artificial intelligence to look up, you know, what's the best burrito place in Lake Worth or something like that?

Is it this effort of just how these data centers are necessary because I use the services? I just don't want them in my community. And that's the exact sentiment. People were attending these hearings and say, hey, look, I use Claude. I use whatever chat bot that is out there on a mass market. They use technology. It's part of their daily life. I mean, it's easy to call this a classic case of nimbism,

but residents argue this is really about smart zoning, not just not in my backyard. They aren't saying these data centers shouldn't exist at all. They're saying you shouldn't build a massive industrial AI campus, 1,200 feet from an elementary school or right against a quiet neighborhood. until the county updates its laws to reflect the heavy industrial reality of these modern tech giants, dropping them next to homes and schools will continue to be a hard sell. And that's essentially what residents have been saying for months now.

Wilkin Brutis covering the Project Tango AI Data Center debate in Palm Beach County. He's with our member station, WLRN. Thanks, Wilkin. Thank you, Tom. Charles has been listening in in Jacksonville. Go ahead, Charles. You're on the radio. Hi, and good morning.

I'm wondering if the power grid in Texas and Florida and nationally, will they be able to support the new data centers with, you know, are there enough transformers and power lines, you know, to enhance the grid? Yeah. Yeah, it's a fair concern, Charles, and Florida lawmakers have tried to address that. They passed a law not that long ago that requires companies that to connect to the power grid with big new demand responsible for paying the costs associated with certain. those projects. And there's a kind of a test case that's happening in real time with the Public Service Commission here in Florida that voted to move forward with Duke Energy electric rate plan for large data centers. His next hearings are going to be in late August. And the company says that its rate plan complies with this state law requiring companies that are

bringing new demand to the grid to pay for that demand in advance. So it'll be a real test here for Florida. We've got more to come here on the Florida roundup. My name is Tom Hudson. We'd love to hear from you 305-995-1800. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. It is great to have you along here live on this Friday. You can always check our inbox and send us a quick note. We're monitoring it live here. Radio at the Florida roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org.

Let us know what you're up to across the Sunshine State, the peninsula and the panhandle here on this Friday. And also if you've got a topic suggestion that you want to. want to talk about, a topic and issue that is burning through your neighborhood that you would like to bring to our attention, by all means, please make that suggestion by emailing us radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Let's hear from Mark, who's been listening to our conversation about artificial intelligence. Mark is joining us from Boca Raton. Mark, you're on the radio. Go ahead. Hey, hi. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I'm just wondering, because China really don't care how they build these things, and we know that AI is going to be a national security item.

Are we taking that in consideration? How so in Florida, are you asking, Mark? Well, just in general, you know, like if we're going to stay behind the development because all these regulations, and I understand that we want to make sure that nobody is suffering from that, but you also want to know if we're taking that in consideration. So finding that balance between the artificial intelligence arms race, as it were, regarding national security and the infrastructure needs of fueling AI as it manifests around data power centers. Is that kind of the balance you're asking about? Yeah, and also, yeah, and more like, you know, keeping, making sure that we have an advantage over our, you know, competitors.

Well, let me ask you, Mark. I mean, you're in Boca Raton, not too far away from where this Project Tango data center might be developed in western, west central Palm Beach County. How do you find that balance between national security and the data center energy needs? Yeah, that's not my area, but I'll think that we need to find a balance. And, I mean, Florida is pretty large. You have a lot of places where something like that could be built, not interfering existing neighborhoods. but I guess I compare with airports, you know, we build them, and then people just start moving closer, closer, and then becomes an issue, so I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point there, Mark. I appreciate you listening and joining the conversation from Boko Raton.

You can share your thoughts, radio at the florida Rondup.org. Money for parks, money for libraries often come from property taxes, so does money for police and fire departments. Now, over the next couple of weeks here on the Florida Rondup, we're going to be talking about some of the ways local property tax dollars are spent. after all Florida voters are due to decide whether or not to increase the value of a home or condominium that's exempt from local property taxes as long as the owner lives in the house or condo. If approved by voters in November, homestead exemption would jump from 50 grand to 150 grand in January and then 250 grand a year later. And if approved by 60% of voters this November, homeowners would likely see property taxes fall. Local governments could see their property tax revenue fall as well. So next week, we're going to be talking about property taxes and mosquitoes.

Yeah, mosquitoes and property taxes, because tens of millions of dollars is collected and spent to control mosquitoes. Nobody was here in Florida, basically, to know how bad mosquitoes were before mosquito control, or how bad they would be today without mosquito control. So how could property tax cuts take a bite out of controlling mosquitoes here in the Sunshine State? Bugs or taxes? Let us know, radio at the Florida Roundup. dot org radio at the florida roundup dot org today we're going to tackle health care and property taxes hundreds of millions of dollars of property tax money is spent to help support some hospitals across the state

sarasota memorial memorial health in broward county halifax health in daytona beach jackson health in miami these health systems collect property taxes to help pay for health care they deliver to their communities have you received care at one of these hospitals maybe you work at one how could a property tax cut impact health care in your community. 305-995-1800. We're going to talk about this for about the next 10 minutes or so, so get your calls in now. 305-9-9-5-1800. Justin Sr. is with us. He is the head of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida. Justin, welcome back to the roundup. Nice to have you again. Thanks for having me. How much property tax money do public hospitals in Florida collect? Well, it definitely varies by hospital systems. Some are bigger than others. And

Obviously, some counties are bigger than others. The biggest would be Jackson Memorial in Miami-Dade County, would have a significant amount of exposure to a property tax cut. The other major one would be Broward Health in Fort Lauderdale. But you mentioned all of the five that are members of my organization, the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida. There's one in Daytona, one in Sarasota, two in Broward County, and then the biggest one is Jackson Memorial in Miami-Dade.

Because I do this sometimes for a living, I actually looked at those audited financial statements of some of these hospital districts here, Justin. What I could discern from these spreadsheets was Halifax and Daytona Beach collected about $21 million in property tax revenue in 2024. Now, it's got a big budget, of course, but that's not nothing, right? No, these are definitely significant amounts. It's definitely a case that over the last, of course, the last decade and a half, public hospitals have made a concerted effort to reduce their reliance on taxes and try to make sure that they have operating income and that gives them a positive operating margin. Not every one of the hospitals has been able to do that and certainly not every year. So these tax dollars are essential to making sure that these hospitals do have positive total margins so that they can meet their mission. And I can tell you, these hospitals see patients that other hospitals generally are not willing to see.

They run every line of business regardless of the margin and are located in areas where they end up with a lot of uninsured patients and a lot of low-income Medicaid patients. Because when you're talking about operating income, you're talking about patients paying for care or insurance paying for care, right? Someone's paying for that care. But oftentimes these public hospitals are serving underserved communities that don't have, certainly traditional insurance, maybe don't have any insurance at all. And so that's where the property tax money can come into place. So how would raising the homestead exemption in Florida impact these property tax dollars that are going to these public hospitals? Well, I mean, ultimately the exemption, once it's increased, is going to reduce the revenue at the counties and reduce the revenue

in the special taxing districts that these hospitals are part of. And as a result of that, the hospitals are going to have to make due with less with less tax revenue. And that's going to affect each one of them differently. But all of them are going to be put essentially under a pinch as a result of this passing if it does indeed pass. Does it mean less health care? You know, it might. And I don't want to be catastrophic or in this or chicken little when I talk about this sort of thing. But ultimately, the hospitals that are part of our group run every line of business regardless of the fact that it might have low margins or negative margins. And they tend to have, in addition to seeing a lot of poor patients, Medicaid patients as well as uninsured, they tend to

run very elite units, if you will, but have very low volume. So they will have a burn unit where people are at the ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or a transplant unit for multivisceral transplants, let's say, in Jackson, where the transplant unit, where the transplant unit, where the transplant is there, they're available 365, 24-7, but they may only see a few patients a year. That tends to throw the operating margins negative. And it's important in our state that no one have to leave their area or leave the state of Florida to receive health care. But you do, if you're put under pressure, have to make decisions about what type of care you're going to continue providing and the level of care that you can provide. And again, I'm not trying to we chicken little

