The Florida Roundup - Senior homes lack state oversight, redistricting in Florida and Texas, and more

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke with the Miami Herald’s deputy investigations editor Carol Marbin Miller about their reporting into problems with the state’s Adult Protective Services (00:00). Then, we joined our colleagues at Houston Public Radio for a simulcast to discuss Florida and Texas’s redistricting efforts (19:44). Plus, we spoke with a middle school aerospace technology teacher about how Artemis II is helping inspire future generations to go into the field of space exploration (37:30), learned of preparations for Artemis III (41:20), got an update on Florida’s drought conditions and wildfires from Florida Public Radio Emergency Network meteorologist Megan Borowski (42:22), and learned about a theater project in Sarasota that pairs teens with Holocaust survivors and Black elders (44:06).

Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at Everglades Foundation.org. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being here this week with us. Florida lawmakers were supposed to be in Tallahassee next week. They had been called back to the Capitol by Governor Ronda Santos to redraw the state's 28 congressional districts. Except on Wednesday this week, the governor decided to delay the redrawing. one week. If the political boundaries

are changed before the November elections, it could change who is running to represent you in Congress. Now, this rush to redraw political boundaries started in Texas, which changed its congressional maps last year. Then California did it. And then other states. So now Florida looks

to be the last state that may change boundaries in the fight for the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. Now, we're going to connect with colleagues in Houston a little bit later on in this program, so Floridian and Texans can talk over the efforts to change political boundaries. What happened in Texas certainly did not stay in Texas.

What will happen in Florida? You can email us radio at the Florida roundup.org. Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. You can also call us at 305-995-1800, and we will get to your calls in several minutes. So be patient with us. Because first, we want to talk about elderly Floridians and their care. There are about 5 million Floridians who are 65 years old and older.

It's about one out of every five of us. And the state system that is supposed to oversee the care of the most vulnerable elderly senior citizens often falls short. An investigation by the Miami Herald finds the state's adult protective services often removes elderly residents who cannot care for themselves from their homes without a court hearing. Some are sent to assisted living facilities that have troubled records of violation. Some sent to ALFs without their family members even knowing where they're going. The decision of where to send some elderly residents in the care of the state can fall to a single person sometimes. And that person in Miami-Aid County often has been Tanya Hernandez. She's a Department of Children and Families caseworker, a state investigator Anita Serna, called Hernandez a human trafficker in recorded testimony.

My opinion is superiors gave this woman the key to do human trafficking with our old people. To me, she's selling them off and she's getting money for it. Hernandez, though, denied she had done anything wrong in a recorded interview with an investigator. I never received anything. You can ask any of them. All that I did was my job. I will call them. Do you take this client?

Yes, no. I will send them, and that was the end of the story. I never, ever receive nothing from it. So how can Florida protect its senior citizens who the state has custody of? How can you make sure the ALF that your mom, your sister, your uncle, or a grandparent is in is safe and appropriate? What are the legal rights that you have for a senior citizen in your family who may not be able to take care of themselves any longer? 305-9-5-1800 is our phone number live on this Friday 305-9-5-1800 send us a quick note radio at the florida roundup dot org harold carol marvin miller is an investigative reporter with the miami harold behind this series

carol nice to speak with you again thanks for your time appreciate it thanks for having me so what is the role of the state's adult protective services The state intervenes when elders or disabled adults are in trouble. And that could be financial exploitation. It could be physical abuse from a family member. And it can just be that the elder no longer is capable of caring for herself or himself in place. and so a large percentage of the cases that are fielded by the Department of Children and Families, adult protective services are elders who are not safe in their current circumstances.

They are forgetful. They can't clean the house. They leave the stove on unattended. DCF's hotline gets a call. They visit the Solution. elder in her home. And if it is their conclusion that she is not safe there, they will take her into state custody. And your investigation found the great majority of those individuals taking into state custody don't have a lawyer, a judge doesn't see them or hear about the case to decide

whether or not the state is making an appropriate decision. According to data that we got from the Department of Children and Families, about 95% of the elders and disabled adults taken into state custody never appear before a judge do not have the benefit of counsel. They are simply removed from their homes and moved into an ALF of DCF's choosing. What is the due process that ought to be followed here? The due process under state law, which is codified in Chapter 415 of the state statutes, is that if the state takes you from your home against your will, you have a right to a hearing, you have a right to counsel.

DCF seems to be threading a needle in which, if I understand them correctly, they are claiming that 95% of the people whom they take into custody agree to the movement that DCF dictates, and they are competent to consent to DCF's actions. The problem is that we interviewed several elders or family members of elders who told us that family members were not apprised or consulted. The moves were made without anyone's knowledge, sometimes in the middle of the night. Family members told us that they went looking for their father or uncle, couldn't find him, and then learned that they'd been taken by the state and put in an ALF that the family members had never heard of.

In some cases, we looked at records in which DCF's own documents show that the elder simply, was not competent to consent to DCF's action, but it happened anyway. Carol Marvin Miller, investigative reporter with the Miami Herald looking into the oversight of the most vulnerable elderly in Florida. 305-995-800 questions. If you have a family member in an assisted living facility, perhaps you're considering making that move. What kind of questions can you share with us? Pastor Troy is listening in Jacksonville. go ahead, Pastor Troy, nice to hear from. You're on the radio.

Great. Yes. Can you hear me? Loud and clear. Across the state, go ahead, sir. I want to say that the Department of Children and Family Services is a carryable from an old, antiquated program called H.R.S. And health rehabilitated services, that was the title of it. And, of course, at that time, we were talking about 20 and 30, years ago, it was in the hands of people who were not, who were very crass. And some people even say that it was top-heavy with people who had a particular psychosexual nature. There were a lot incompetence, alcoholics. Okay. And he seemed to over programs. They're job ministers too.

Well, let's let's be careful here, Pastor Troy, about, you know, casting aspersions here. Certainly it's your opinion. These are unproven allegations. But, get to your point if you could sir please are you there yep we're here okay what i'm saying is that that that the documentation was complete that's why hrs was abolished but children's family services are now in the hands of people who may have inherited some of that neglect and of course uh there was so much consternation and disappointment about what was happening with hrs that it was Okay. Let's go through a little bit of this here. Carol, you've been reporting on protective services, both for children and family for decades here in the state of Florida. This previous agency to the Department of Children and Family Services, the pastor Troy mentions. What can you remember? What do you recall of that?

It was indeed called the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. And as such, it was one of the largest government, agencies in the country, certainly one of the largest in the southeastern U.S. It included a host of state agencies and programs that were spun off beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the early 2000s. What used to be HRS now are a number of state agencies such as Department of Children and Families, Juvenile Justice. the agency for persons with disabilities, the Department of Health,

the Agency for Healthcare Administration. As HRS, it was unwieldy, and the thought was that we would get better results by spinning it off into smaller departments. And so this particular investigation in the Adult Protective Services, you've done previous investigations around the protective services

and care of children within DHS. DCF years ago and found also similar shortcomings and lack of oversight. To Pastor Troy's, I think, I'll be a little more diplomatic than he has some systemic issues that he thinks are still at play with the Department of Children and Families in Florida. I think the most significant systemic problem within this agency and all the agencies of state government now is that they are really immune to scrutiny. They're allergic to scrutiny. And when things go wrong, as they will, in any large agency,

it's extremely difficult to get traction. They don't want to talk about it. We submitted questions to DCF about this problem. We submitted a raft of public records requests. We got nothing. We got about a one paragraph long statement that we included in our reporting. This is an agency. This is a state government that does not respond well to oversight or criticism.

Carol Marvin Miller is with us, investigative reporter who's been looking into the state adult protective services portion of the Department of Children and Families. and the lack of oversight for the care of the most vulnerable elderly here in Florida. 305-995-1800. Perhaps you have a family member who is looking at care in an assisted living facility. What kind of questions might you have to ensure that their care is safe, secure, and appropriate for them? Carol, as you described this agency as kind of allergic to reform, sort of speak, if I may use that word here, a number of the regulators in this case, elected officials, state lawmakers, have been responding to your findings here that the great majority of elderly that are in the care, wind up in the care of the state, don't go through due process.

We got calls, in fact, from some state lawmakers who oversee the Department of Children and Families and Elder Affairs, and we spoke to others. and there was an outpouring of interest in first doing their job of physical oversight, asking questions of DCF leadership, demanding records, but also some interest in sponsoring legislation that might lead to reform. Currently, under the law that governs this program, elders are entitled to a hearing before a judge but to the extent that DCF controls every aspect of that process, if the elder or her family members don't know that and they don't understand that they have a right to hire a lawyer on grandma's behalf,

then there is no oversight. Right, right. And so one lawmaker I interviewed spoke of perhaps a pilot project in Miami-Dade that guarantees a court hearing for, everyone taken into state custody, regardless of whether DCF believes they're competent to consent. Nancy's listening in Tampa. Nancy, we're glad you're here. Go ahead. You're on the radio. Oh, thank you so much. I just wanted to call in. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and intimately involved with guardianship proceedings for the last 26 years for people that may have been removed from

their home or they're felt to be incapacitated. And one thing that I did want to say is that DCF does not rip people out of their homes for no reason. You know, if you've got maggots crawling in your food and you have food from a year ago in your refrigerator and nothing now, well, certainly that might be the case. There are, you know, responsibilities of family members that they try to contact and sometimes their family members just don't do anything and they're left with an endangered person that they must do something immediately with to ensure their safety. And I've worked with DCF long enough, both in early in my career as a clinical social worker, and in my capacity now to know that DCF does many times file petitions for guardianship for

these individuals so that they do get, you know, their hearings and so on. Maybe it doesn't happen in every case. maybe there's changes that need to be made, but I will tell you that I think people need to be complimented for what they've done. Each one of the social workers or case managers in Hillsborough County alone have just been added with 100 additional case members or persons to investigate per person. Nancy, appreciate you giving voice there from Tampa. Carol, you were not in your head there in agreement that this isn't a matter of knocking

on the door and taking somebody out of their home. Absolutely. Nancy, I couldn't agree with you more. even the folks with whom we spoke, we looked at their records, we spoke with their relatives. They needed help. There's no question about that, that there are many elders and disabled adults here that need this kind of a program. What we saw that went wrong was what happened after the removal. Yeah. What should the adult children? What should family members be thinking about if they know that they have an elderly family member who is increasingly incapable of taking care of themselves? We did a story as part of this package that offered advice from elder lawyers and elder advocates. And one of the pieces of advice that I thought was,

right on target was don't wait until you're 70, 85, before you protect yourself legally. Go to an attorney now. You're never too young to think about old age and get guardianships or proposed guardianships for when you may need them later. Think about about healthcare surrogates and medical proxies have wills. As you and I were talking a moment ago, if you don't want to be brought back to life when you go into cardiac arrest, put your do not resuscitate order on a magnet on your refrigerator where paramedics will see it. get all that legal work done while you're still young and able to do it. Don't wait for the crisis to emerge.

And share that with family members and know where those documents are and know what your wishes are. The other thing I wanted to tell people is when the crisis does occur, make sure that your loved ones are in your corner, that they have the wherewithal to call an attorney on your behalf, that they will ask the attorney to request a hearing to determine what your wishes are if you're taken from your home. You don't have to agree to what a caseworker determines. You have rights, and that's why we have judges and courthouses and lawyers. And your investigation has,

highlighted the real necessity for having those conversations in that kind of preparation, as well as the regulatory oversight that it sounds like lawmakers are certainly talking about. Thank you for sharing the investigation with this, Carol, Marbley, much appreciated. Thank you very much. Carol Marvin Miller, an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald. Coming up next, we're going to connect with Houston Public Media talking about redistricting in the Lone Star State. It is an effort that is likely to begin in the next week to 10 days or so here in the Sunshine State. So what do you want to know about redrawing political boundaries, 305,

995-1800. Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at everglades foundation.org. We're back on the Florida Roundup here. Thanks for being with us.

I'm Tom Hudson. Florida lawmakers. We're supposed to talk about redistricting next week. It's going to be happening a week after next, but we are going to connect with our colleagues in Houston to talk about this issue. Hello again to Ernie and Celeste. Hey, it's Tom in Florida.

How are you guys in Houston? Well, how are you folks handling things in Florida? Oh, well, things are delayed a little bit. The special session, Ernie, that was supposed to happen next week. Next week has gotten delayed until the week after next. But political boundaries are definitely on the political table for our Republican legislature to debate. to debate. Tell us about what's happening in Florida. Well, if you can help us a little bit before we mean, mix minus, mean mix minus. If you can help us a little bit about what is happening there that,

and then I'll get into what happened here for your folks. But the thing that stands out to me, if I didn't follow this, maybe I followed it incorrectly, but that Florida already had a statute that said you cannot redistrict. So how is this happening? You guys had a law beyond what we had. So this is the fair districts commission. constitutional amendment that bans gerrymandering for political parties. However, the state

has changed political boundaries many times through the years with this constitutional amendment in place. It has been successful navigating around that. And the expectation by Republican legislators and Governor Ronda Santos here in Florida is that whatever they may come up with

in the weeks ahead is going to be able to meet the scrutiny of this fair district's constitutional amendment. But you're right, it's an important legal threshold that is likely going to be the focus of any kind of legal challenge of what winds up coming out here in Florida. Florida. Well, in Texas, we do know about legal challenges. And we've gone back and forth on ours to catch your listeners up. We were all fine and happy. And then a phone call came from the president to our governor who said he wanted five more seats and it started all of this redistricting, I would almost say, craziness that happened here. So we decided their new map was drawn that would give five new seats that would be

leaning more toward Republican voting and that that would increase our number on the national level. And as you probably remember, our Democrats in the state house decided, well, then we're leaving town. So they broke quorum and they took off all over the country, mostly to Chicago and also to California, where then California got into it and said, well, if Texas is going to do that, we're going to change our maps and we're going to add. And they went ahead with it and they've sailed through on their plan to do it. We then got blocked on our maps here when it was said, nope, that's on, I should say eventually, our folks came back and they voted along party lines, no surprise there.

And the maps were moved forward. Then the Supreme Court said, whoa, stop. Then the Supreme Court said, nah, you can go ahead again. And how that's played out for us, especially in Harris County, where Houston is located, is we have had election after election after election, runoffs, primaries, all this, in which you may be voting. And three weeks later, you're in a different district than what you just voted for in a primary. It's been crazy. As of today, we are living under this new drawn map.

So that's where we're at. So is it settled law now in Texas? So the boundary is settled for the 26th? November election? Oh, Tom, you know well enough not to say Texas has settled law anywhere. We are moving forward with the assumption that these are the maps that will be being reflected in the November election here. We have vote, we are in the middle of primaries and runoffs for the new, we're calling District 18, which was fascinating because we also had Sylvester Turner representing us who had passed away in office, and then the governor held off filling his

democratically held seat for almost a year, which then put us into these race on top of race on top of race. I mean, it is time compressed, right? Celestine Ernie? I mean, you know, we've got primaries here in Florida in August. Those are our primaries. And then, of course, the November election. And the governor here in Florida had talked about this April.

I mean, he announced this special session back in January saying April, you know, late April after tax day, that's going to be the day. And, you know, things were happening there in Texas. things were happening in California. We've seen what happened in Indiana. And now, of course, this voter referendum in Virginia, which may change the Virginia map. The governor here was asked whether or not his scheduling

was influenced by the Virginia referendum that's due to be decided soon. He said no, he denied any knowledge of what's happening outside of Florida when it comes to congressional redistricting, which it's kind of hard to believe that a governor of a state that's subject to redistricting by a request from the president doesn't know what's happening in Texas

or Virginia or California or Indiana too. Kind of belize common sense there. But, you know, it's been fascinating to see this, and it's at this compressed time schedule then, where voters and even some folks that are running for office, it sounds like you've experienced this too, are saying, you know, we need to know where these lines are just so we can put together campaigns

and voters can feel comfortable asking the kinds of policy questions, the kind of political questions of the folks that want to represent them in Washington. Well, perfect case again, Texas 18, was the fact that we were doing an election to fill a seat, the remaining term of Sylvester Turner, and other representatives, other congressmen were running from different districts in that district for an upcoming election that the people that were going to vote on weren't voting on right then. So you see like Al Green is running in Texas 18 and people are seeing his billboards

while they're going to vote on a ballot for 18 that doesn't have him on it because we hadn't switched over. It was extremely confusing, and it, of course, led to lower voter turnout or understanding or appreciation. And the voter turnout has been the biggest problem for us. There have been areas that have voted four times for the same seat within just a couple of months. Yeah, we've seen that with some special elections as well, called for various vacant races at the statehouse level. wondering Ernie and Celeste, like how folks are trying to read the tea leaves as you have worked through a couple of special elections in Texas after the redistricting where you've seen, you know, Democrats maybe win in what had been Republican areas. We saw that here in Florida with the statehouse race of the district that actually represents Maralago in Palm Beach County where the president, of course, votes and is a resident in Florida where we saw that district. Excuse me.

He mail-in votes just for the record. That is true. Yes, yes, he did acknowledge that he cast a ballot via the mail. But that district was flipped from Republican to Democrat. Now, State House, but a lot of folks get excited. A lot of Democrats certainly excited and are pointing to that as perhaps a reason for the Florida legislature to begin to slow walk some of this redistricting and kind of wait and see what happens in Virginia and elsewhere. Well, I think for us, a lot of the focus.

or a lot of the oxygen has been sucked up by our U.S. Senate race, which is getting so much of the attention. But that's going through kind of what you're talking about there in that we have been a strong-held Republican senator seat for years and years. And James Telerico looks like he's nipping at the heels and there could be that swap. So so much of the energy and coverage seems to be on that race. And with the multitude of special elections we've had on these house seats, I think people are totally lost and confused what and who they're voting for. But as far as seeing the flips going on, for us in our area, what they kind of did was shift around some Democratic seats, clearing ways for what were more Republican areas to take them. And our focuses have been on, like Texas 18, as I keep mentioning, because that's the big one with all the special elections.

That is going Democratic, no matter how you slice it. But it'll be interesting to see as we move toward November how these other House seats are. looking. I have a funny feeling if you're reading the tea leaves that you may see a little bit more blue coming out of Texas, even though this plan was to make it more red. Yeah. Well, listen, we're talking with our friends in Houston here in Florida. My name's Tom Hudson. We've got Ernie and Celeste with us in Houston. We're doing a simulcast on our programs to bring Texans and Floridians together to talk about redistricting. And Rufus has been listening in an Orlando, Florida. Rufus, thanks for your patience. You're on the radio. Go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for having me. My couple points are I'm four redistricting, and I'm neither Democrat nor Republican. I was a Democrat, but I withdrew that and am independent. And my point is, where I live here in Orange County, Florida, when I moved, my wife and I built our home on an acre and a half lot. when I moved into the community, there may have been five at most people of color in a pretty large area. Today, there are more Caribbean, Hispanic, and African Americans, and the white people have moved out. And these are acre-to-acre lots, very, very solid financially. And my point is this.

You can read district, draw new lines, but the old model of where people gravitate to are changing. And I'm for change. One last point. John Morgan wants to develop a new political party here in Florida. I'm for that. And I think there are many people, both Democrats and Republicans, that are basically fed up with the machinery. and the shenanigans that go on with both parties

and are looking for something new that will be a true voice of the people. Rufus, I appreciate you lending your voice there from Orlando. I'll tell our Houston friends, John Morgan is a well-known personal injury lawyer based here in Florida. He actually operates in many, many states who had talked about running for governor

and this week decided not to run for governor, made that announcement. But you hear there from Rufus, And I'm wondering if you heard from Texans about more independence, more a third way, something less than the Democrat or Republican forced vote that we've seen for a good number of election cycles. I think more what we're seeing. And I go back to what I said a moment ago and then let Celeste have a shot at this one is with that Senate race, James Tala Rico, as opposed to launching a new policy. party. He's redefining a party that I think speaks, or at least is approaching speaking across party lines. He brings folks in Florida who aren't familiar a much more Christian ethics to being

a Democrat. He is a seminarian. He talks often of faith and speaks to that. And I think that's what we're seeing more, that it's a softening of the line, more so from the Democratic point of view, I would say. I think the Republicans are saying, we've got power, we're in control, this is who we are, where the Democrats are saying, well, how do we then play in that sandbox, maybe if we soften this edge, maybe if we speak more of this? And I think that's what's happening more than a new party push. And, you know, we've heard that a little bit, Celeste, from the State House flip at the district in Mar-a-Lago, right, that covers Mar-Lago that was Republican-Went Democrat. We heard from the Democrat who won that race to say, I didn't mention President Trump.

This wasn't a local election that was nationalized. This was about, you know, issues in Palm Beach County, housing affordability, transportation, education. She really said that she thought the reason why she won was because stayed focused on the policies as opposed to the politician. And I just want to remind everybody, we are speaking with Tom Hudson, the senior economics editor and special correspondent from WLRN News. You can join the conversation at 713-440-8870. You know, just to chime in, you know, listening to what Rufus was saying out of Orlando,

It makes me wonder, Tom, from your perspective and what people are saying, oftentimes here in Texas, we saw this specifically in our district 18, in our backyard. You know, the purpose of redistricting was historically to protect brown and black representation within our communities. And it felt like we saw that push that, you know, it was coming from the federal government. We need to redistrict. We're looking for that seat. I know y'all might have already touched on this. But what do Republicans and Democrats say within Florida that their main push to redistrict is? Well, so, yeah, this effort is led by the governor in Florida Republican.

It has some support amongst governor, Florida Republican legislators, not all. It's not universal. Florida Democrats don't like the idea really almost universally. You know, the racial question here is central to this, because, the governor here in Florida has pointed to two primary reasons for his support for redistricting. One is he thinks that the Florida population has changed a lot since the 2020 census, and there's complaints that the 2020 census was inaccurate, and more people have moved into the state and moved around the state,

and so those district lines should be moved to represent that. But the primary reason, honestly, Celeste, that he's pointed to is this Voting Rights Act, Supreme Court case in Louisiana that is still pending. We still have yet to hear from the Supreme Court on this, which may do away with the majority minority allowance of congressional districts inside that 1960s-era Voting Rights Act. And the governor has said that if that designation is removed, then he thinks it's mandatory that Florida redraw its congressional districts without favor of race. That's what it comes down to here.

And that whole school of thought, though, leads to the problem, how often do you redistrict? Because every time you feel there's a shift, every time there's a shift in political authority at the statehouses or nationally, then we're just constantly redistricting and redrawing where the 10-year rule, along with the census, I call it a rule, behavior, pattern, seem to make sense. Which to also just chime in on the U.S. Census, you know, Bureau count, we even had President Trump say that potentially he wanted to change that as well. So you also have that element of, is that really a stronghold? And the horse trading that initiated this conversation between Florida and Texas, right? One state does one thing that tends to lean one way politically, another state like California or somewhere else, does something else. And so then another state responds. And while ultimately you're up against this election date, things get compressed first. and further and further and further. And you've got folks in the Texas 18 or perhaps, you know, in the Florida 22nd who are deciding, well, which district am I in? Who am, who are the candidates that I'm going to vote for? And the candidates themselves are left as well. It's kind of spinning around, waiting for the lines to be drawn, at least temporarily enough for folks to decide

on a fall election. Well, it's funny, too, because when you talk about the Supreme Court and getting involved in all, for a while there, we thought that our Texas map had been knocked down. But California went along a different route to do it. So we thought, wow, this plan to increase Republican seats was going to fail. And Democrats were going to increase their seats because Florida was reacting to Texas. But then Texas law came back in and then all of these states are doing. I can't keep track of it, actually. I mean, it sounds like a tennis match or a football game, right?

You know, where you're trading leads here. But ultimately, it's voters who are affected by all this, right? Ernie and Celeste. I mean, it's voters. It's who's going to represent them and what are their interests. interests as you go off as they go off onto Capitol Hill. Right, but we want to thank you, Tom, for joining us today. Yeah, you're right back at you.

It's great to connect our friends in Houston. We need to do more of these. We have so much more in common than we do in opposition between Florida and Texas and elsewhere, and it's just a great opportunity to hear from our neighbors. So thanks for taking us up on it. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

That was Tom Hudson. Friends there in Houston, Houston Public Media is, hello, Houston, talking about redistricting in the Lone Star State. Sean and Winterhaven emailed as the Republicans have been in charge of Florida's government for over 30 years. Why do they need to change maps now? Well, Sean, these maps are about congressional districts, not statehouse districts. Rick and Largo says, bottom line is redistricting erodes democracy by politicians picking their voters rather than voters picking their political representatives. Rick concludes perhaps we should abandon our representative democracy for a direct democracy.

Well, we do have that here certainly in some types of races and some offices. continue the emails here radio at the florida roundup dot o rg radio at the florida roundup dot org i'm tom hudson and you're listening to the roundup from your florida public radio station support for florida roundup comes from the everglades foundation working to restore and protect florida's one trillion dollar asset that helps to bring clean water to floridians learn more at everglades foundation dot org this is the florida roundup i'm tom hudson terrific to have you along as The crow flies, it's about 2,200 miles from Kennedy Space Center here in Florida to the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. But the space capsule integrity took a swing around the moon first, traveling almost 700,000 miles by the time the crew returned last Friday night. Copy Splashdown, waiting on VLDR.

Splashdown confirmed at 707 p.m. Central Time, 5.07 p.m. Pacific time. It was the first crude trip to fly around the moon since 1972, and the first in the Artemis Moon Exploration Program planned to blast off from Florida over the next couple of years. From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrities astronauts, back on Earth. I was driving and thank God we were at a red light when the splashdown happened, but I picked up the phone that looked at.

That's Braynard Harris. He's a teacher at Stuart Middle Magazine. school in Hillsborough County. He teaches aerospace technology to eighth graders. Artemis too was not his first moon mission. I still distinctly remember where I was when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I was in my granny's living room, which is about a quarter of a mile from where I live now. The house is no longer there, but I can still take you and point to the spot on the on the dirt where I would have been sitting because I remember it that vividly. One goal of the return to the moon missions is to inspire the next generation of astronauts and space

industry workers, workers who may be in Harris's classroom in Florida today. We push math, higher level maths early, so our sixth graders take six, seventh, and eighth grade math in sixth grade, so that they can then take algebra one in seventh grade so they can take geometry in eighth grade so they're prepared for those higher level courses. Now, most Florida eighth graders are doing math at their grade level or better, about 57%. That's according to state testing. But a different national assessment found Florida math scores among eighth graders dropping over the past 20 years and well below the national average.

The state argues that measurement excludes private schools. Most of the kids think that, you know, our space endeavor, we only need the engineers, but we also talk about all the support roles and all those kind of things. So to go to space, you know, it takes accountants. It takes, you know, environmental people. You know, so we do a lot of that. Harris's background is not space. It's not math.

It's not science. It's music with a little computer science thrown in when he entered the workforce back in the late 1980s. The job offers I got other than in music education were from, IBM and Harris Computer Corp for programming. And I had no experience in that other than, you know, two courses in my freshman year. I didn't reach out to them. They reached out to me.

And I was like, why are you reaching out to me? And the answer was because musicians know how to be creative within a framework. So in addition to teaching aerospace, Harris also teaches middle school orchestra. The kids in my class who are also in band or orchestra or chorus, they grasp a lot of the, for the AI course, a lot of the programming things quicker than the students who are just in the STEM courses because they understand that creativity within framework, that, you know, this leads to that.

So don't forget the melody and the music on the way to the moon. And then Mars. The next step will be Artemis, Three. Work is already well underway at the Kennedy Space Center along the space coast. Brendan Byrne, with our partner Central Florida Public Media, has more. NASA's John Giles oversees the crawler transporter, the massive vehicle that moves the mobile launch pad, and the SLS rocket that launches Orion from the hangar to the launch site. His team is preparing to move the launch platform from the Artemis II mission into the

vehicle assembly building to begin working on the rocket for Artemis 3. We really haven't had too much time to relax and reflect on Artemis 2 other than thinking what a perfect accomplishment it was. And, yeah, moving right into Artemis 3. So no risk for the wary. It's moving on. The large fuel tank for the SLS rocket will arrive at the Kennedy Space Center later this month. And other parts of the rocket are already at KSC.

Artemis 3 aims to launch next year. It'll stay in Earth orbit while testing spacecraft that are designed to land humans on the moon. NASA says the naming of that crew will come soon. I'm Brendan Byrne, Orlando. Here on Earth and in the sunshine state, plenty of sunshine, not many clouds or rain. In fact, it's been a very dry and smoky week in parts of Florida. There have been dozens of wildfires throughout the state this week. Most of these are quite small, but one in Collier County grew to almost 1,700 acres.

Another one in Alachua County near the Gainesville Airport has burned more than 300 acres. Firefighters continue battling those fires on this Friday. Black lest or rainy season, no tropical cyclones, and a winter spring period with very few heavy. rain events that's caused a rainfall deficit to mount. Vegetation is dry and when you have stretches of windy days and low relative humidity like we've had recently, you've got a prime environment for wildfires. That's Megan Borowski. She's a senior meteorologist at the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. We are coming to the end of our typical dry season, but what's not normal is the severity of the dryness. There's parts of North Florida and the panhandle that are in a

rainfall deficit of about 10 to 15 inches for the past six months. And those past six months rank among the top five driest on record. When you look at a drought map of the entire state of Florida, down here where I am in South Florida, at the very tip of the peninsula, the National Weather Service calls our conditions abnormally dry. And that's an improvement. It's only after three to six inches of rain in recent weeks.

Most of the state is considered an extreme or exceptional drought. And the rainy season, the rainy season is still about a month away. The rest of the month that April is looking dry, so the drought may worsen over the next few weeks. But once we get to mid-May and it, into June. rainy season should start to kick in, but it's going to take a while for rainfall to replenish all that we're missing and then to catch up to what's quote-unquote normal. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Rondo from your Florida Public Radio Station.

A theater project in Sarasota brings together black and Jewish people, young and old, to exchange personal stories of overcoming racism and anti-Semitism. The idea is rooted in a friendship that bloomed decades ago during the civil rights movement between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Carrie Sheridan has the story from our partner, WUSF, in Tampa. Betty Zerrett is the Director of Holocaust Education Programming at the Jewish Federation in Sarasota. Like many in the world today, she saw a problem. There's so much anti-Semitism and racism that's raising its ugly head, not that it ever went away,

but it's definitely been given a voice. She wanted to find a way to revive an alliance that took shape in the 1950s and 60s. among black and Jewish people in the United States. So she called Walter Gilbert, who grew up in Newtown and led the local chapter of the NACP. The persecution that black people were getting, the Jews were getting that too from certain parts of our community. You know, they hated the Jews just as much as they hated blacks. And we did come together as two groups to fight those injustices during the civil rights area. They came up with an idea for a new project called Impact Theater.

Black high school students would meet Holocaust survivors. