The Florida Roundup - ICE arrests, Fishback’s campaign rhetoric, Florida’s August primary and weekly news

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

This week on The Florida Roundup, we were joined by Jake Shore, investigative reporter for WLRN, to talk about the presence of ICE agents in Lake Worth and later, GOP gubernatorial candidate James Fishback’s controversial campaign (08:36). Then, we spoke with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections about important deadlines for the August primary and elections security (23:32). Plus, a look at how dramatically cutting Florida’s homestead property tax could impact mosquito control and other news from the week (37:22).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. It is great to have you on board this week. Two people died during this past week with encounters with immigration enforcement agents. A man from Mexico was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Maine on Monday. The Department of Homeland Security says the agent fired his weapon when the man they were going after tried to get away in a vehicle. The man from Columbia was killed. Early Tuesday morning here in Florida, four people ran out of their vehicle at a Wawa gas station in St. August fleeing immigration agents, according to the federal government. One of them ran onto a road and was hit and killed by a passing tractor trailer.

The truck driver stopped and tried to help. The DHS released a statement on Tuesday in the Florida incident, saying immigration agents conducted an operation near St. John's County, and a man from Mexico died. Florida is home to one of the highest number of immigration arrests since President Donald Trump began his crackdown. This week, here on our program, we'll talk about the intersection of federal immigration policy and local.

law enforcement. More police departments in Florida have agreements to help federal immigration agents than in any other state. You can join our conversation by calling 305-995-800-305-305-9-9-8-100. We're going to take your phone calls for a couple of minutes in a couple of minutes. Now, there have been three statewide major immigration enforcement operations in the past several months, making almost 25,000 arrests across the Sunshine State. There have been other smaller actions from small towns to the suburbs. So we start with Nancy Gwan from member station WUSF, who reports on residents in Arcadia, seen ICE agents this week. Maggie Velazquez says agents parked in front of her restaurant La Placita at around 630 a.m. She heard them identify themselves

as immigration and begin asking for papers. Then she yelled at her customers to flee. No comment to hear because the immigration is here. Velazquez says the agents eventually left after she locked her doors, but not before they arrested at least one individual who ran from the parking lot. A woman who asked to use her initials JF because she fears backlash from her employer saw them half an hour later, detaining an elderly man outside the CBS down the street. It's more than heartbreaking, honestly. Arcadia Police and the DeSoto Sheriff's Department denied any involvement. WUSF reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to confirm ICE activity, but have not received a response. yet. I'm Nancy Gwan in Tampa. I'm Jake Shore in Lake Worth. Around 30 federal agents,

state troopers, and sheriff's deputies are standing outside of a Guatemalan bakery on Lucerne Avenue. They're trying to arrest a Lake Worth man named Jacob, who allegedly fled ice after a traffic stop and then locked himself inside the bakery. Nearby are dozens of community members protesting and recording the officers. Jacob's children are outside too. One is weeping. Activists and community leaders say ICE and Florida Highway Patrol have been concentrating heavily on the majority Hispanic city in the past week. At the scene, one trooper addresses the crowd.

Clearly, he fled from law enforcement. He has an extensive. criminal history. He's been deported multiple times. I talked to a relative of Jacob, who's 18 and asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. Well, I don't understand is the federal officers pulling some hard workers over, just taking them away from their families. It takes more than two hours, but Jacob still wearing the pink staff polo he put on for the day, emerges abruptly. He's quickly detained. The anchored crowd begins to clear as Jacob is driven away. Reporter Jake Shore is with us now here on the Florida Roundup. So Jake, let's talk about this intersection between local police and federal immigration enforcement authorities.

What role did the Florida Highway Patrol play in this Lake Worth arrest? Yeah, they said on the scene of that really chaotic, you know, intersection, literal intersection, that they were just helping ICE out after ICE had tried to conduct a traffic stop. of this man that we now know, his name is Jacob Zapata Castro. And he had actually owned the bakery that he had been hold up in during this encounter. And so FHP said that they were just helping, but there was also a pretty contentious dialogue that was happening over the course of the two or three hours that I was out there in the middle of the afternoon.

With this particular individual, do we know what the alleged crime is? The alleged crime was entering the country illegally and reentering the country after being deported. And Islater brought up that he had a 2012 DUI case, a conviction or a criminal charge. It's not exactly clear. But the main thing that was communicated to the crowd was he had been deported before and he came back to the country. And that is what started this, you know, traffic stop and counter. Okay, so local police, state police, we know that many of those organizations have these 287G agreements in place that allow them, require them to assist, train them to assist federal immigration authorities. Here we are more than a year into this enforcement.

How are local police working with federal immigration authorities here in Florida? Yeah, the thing that we've heard from immigrant rights advocates is it's actually not as. binding as some officials would like you to think. You know, the jails and the sheriff's departments have to cooperate, but it actually is a little bit more individualized on how local police departments want to help out. And FHP, Florida Highway Patrol, has gone a little bit above and beyond in how they enforce immigration law. And the tip of the spear is these traffic stops. And so, you know, while they said they were assisting ICE and just helping ICE with the traffic stop, the director of the parent agency of FHP has said that they have ICE and Border Patrol in their cars with them, as I've talked about with you in a prior program. So this event was just kind of a microcosm of what we're seeing across America and just days before another ice shooting in Maine.

It was really striking this past two weeks of events. Here in Florida, the governor set up the Immigration Enforcement Council, and that group just a couple of weeks or so ago got together, and some of the sheriffs that belonged to that council say not enough Florida police departments are participating with immigration enforcement action. To what are they attributing that lack of participation, and is that accurate? Yeah, I mean, what they're attributing, the data is really poor. I mean, we have a hard time even telling the most basic ways that local police work with immigration enforcement.

The most minimum data that has to be reported is just, you know, was there 287G arrest and did officers encounter a quote, undocumented or unauthorized illegal alien? So the data out there's pretty poor, but I think what the Immigration Council is complaining about is just not enough departments kind of. of being proactive about immigration enforcement. They might, you know, contact ICE if, you know, they find somebody who has an actual like removal order on their file after they're checked, but they're not doing the kind of proactive enforcement that Florida Highway Patrol is doing. And maybe that's where that, you know, unhappiness is coming from. Jake, stick with us here because we want to continue this talk around the governor's race here, because immigration, while certainly a significant issue in many, many communities in Florida,

it does not actually rank high among the biggest concerns of Floridians. There's a statewide poll from the University of North Florida that was out a couple of months ago that found half of those assets affordability. Affordability was their number one worry and a distant number two, political polarization. Now, Jake, you and your colleague, reporter Carlton Gillespie, spent some time with one of the most polarizing candidates on the ballot for Florida governor, Republican James Fishback and his supporters. Young men in T-shirts, baseball hats, and soccer jerseys are gathering in a Fort Lauderdale Hotel ballroom. They're there to hear from a youthful candidate for Florida governor.

Some attendees are college students and others are new to the workforce, teachers and construction workers. 21-year-old Adam Torres of Miami-Dade says he's there because the Florida he grew up in is no longer affordable. Progress is good until it's so much that it's like maintaining it costs even more and then that's just a burden on us. I like his approach that we don't have to be crazy fast. Torres came with his buddy Carlos, who did not wish to provide his last name. He says of their candidate, he's going to preserve Wild Florida and not take money from developers, don't take money from, you know, large corporations like that.

These political ideas might suggest a candidate more aligned with the left, but their political candidate is anything but. He's Republican insurgent James Fishback, a 31-year-old former investor who grew up in Broward County. Fishback is considered a long-shot candidate for governor. The average of the three most recent primary polls puts frontrunner Congressman Byron Donald's at around 41% and Fishback at about 16%. But in the past several months, he's gained significantly on Donald's. Fishback's political ideology mixes religious concerns. Abortion is not health care. It is murder. And in the state of Florida, we will treat it as such. And he combines it with populism.

An entire future generation is being told, you don't need to buy a home. Rent one. The year is 2030. You own nothing. You will be happy. No. I'll listen to the people of Davy and Dunedin before I listen to the idiot globalist communists in Davos. He's against flock surveillance cameras, wants to ban artificial intelligence data centers, and stop private equity firms like BlackRock from scooping up homes in the state. It's these ladder points that seem to have sung young people really excited for Fishback. But there's another side to James Fishback. WLRN reviewed Fishback's rhetoric, online posts, and appearances on far right-wing podcasts from the early days of his campaign. He echoed talking points and appeared on shows popular with an internet subculture called Groopers. We're going to take a pause here. You're going to hear some terms ahead that may be new and some of them might be uncomfortable.

Groopers are supporters of white supremacist Nick Fuentes. They're known for their racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic beliefs. They're to the right of the right, seeking to promote a majority white and Christian America. In interviews and online posts, Fischback has alluded to the anti-Semitic great-Rexametic. replacement and white genocide conspiracy theories. He also gained traction online in misogynistic and male-only referred to as incels or the Manosphere. Thought leaders in both movements, Fuentes among white nationalists and Andrew Tate among the Manosphere, have both endorsed Fishback independently. Tate, a social media influencer, is under indictment for rape and human trafficking, but denies

wrongdoing. Fishback also frequently uses racist dog whistles. For example, he has called Donalds, who is a black Republican, a, quote, slave to corporate donors. Byron Donalds, you're a coward. You're a DEI hire. You didn't earn crap. In another instance, Fishback was confronted by a heckler at an event. The heckler, who is black, brought up accusations that Fishback had an inappropriate relationship with a minor, allegations that he denies. Fishback responded, You should be lynched. You should be lynched. I should be lynched. I should be lynched. I should be lynx. Fishback criticizes aid and arms to Israel, which is something common on the left.

But some of his supporters interpret that criticism as more anti-Jewish than anti-Israel. There's one version of James Fishback that speaks in a code that only some supporters will understand, those versed in the language of the right-wing internet. At the Fort Lauderdale rally, WLRN saw supporters wearing shirts and hats emblazoned with American Reich, which appears to be a reference to the Nazi Third Reich. We also met a volunteer for Fishback's campaign who describes himself as a Christian nationalist. 28-year-old Jesse Owens is from Oviedo, near Orlando.

Just everything that's happening with taking over by foreigners, inflation, just the, even if you go to the mental health, the depression rates, just everything is deteriorating at a rapid rate. And I think that comes from not honoring God with our laws. Then there's the other James Fishback, the one on Instagram Reels, who rails against the establishment in campaign speeches, clipped for social media and promoted by his motivated online supporters. Many of his new supporters might not hear, know about, or even care about the first fishback.

We spoke to some of those supporters at a rally at the Moose Lodge in Tamarack. Cade Mason, a 21-year-old from Whitehouse Point, supports fishback because he's feeling economic anxiety. I was fired up. Everything he was saying, you know. Especially about being able to buy a property in the state of Florida, because, you know, like my parents did, it's harder than ever now. Mason said he learned about fishback through Instagram Reels. Avi Ziper is 17 and lives in Weston. He came with his dad to the fishback rally because he wants to be informed on all of the candidates before voting for the very first time in the fall.

He says he leans left and is undecided, but likes that fishback is candid about protecting the Everglades and housing for young people. He says fishback is speaking directly to young people, including his friends from high school. A lot of them are not so engaged, but a lot of them are hearing more and more about them on social media. And so while a lot of my friends aren't sure who they're going to vote for yet, they definitely know who James Fishback is. That fishback is capitalizing on the growing disconnect between the lived experiences of young people and their political reality. As his popularity and notoriety have soared, fishback downplays criticism and redirects it towards populist campaign planks. We asked him about his language in a sit-down interview at an outdoor restaurant. I would say, get over it.

I would say that there's a bigger fight to be had over my word choice, and that fight is the future of the state of Florida. If you're not going to vote for me because you don't like the words that I use, but you want to vote for a guy who's going to build an AI data center, I just respectfully disagree with your decision. He says that his criticisms of Donald's as an out-of-touch elite are substantive. I'm more worried about the potential that we elect someone who will hand over our state to out of state interests who will build over, pave over, and take what is rightfully ours. Fishback has rallied young people, especially young men, by appealing to their very real economic

anxieties, like housing and affordability. He's also received support from people with far-right views who see the political problems facing Florida as issues of race and religion. It's both versions of James Fishback that are capitalizing on a current schism in Republican and American politics. Reporters, Jake Shore and Carlton Gillespie reporting from South Florida, and Jake is still with us here on the Florida Roundup on this Friday. So Jake, fishback's advice to people who don't like or disagree with his rhetoric was to, quote, get over it, a bigger fight to be had over my word choice, and that fight is the future of the state of Florida. What of his actions

been behind his rhetoric, his language? Yeah, I mean, what we've seen is that he kind of dismisses most discussions about his language or, you know, they're passed off his jokes. And some of his supporters even even see it like that. And I think that was the interesting finding that Carlton I had from doing this reporting, which we came into this open-minded as a, you know, profile on this new insurgent candidate. And what we found was this difference, this dichotomy and the type of supporters for James Fishback, one that hears the language of the far right and, hears some of these, this language that he's using as dog whistles and others who just are happy to hear a candidate that speaks to their actual lived experience for the first time.

But is the language, your sense of the ideas expressed in his language, the authenticity of his belief in those ideas expressed in those language or in those so-called dog whistles? Yeah, I mean, there are some campaign planks that you could probably tie to some of that. He is pretty forceful about being, you know, he says that he follows Ron DeSantis when it comes to immigration, you know, wants immigration, quote, the right way. But some of his policies that he's proposed go beyond that. He said that he would like to take away a driver's license from anybody who passed the

driver's tests in Spanish, which is a step beyond, you know, just out forbidding anybody from taking this test in Spanish, like the day. disances administration is done. He's also said that, oh, really quickly, like he said that foreign nationals should be banned from buying private property in Florida. You know, this, there is a nativist thread to his policies that could be linked to some of his language. Jake Shore reporting on James Fishback, a Republican candidate for governor here in the state of Florida. Jake is an investigative reporter with our member station WLRN in South Florida. Jake, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Appreciate it. Sure. We will talk about the election here

in just a couple of moments, including the method of voting. There's some new rules here. If you're a regular vote-by-mail voter in the state of Florida, we want to get you updated on that. You know, the deadline to vote in the August primary is coming up very, very quickly. And we will have a county election supervisor with us in just a few moments to answer all your questions about how to make sure you're properly registered, how to make sure you cast your ballot, and we will talk about election security.

So call us now 305-995-1800. This is the Florida roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Next week on our program, $11.8 billion. This is how much state economists estimate could be lost in local government revenue if voters approve the property tax cut proposal that's due to appear on the November ballot. Now, the state has released a city by city, county by county analysis of how much property tax revenue would fall if the amendment is okayed by at least 60% of voters who vote in November. Orange County figures it will lose about $275 million, making it harder to address environmental concerns, for instance, like pollution. So these are real threats. These are not things we're making up. We're anticipating an increase in impairments over waterways adversely impacting our ecosystem or pets, human life and the local economy. You know, for weeks we've been talking about this property tax referendum and some of its implications going well beyond just the property tax issue. and we're going to continue talking about the stakes of this vote on cutting property taxes for home and condominium owners. So how would this tax cut impact your cost of living?

You can send us an email, radio at the Florida roundup.org, radio at the Florida roundup.org. Frank and Orlando sent us a note a few weeks ago, writing revenue for public services should be recovered from those who use the service. As long as we make enough money by working, people can pay, Frank writes. Adrian wrote, the winners are the insurance companies because we're having the wrong conversation. Instead of talking about property insurance, we're talking about property taxes. Adrian wrote, and everybody ends up paying more property insurance anyways. Well, you can lend your voice to us by emailing radio at the florida roundup.org. We'll continue more

about the property tax implications coming up next week and even more to come on this program. But first, it's Monday, Monday, Monday is the deadline to register to vote if you want to cast a ballot in next month's primary election. Don't forget we got an August election before we get to November. Republicans and Democrats will choose their candidates for governor, U.S. Senator, Attorney General, Congress, lots of also nonpartisan local races that are on the ballots. Well, there are several nonpartisan races, judicial races as well across the state, regardless of your political affiliation. Monday is the deadline also if you want to switch your party affiliation for that August primary.

Florida, after all, is a closed primary state. It means that partisan primaries can only be voted in by citizens of the same political affiliation. Republicans for Republicans, Democrats for Democrats, and so on. So are you ready to vote? And what questions do you have about your vote-by-mail ballot, for instance, about when you may be able to show up at your polling place, how to find all the details that you need to find in order to cast your ballot? 305-995-1800 is our phone number.

We're live on this Friday, taking your phone calls now across the state. 305-9-9-8-100. Any concerns about election security? Well, on Thursday night, President Donald Trump returned to a familiar third. theme for him, raising doubts about election security, but not providing any new evidence. If you look at voting today, it's in such bad shape in so many states, and we are committing to fix it. And we're also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections.

305-9-5-1800. 305-9-5-1800. Let's go right to Jasmine in Clearwater, who has been involved with Florida elections as a volunteer. Jasmine, go ahead. You're on the radio. Hi. I really enjoy working for a supervisor of election.

I am a deputy, and I greet people when they come in to vote. and in 20-plus years I've been volunteering or working. We had no problems whatsoever. So I hope that everybody is going to do their civic duty and come to vote in person or by May. Got it. Jasmine, thank you for your volunteerism there in Clearwater and helping folks cast their ballots for the better part of a quarter of a century.

Wendy Sertori Link is with us now, the supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County. And Wendy, I think you are just the most immediate past president of the county election supervisors here in Florida. Is that right? That is right. Yes, I was just in June. I stepped aside and I'm now the immediate past president. There you go.

To some degree, that's always the best title with some of those organizations, right? It's a great title. I loved being president, but being passed is awesome. Yeah, man, you've got certainly a lot of work ahead as the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County. and one of your constituents is Donald Trump, a registered voter in your county. How confident are you that his ballot, assuming he votes in August,

will be processed and counted correctly? 100%. I am very confident. His ballot, along with everybody else's ballot, will be properly handled, whether it's a vote-by-mail ballot, an early voting ballot, or an election day ballot. It will be counted in the way it was cast.

What did you make of his comments last night? So we, you know, really what we're doing is just focusing on delivering our elections. We make it a real point not to comment on political statements or comments. You know, what I can tell you is that, you know, all votes in Florida are on a paper ballot. You know, there's a verifiable record of every single vote. You know, Florida has a lot of safeguards in place, testing requirements, security protocols, a lot of transparency. So I feel like, you know, again, I can't speak for every state in the country, but I certainly speak for Florida, that I know that the things here are done very well.

They're done correctly. And I'm confident that the security is in place in every one of our 67 counties that people can feel good about it. We've got some phone calls coming in here, Wendy, that will take in a moment. But let's talk about some of the security precautions that you can share with the public, starting with the security of the voting roles, the registered voting roles. There have been some issues, some questions about, you know, the security of those voting roles in elections passed. How secure are they in Palm Beach County? The voting roles are very secure. So, you know, the voting roles are, it's an independent, you know, we, those are, the voting roles are completely independent from our tabulation systems.

and we do routine list maintenance throughout the year, making sure our roles are up to date, that we have everybody's most accurate information. Somebody who should not be on the rolls is taken off as soon as we learn about it, whether that's by death, whether somebody has moved out of our particular county, perhaps into another county in Florida. we don't have as much information as we used to about people who change states, but certainly when we know about somebody in a different state, we'll follow those procedures. So I think the voting roles are very secure and they're very up to date.

The president has pushed very hard on the Senate, especially to pass the so-called Save Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and a voter ID at the polling place. The president, in fact, Thursday night said the only reason you wouldn't pass the Save Act is, quote, if you want to cheat. Do you support the Save Act, Wendy? Well, we have our similar version because in Florida, House Bill 991 was this past legislative session, which does incorporate a lot of that. And so a lot of those same things. So there will be beginning in January of 2027 as the law stands now. I do know there are some, there's some litigation involving it, but as it stands now, beginning January 1, 27, there would have to be documentary

proof of that citizenship. The statute indicates what type of proof is acceptable in order for somebody to vote. If they do not have not provided that proof, they would only be permitted to vote a provisional ballot, and then they'd have a couple of days until Thursday at 5 to cure that deficiency. The difference being right now, a Floridian attests to the citizenship question, right? Correct. They have to stay, they have to state under penalty of perjury, that they are a United States citizen when they fill out a voter registration application. The eligibility checks for that are done at the state level.

So the state does run people through a save database that is a federal level. that saved database is not always completely up to speed. So sometimes we'll learn that somebody is, in fact, a U.S. citizen and maybe it's not been updated in that saved database. So we are, you know, they have the opportunity to provide that proof to us if the state does, you know, send that through. Wendy, Sotori Link is the supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County here in Florida. She's with us live on this Friday. We're taking your phone calls, questions that you may have about registering to vote with the deadline on Monday. in order to vote and cast your ballot for the August primary,

about the method of voting, processing, security, even kind of what comes next after August, because there's yet another election in November. AJ here, Wendy, has been listening in from Punta Gorda. AJ, thank you for your patience on line four. Go ahead. You are on the radio. Let's see here.

Let me hit the right button. There we go. Go ahead, AJ. Good afternoon. As an independent voter, I can't vote in the process. primary, there is a candidate running for governor with no party affiliation. Will that candidate automatically appear on the ballot, even though I can't vote for that person in a primary? Yeah, go ahead, Wendy. Right. So if there's a no party affiliation candidate, they will be on

the general ballot. The only thing I do want to correct for you, and when you say you can't vote in a primary, you should check with your county supervisor because there may, in fact, be nonpartisan races, whether it would be perhaps school board or judicial races. There could be those races that even people with minor parties or no party affiliation are able to vote in the primary for those races. It's just not the partisan races. Yeah, you won't see the Republican gubernatorial candidates or the Democratic senatorial candidates on that on that non-party not-affiliated ballot in August there, AJ. But you will likely see some candidates on that non-party affiliated ballot. J.B. has been listening in in West Palm Beach, J.B., you're going to be voting in Palm Beach County, maybe.

Yes, I'll afford to it. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Yes. So my question is around border registration. So I've lived in Palm Beach Corner for a while. I've moved around to different places. I've always received that border registration card in the mail. Now, my current residence, I've been there for like seven years. Over that time, I've received about three or four, maybe even five different voter registration cards. I don't know why I'm receiving that much,

and then how do I make sure the one I'm currently looking at is the most updated one I need to have for voting in August. Got it. Okay, J.B. I'll say on our family bulletin board, we have a collection of those voter registration cards through the years. how does he make sure he's got the right one? So we actually, since he is in Palm Beach County, we have just sent out new voter registration cards, and that's because there was just redistricting that occurred.

So we had about 640,000 people in Palm Beach County that were affected in some way by the redistricting. And so as he gets these new cards, it could very well be because there's been a polling location change, or maybe there's been a change in one of his districts, whether we have had recent changes to some county commission district. We've had some changes, of course, to the congressional. So whenever those changes will occur,

there'll be a new card that's sent out. So you can expect one if you didn't just get one within the next week or so he should receive one. But also on our website, vote palm beach.gov, there is a voter dashboard. And if he goes to the my status, it will show all of the information for him there as well. For those folks that live in a congressional district that are not subject to redistricting, will they get a new voter registration card?

In Palm Beach County, they will since we had the vast majority of ours who did, and people weren't sure we were getting questions. Well, I don't know if I just missed my card or did you send me a new card? Am I supposed to have a change? So we have sent, because also a lot of our poll. polling locations changed, irrespective of a congressional district change, sometimes polling locations change because just that particular polling location is no longer available. Yeah.

Wendy, I know you've got to run here on this Friday. We're going to continue talking to Floridians about some of the questions, concerns, and comments they have about voting, but we do appreciate your time. Wendy Satari-Link, the supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County. My pleasure. Thank you. You got it. My name is Tom Hudson. You are listening to the Florida Ronda from your Florida Public Radio Station.

All right, let's go to St. Pete, where Katie, is on line seven. Katie, you're on the radio. Go ahead. Thanks for calling. Hi, thanks for taking my call. My question is, as Florida is home to a lot of snowbirds that live out of state for part of the year, how do the different counties ensure that someone that's registered to vote in the state of Florida is actually a full-time resident for that six months and one day, and if you know someone that is personally not accurately reporting that, how and where do you report that? Well, I would suggest probably the first place you'd want to start is with your own local county supervisor's office to raise just that question of a concern that you may have. What's behind your question, Katie? Just a lot of people live in Florida for part of the year, and they live in other states for part of the year.

And it's just an honor system is to determine where they're considered full-time residents and what state they're getting to cast their vote. and I just wondered how that is actually verified. Fair enough. Katie, thanks so much for the question. Thank you so much. You got it. Thanks for listening. Carol in Tallahassee, thank you for holding online six.

Go ahead. Carol, it's your turn. You're on the radio. I registered to vote years and years and years ago, and I had to choose a party if I wanted to vote in the primary. And I just, so I had to pick, in August, I'll have to vote on just the people in my party. But do the young people know that in November, even if they're, say, registered for a Republican, they can vote for a Democrat in November or the same thing if they are registered for a Democrat

that they can vote for a Republican in November? I think it's just kind of confusing because of the primary rules. So interesting perspective there, Carol, and I've thought about it that way. I mean, Generally speaking, I've been a voter in a few states, including a voter in Florida here, you vote what's on the ballot in front of you. So that ballot in November would have all those political candidates, Republicans, Democrats, and others, right? Right, but I think if you think you registered, let's say, as a Democrat, that I can't vote for a Republican there. I just, I don't know. I mean, I just remember being young and confused. Yeah, fair enough.

And I just thought maybe there's some education that maybe there's other people confused to. No, it's an interesting perspective, and, you know, Carol, not for nothing, right? You know, Florida has had a history of, let's say, confusing ballots. There was that one year, right? That one year with the butterfly ballots. Carol, thanks for listening and joining the conversation there from Tallahassee. Let's get one more call in from Coral Springs. Pedro on line 8. Pedro, we want to hear from you.

You're on the radio. Go ahead. Hey, how are you going? I just wanted to call in because I know there's been a lot of discussion about DSA and the Democratic Party. and I live in Coral Springs. I live in South Florida, and I've been really excited by the work that I've seen GSA chapters here in South Florida do.

I know they've endorsed Oliver Larkin for Congressional District 25, and they've knocked about 25,000 doors for his campaign. So I see DSA, which is mostly young people. DSA is an acronym, right? Yeah, Democratic Socialist of America, yes. Got it. And I see them putting in the work that I feel a Democratic Party

here has failed to do for years. So I'm super excited to see what's going to happen and where this will go. You registered to vote for August? Yes, sir. All right. Thanks, Pedro. I appreciate you giving us a voice there from Coral Springs in South Florida.

Keep your comments coming. You're ready to register to vote. Monday is your deadline if you want to cast that ballot in the August primary. And we'd love to continue to hear from you. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. What's your method of voting? You're going to vote by mail, early voting, or do you wait for that actual primary day and go to the polling place?

Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. got plenty more to come, including the potential impact of a property tax cut on mosquito control. That's still to come. You're listening to The Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us. In addition to selecting a new governor this November, Florida voters also will be asked to decide whether or not they want to dramatically cut part of their property taxes. Now, last week on the program, we spoke about how the proposed amendment. could reshape public hospital funding. This week, we're going to look at how, if past, Florida's property tax overhaul could result in more mosquitoes.

Yeah, more bugs. From our partner station, WLRN in Miami, here's Environmental Editor Jenny Stolettovich. If you stop mosquito control hearing the Florida Keys for two weeks, you would see, in the summertime, you'd see what it was like in 1950. Phil Goodman is the chairman of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District. He's been on the district board since 2011.

He's a chemist who worked in the chemical industry as an executive for decades. Mosquito control is probably one of the most misunderstood government organizations in Florida because nobody really connects the dots. As part of the referendum proposed by Governor Ron DeSantis and approved by the legislature, Mosquito controlled districts that rely on property taxes could see a big chunk of their funding disappear. We're looking at one-third of reduction in revenue. And the bill did have language in for core functions, but it was very unclear if mosquito control would be considered a core function.

Sherry Burroughs is vice president of the Florida Mosquito Control Association and a former director of the Indian River Mosquito Control District. Being designated a core function would mean that districts provide an essential service that can't be cut. We don't have an alternative revenue stream. we don't have the ability to backfill. And mosquito control managers know what can happen when mosquito control gets cut. We got a sobering update on Zika today.

The nation's top health officials warning that the Zika virus appears to be a lot scarier than first off. Another locally transmitted case has been discovered in Florida, this time outside the containment zone. And authorities are not using planes to back. And the head of the CDC says mosquitoes carrying the virus are harder to wipe out than officials first expected. A decade ago, Miami-Dade County became ground zero. for the first outbreak of deadly Zika virus in the continental United States. Before it hit, the county had cut its mosquito control budget in half. It's still way underfunded there.

Goodman says that's because people don't usually connect the dots between mosquito control and a healthy economy. Because 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. Before government run mosquito control, people would fend off bugs, by carrying around smudge pots or old cans filled with burning grass or peat. Malaria and yellow fever were among the leading causes of death in Florida. There was a Virginia Congressman John Randolph.

He made a very famous impassioned speech on the floor of the House in 1821. And he said, now paraphrase, he said, nobody wants to come to Florida. Nothing but quagmires and swamps full of alligators and mosquitoes and diseases. No man would ever move to Florida, no not even from hell. For the next century, Goodman says Congressman Randolph was mostly correct. Swarming mosquitoes were so bad in the 1920s that a real estate investor in the Keys built a bat tower, hoping to lure an army of skeeter eating bats. No bats came. There was no bats. We baited it and none came. This was Fred Johnson explaining in a 1986 interview provided by the Wilson Archives. Johnson had built a 30-foot tower on Sugarloaf Kiefer's boss, the investor and largest landowner, the Keys at the time, who dreamed of turning sugarloaf into a fishing resort, but for the mosquitoes. It's so bad that you just raked them off your arms. You didn't try to strike them or anything

like that. They were just so thick. The local folklore here in the lower Florida Keys is that the mosquitoes ate the bats. About the same time, after a statewide outbreak of dange fever, Goodman says Florida began establishing mosquito-controlled districts. The first was in Indian River County. Operations mostly focused on battling swarms after they arrived, which left most residents fleeing inside at dusk and waiting for the seasonal fogging planes and trucks to arrive. We have been moving heaven and earth to get the planes into the air. This was Dade County Mosquito Control Chief Fred Stutz in 1957, explaining why irate residents were still waiting for relief. This interview is also from the Wilson Archives. We hope that people will be patient and eventually

the trucks will get to them. The difficulty with the trucks is the fact that we cannot cover the large areas that we can cover with the airplanes. Since then, Goodman says mosquito control has undergone a renaissance. We have entomologists, we have biologists, we have zoologists, you know, working. So it is a real complex science. But we also have people that go out into the field, into the marshes and do testing. Mosquito control managers don't wait for the mosquitoes to arrive anymore. Instead, Instead, they fight them before they're born. They use larvicides and maintain surveillance networks.

They investigate new controls like releasing sterile mosquitoes to reduce the population. Modern fogging trucks make routine runs, often quietly before dawn, without notice. The state's 15 mosquito control districts also serve as unofficial hubs for mosquito intel for county run programs. We share our knowledge to really make Florida right now, number one in mosquito control, in the United States. But, you know, we still have problems. Diseases are still our main concern. You know, if you look at them out, all of the diseases come really from the tropical areas. And, you know, here in Florida Keys, we are tropical climate. But Florida is really the only area in there that has really overcome the problem of mosquito-borne diseases.

Goodman says Floridians now spend about $330 million a year on mosquito control, mostly through avilorum taxes, county by county. The Keys, which has a fleet of five helicopters, spends the most per square mile at $20 million a year. It's a lot of money. But when you look at the tourist economy that you have and the real estate market and the property values and all of these things, it is one heck of a good return on investment to Floridians. With funding cut, he worries that could change fast. The mosquitoes in the Everglades, they breed at about $45,000 per square foot, if you can imagine. $2 billion per acre, basically.

And this is not just once a year. This is like every 10 to 14 days. Goodman and Burroughs with the Mosquito Control Association say they asked lawmakers to designate mosquito control as a core service to preserve funding. But the final draft passed by legislators left the language vague. This month, lawyers and Broward in Miami-Dade counties filed a lawsuit challenging the referendum,

saying large parts were misleading or unclear. They've asked a judge to order Florida's Attorney General to rewrite it. I'm Jenny Stolettovich in Miami. Charles sent us this email. He writes, When I was growing up in Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, all of the neighborhood kids and I would ride our bikes inside the billowing clouds of the white smoke exiting from many mosquito control trucks that routinely patrolled our streets. Charles then continues little did we know that that chemical producing the smoke was DDT. Hopefully whatever is being used now isn't as

toxic, writes Charles. and it only kills mosquitoes. We're losing our insects at an alarming rate. You can send us your thoughts about property taxes, bugs, and other issues by emailing radio at the Florida Roundup.org. I'm Tom Hudson, and you're listening to the Florida Rondup from your Florida Public Radio Station. Now a few stories about land development and how much power local governments across the state have to control it. We'll start in central Florida, where one county is working to reactivate its plan for future development after the state struck it down. Molly Dureg, with our partner, Central Florida, public media tells us about Orange County's new Vision 2050.

The state declared Vision 2050, quote, null and void last year, shortly after county commissioners voted to adopt it. The problem was Senate Bill 180, a controversial state law that broadly restricts local government planning efforts until at least next October. Now staff is drafting an ordinance to reactivate Vision 2050, this time with an opt-out provision for developers. County resident Liz Connor says she doesn't like the sound of that. Trying to save what we can. Like, I get that. But I think if they don't want to play the rules of the land, then that's not the land for you. That's not the area for you.

Vision 2050 and the corresponding new Orange Code were designed to limit more urban sprawl by guiding future development toward the county's busiest areas and away from rural ones. Last year, the state said the new planning framework violates SB180 because it's, quote, more restrictive or burdensome than the status quo. In Orlando, I'm Molly Derry. A growing number of counties are moving to ban new construction of large-scale data centers. Last week, Sarasota County Commissioners voted to halt the, quote, acceptance, review, and approval of any major data centers until at least July of next year. And this week, Pascoe County followed suit. As Steve Newborn with our partner station WUSF and Tampa reports, county commissioners there unanimously approved a one-year reprieve on any new large-scale data centers. The data centers have drawn criticism across the country recently because of their high demands for electricity and water needed to cool servers.

Pasco officials say they want to be sure how to define a large data center before allowing any to be built in their county. This would place a temporary ban on server rooms and computer rooms that exceed 2.5 megawatts of electrical power. County Commission Chair Jack Mariano says he's pleased with the reduction from one of the original proposals that would have placed a cap at 10 megawatts. This is a board-initiated item. This moratorium is rock-solid for us that we don't have to worry about any data centers for a year. Scores of county residents spoke out against the data center saying the noise and pollution isn't worth the risk. I'm Steve Newborn in Tampa. And then remember the 3.6 million square foot hyperscale data center proposal in Palm Beach County we talked about last week?

Well, after a marathon 12-hour meeting Wednesday, county commissioners voted to block the plan known as Project 10. Tango. Commissioners will discuss a proposed one-year moratorium on all large-scale data center applications in Palm Beach County next month. Finally, this week on the roundup, a star-studded reunion of sorts. It's been 15 years, 15 years now, since NASA launched the space shuttle for the last time. The crew of four recently reunited at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to mark the anniversary. Retired NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson was the commander on that last mission. He says, despite the program's end, its legacy certainly still lives on and over it. The shuttle's legacy really was what it left behind in the space station that's been in use for, you know, 20-plus years.

The space shuttle program had quite a run. It lasted three decades and flew 135 missions. That is our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami with assistance from WUSF and Tampa. Our crew includes producer 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 and the vice president of radio is Peter Mers. The program's technical director is M.J. Smith. We get engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson, Harvey Bissard, and Ernesto J. Our theme music is provided by I'm I'm a jazz guitarist Aaron Libos at Aaron Libos.com.

Stay cool. Thanks for listening, calling, emailing, and above all, of course, supporting public media here in the Sunshine State. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.