about it, but it does have an impact, and it does force, it could potentially force some difficult choices. Justin Sr. is with us. He is the head of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida. This is a group of public hospitals, some of whom collect some property taxes in their communities to help pay for care. Leslie has been listening in North Florida. Leslie, thanks for your time. You're on the radio. Leslie, you're with us on line two. I'm sorry. This is actually Goodman. Are we speaking to me? Are we trying to speak to Leslie? Go ahead, Goodman. Go ahead. You're on the radio. You know, I'm a health care provider, and I have direct affiliation with the local

indigent care facility in my area, and someone who's also worked as a nurse at that energy care facility who had access to the financials. You know, I can attest that our revenue sources are diverse, and our local property taxes, while they do contribute, make up a relatively small contribution to our overall budget. And I can also confirm no one is going to be sent away from a hospital because, you know, you're required by loss, regardless if it's a for-profit or not-for-profit, stabilize a condition before you tell somebody they can't be. So that's their prejudice of income status.

So it sounds like you're in favor, perhaps, of this property tax. You know, as someone who's also a homeowner and lived in Florida and home-steaded in Florida, you know I do, because the property tax exemption has remained stable for a substantially period of time and does not follow the CPI. And so- The Consumer Price Index, the measure of inflation. Yeah, go ahead. Right.

And so, you know, I think for me as an individual, you know, I work, I pay taxes, I own a home, and I, you know, I love my community, I'm here to serve. But it's, you know, from my household, it does help our ability to afford all the cost increases in inflation, and that's another discussion, you know. And so I do support the property tax exemption because, you know, when I retire and I, you know, paid off the mortgage, my tax bill is still going to, you know, as things continue to, you know, as things continue to, increase in price is probably going to go up. And it would be nice if the homestead exemption that I received also kind of matched that rate of inflation similarly. Yeah. Goodman, I appreciate that heads up there from North Florida. I apologize about getting your name wrong. But thanks so much for calling in and joining the conversation. So, Justin, there's a health care provider. Do these hospitals have a variety of revenue that

they could make up for should these tax these property tax dollars be reduced or eliminated yeah i think i think that's going to be part of the reaction again we we don't know whether this is going to pass of course not um and and if it if it does pass then we do have to have an understanding and our hospitals have an understanding of how much potential revenue they might lose in the short term or in the long term there's there even to to goodman's point there are times when you can actually lower the tax rate and increase your collections so so seeing how this works out over time is going to be something of interest. But yes, we have commercial payers,

and then we have government payers like Medicaid and Medicare. Our hospitals tend to be unique. The public hospitals, like I said, tend to run a lot of, a for-profit hospital is going to run lines of business where they have high volume and high margin, whereas the public hospitals are going to run lines of business that maybe there aren't as many,

there's not as high a volume of patients, there's not as high of a margin. They do that as a public service and as a public benefit. that these tax dollars help offset the cost of that. Goodman is 100% correct. We do not turn anyone away and we'll treat anyone regardless of their ability to pay. It just becomes a matter of making very difficult choices about your capacity if you really are pinched.

And we don't know. Ultimately, we're lowering taxes. He's correct. It's been at this certain level for a number of years and is not chained to the consumer price index. So there's a lot of arguments in favor of it and against it. it's ultimately something that our hospitals are watching, understanding that it's going to have an impact on our facilities. And our guys are planners, right? You really have to think of that spirituality. About that planning, Justin, here is in our final moments together, because you've

navigated legislation and the capital and lawmakers' intent and the letter of the law and the spirit of law. This proposed constitutional amendment, as it exists today, mandates that local governments use property taxes for only certain things, which include, quote, emergency medical service. How do public safety hospitals fit into that requirement right now? How do you understand that? I understand the emergency medical service to really be referring to ambulance services and to paramedics. And ultimately, our hospitals tend to be level one and level two trauma centers,

including the public hospitals. So the trauma cases, the big car crashes, they're going to be coming into us. And that is something that the counties are allowed to spend their money on. But you see this emergency medical service as the transportation of the patient as opposed to the care at the ED at the ER? Yes, that is correct. However, we do think, you know, the way that it was structured, they still can spend money on public hospitals, in particular the Public Health Trust in Miami-Dade can.

Sure. Yeah. Our hospitals that are public, other than Jackson, tend to actually not be run by the county. They have their special taxing districts, and their ability to spend money is associated with what the taxing district is set up for. So they're not implicated by that. Yep. It is a web, certainly Justin Sr. with the CEO of the

Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida. Justin, thanks so much for walking through this with us. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, my pleasure. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Ronda from your Florida Public Radio Station. Well, the United States celebrated 250 years last week. Florida

officials highlighted a nickname for the state with a revolutionary ring to it. There was a website that referred to the state of Florida as the 14th colony. This appeared in an America 250 exhibit that was at the state capital this spring. The governor unveiled statues honoring founding fathers in their namesake Florida counties, and he has talked about Florida being the 14th colony as well. All right, so Florida was actually the 27th state of the Union back in 1845.

There were 13 colonies in 1775, 250 years ago when the Declaration of Independence was signed. So let's separate fact from fiction here. Lou Jacobson is back with us. He is chief correspondent with Politifact, one of our news partners here. Lou, welcome back to the program. Hi, thank you. Happy birthday, America. We should, happy belated birthday. Barely looking over a year, over 250 here. All right. So what is this nickname, the 14th colony? Yeah, so it's actually been used for Florida for decades and for various other places, too. The number of British territories in North America and the Caribbean fluctuated, and the British really didn't assign a numerical ranking

to each of their holdings. It was the colonists who began using the phrase the 13 colonies back in the 1770s as tensions were flaring. The symbolic 14th colony nickname came much later. Basically, historians told us that they started seeing the term used in the 1950s and 1960s, and then around the bicentennial in 1976, it kind of spiked.

There's also the fact. of revolutionaries or loyalists, which side Florida was on at the time in 1775? Yeah. So Florida was much larger in the colonial times. It stretched further west, and it was sometimes traded back and forth in terms of ownership. After the British control in 1763, one of the first things they did was to split it in two, basically West Florida, which included parts of present-day Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and the Panhandle in East Florida, which is basically the rest of the state that we know today.

Both of them sided with the British in the Revolutionary War. And of course, the fact that there were two separate colonies does kind of undercut the notion that a single Florida counts as the 14th. Both of the territories were very much reliant on the British financial support and for their physical security against Native American tribes in Spain. Florida actually became a haven for loyalists from the north. And when the Continental Congress in Philadelphia welcomed North American colonies to join the rebellion in 1774 and 1775, both of the Florida has refused. So a couple just final moments here, Lou, but rate the rate, give us a Politifact rating on this, 14th colony for Florida. We actually didn't, didn't rate this. No?

You just didn't want to rain on a Fourth of July parade, Lou. You just didn't want to rain on the parade. Sometimes just like to tell yarns and kind of explain the situation without actually giving a truth rating. All right. Fair enough. We'll leave it there because you'd have to add another stripe to the flag, too, if there was a 14th colony at this point. Lou Jacobson with our editorial partner, Politifact. If you've got political comment, you'd like us to fact check, just send us an email, radio at the floridorondup.org.

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. It's great to have you along. As we mentioned earlier in this program today, temporary protected status, TPS, is set to expire for Haitians. This comes after the Supreme Court's ruling last week, allowing the federal government to end TPS for around 300,000 Haitians living here in the U.S. and about half of them live here in Florida. The program allows foreign nationals from countries experiencing crises such as armed conflict or natural disasters to live here in America. for up to 18 months or longer if extended. Kato Nord Hodges is a prominent Haitian community advocate in Tampa. He spoke about the ruling on WUSF's Florida Matters Live and Local. It is not as an exaggeration to say that many Haitians who would be forced to go back now would just simply perish because of several things going on and those things primarily influenced by American policy. Now, the United States State Department currently maintains a do not travel advisory

for Americans who want to visit Haiti. This week, a federal court struck down a Florida state law that restricted teaching on racism, sexism, and history. From our partner station, WUSF, and Tampa, Carrie Sheridan tells us more about the ruling against what's known as the Stop Woke Act. The law barred faculty from teaching about systemic racism or saying anything that could make students feel guilty for events in the past. Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law in 2022. The ruling called it a, quote, breathtaking assertion of power. and said it clearly violated First Amendment protections for free speech by seeking to ban unpopular ideas.

There's a lot of people out there who think that the First Amendment is the amendment for progressives and liberals and the Second Amendment is for conservatives. And that's just nonsense. The First Amendment affects everybody. The judge was appointed by President Trump. The American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the ruling, saying higher ed cannot be limited by politicians.

whims. I'm Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota. You know, we were talking about how artificial intelligence is reshaping political campaigns earlier this hour. It's also changing the game for employers and job seekers. WUSF's Gabriella Paul brings us a story about how AI is impacting the way recent college grads and young professionals are navigating a tight job market. Brenda A. Bruce is fresh into her job search with no luck. She graduated in the spring from the University of Central Florida with a degree in media production. and a feeling like everything is working against her in today's market. It's already difficult looking for a job as is.

Now there's like another layer of complexity of, will I actually get this job? An analysis of Florida's labor data shows she's right to feel that way. At 4.8%, the state's unemployment rate is worse than the national average. Seven of our 10 major industries posted job losses compared to last year. And while other signs point to a weaker economy for everybody, Labor analyst Ron Hedrick says, things are feeling especially bad for college grads.

And it's not because there aren't enough jobs. It's because there aren't enough of the same jobs. We do have so many people who are going to college now. And they all tend to specialize in the same majors. So we have tended to flood the market with a very similar type of person. Typically, he says that's your business, finance, and computer science majors. But in Florida, industries like government and media are experiencing downturns, too. And when growth slows, hiring slows.

Making things worse, Hedrick says. Money that could be spent on new hires, companies are spending elsewhere. The money I would have hired you with, I'm buying, you know, more tokens so that I can see if AI can do something for my company. While that's not AI replacing jobs, it is temporarily taking away opportunities from some Gen Z job seekers. And that's what made Brenda Abruse so angry on the day of her graduation. In a moment that went viral on social media, a corporate executive giving a UCA. commencement speech was booed on stage for praising AI. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.

Abruse says it felt especially tone deaf to a room full of arts and humanity students. But not all college kids feel the same way about AI, says Priya Dozier. She teaches business finance at the University of South Florida. I think students are uncertain about what the future looks like. with AI. And, you know, they're keenly focused on if they choose something today, what will that look like in the future? She says she's noticing pressure from incoming students wanting to pick AI proof majors. Meanwhile, some of her graduate students are returning to school to stay competitive in an AI market. Still, Dozier says the technology has a long way to go. It's very wrong sometimes.

I was arguing with, I think, co-pilot or Claude about basic math. It could not add to 200. is completely wrong, but it's adamant that it's correct. 26-year-old Isalina Laguno would argue AI misses the mark on more than just math. When applying to jobs in Tampa, she says it rarely felt like her resume reached a human reviewer. After four months in submitting nearly 100 applications, she was convinced employers were turning to AI to screen candidates. And that's when I was like, oh, okay, let me see if I can kind of beat the system a little bit and use AI against AI to try to, you know, surpass their initial screenings or whatever. Laguna was laid off from her job in immigrant child welfare after federal budget cuts and was looking to switch fields.

Even though she had transferable skills, she says convincing an algorithm of that wasn't so easy. And I would imagine in people who are early in their career straight out of college, it's got to be 10 times harder. For Brenda A. Bruce, who graduated at the viral UCF ceremony, the solution is to steer clear of companies using AI altogether. I keep seeing more and more logos that I can tell that are generated by AI, which begs the question. question, are you looking for somebody who can just get things out quickly so you can make more money or are you actually here to create quality content? She says she would rather volunteer than work for a company that doesn't share her values on AI. I'm Gabriella Paul in Tampa. And I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Rondeup from your Florida Public Radio

station. It's been a hot week here in the Sunshine State. Heat advisories have been issued throughout the state. My phone has gotten a heat advisory even just after midnight for the day ahead. Some counties are experiencing feels-like temperatures as high as 110 degrees. For more, let's turn to meteorologist Megan Borowski from the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. Thanks for having me, Tom. All right, so I'm looking through my text message history here from the National Weather Service. Monday, heat advisory, Tuesday, heat advisory, Wednesday, heat advisory, Thursday heat advisory. Thursday heat advisory. 135 a.m. this morning, I get the text advisory for a heat advisory today on this Friday. Yep.

Yeah. The big reason why we have the heat advisory in place, at least for this week, is because we've had a dome of high pressure in the mid levels of the atmosphere build in from the Atlantic, actually. And so what that does is when we have high pressure that extends through the column of the atmosphere, that causes temperatures to rise. So the actual temperature to be warmer than normal. Now, there's a couple other factors that that have been playing here as well. is we've had a plume of Saharan dust move into the region. Again, that'll decrease our storm chances. And so that not having rain in the afternoon is going to help keep those temperatures up.

I have switched my weather app to Celsius just to make myself feel better. So it's not necessarily triple digits, but rather 31 degrees Celsius here as we're talking now in South Florida. Wish it into being a little bit cooler mentally at least, yes. So what's the forecast? How long is this dome going to last? I mean, yes, it is summer in Florida after all. we're expected to the heat, but boy, these temperatures are awfully dangerous. Certainly today, for the entire state of Florida,

will have those dangerous heat index values into the weekend as well. We will see, though, an increased chance for thunderstorm chances across the board as we get into the weekend. So I still do expect temperatures to be on the hot side in the mid-to-opper 90s over the weekend, but we'll see likely more widespread thunderstorm development over the weekend. So that means we get at least a little bit of relief during the afternoon hours. Megan Browski is a meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. Thanks, Megan.

Absolutely. Well, the extreme heat is causing concern over South Florida's fragile coral. From our partner station, WLRN in Miami, environmental editor Jenny Stolettovich tells us how scientists are preparing. The dive crew at Reef Renewal and the Florida Keys packed up their boat for a special emergency operation, moving endangered elkorn coral to cooler, deeper water. In 2023, we were not ready for all of this, and it's hard to track everything because we were literally trying to tag it as we were moving it. Ken Nina Meyer is technical director for reefernoll. He's talking about that 2023 ocean heat wave. It wiped out huge amounts of staghorn and elkorn coral in the Keys, leading wildlife managers to declare the coral functionally extinct.

As summer heat intensifies, a University of Miami-Rosin-Stele Coral Working Group met this week to map out of plan. I met Niedemeyer at his house in Tavernier where the reef renewal team was packing up to head out to their offshore nursery, which holds the largest collection of rescued wild elkorn. It's an insurance policy because it's still early July. We are going to have hot water, and next week we're going to move some big ones because I think we've crossed the line already. While scientists plan to move some coral to protect them, others specially bred to handle hotter waters will be left in place to test their durability. I'm Jenny Stolettovich in the Florida Keys.

While we are out in Florida's environment, finally this week on the roundup, another season kicks off today. It is the python hunt. The annual Florida Python Challenge begins today. Contestants have the chance to win $25,000 in prizes by removing invasive Burmese pythons from the Everglades. These snakes have no predators.

They pose quite a threat to native wildlife as they prey on birds, mammals, reptiles, pretty much anything and everything. And while the grand prize may be enticing, it's not the main driver for the annual event. Here's Darren Bergmeier, who competed in last year's hunt. It's not really the hopes of getting the prize. I think it's great to get out there.

So any way you can get out and maybe help some of the native animals out here. Now, this hunt is organized by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. You can't just head out to the Everglades, though. Hunters have to undergo some training to ensure they know the difference between python and a native Florida snake, and also that hunters know how to humanely kill a python. That training is not out in the heat, humidity, and water of the Everglades. It's online. Hunters have until July 19th to go out into the wild of Florida and try to snag a python snake. That is our program for today. The Florida Rondup is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami with assistance from WUSF in Tampa.

The show is produced by Bridget O'Brien. Denise Royal is WLRN's senior producer of content streaming and news products. WLRN's director of live original programming is Katie Munoz. The vice president of radio is Peter Merritt. The program's technical director is M.J. Smith. Engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson, Harvey Bissard, and Ernesto J. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist, Aaron Leibos, at Aaron Leibos.com. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening, and above all, supporting public radio in Florida.

I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.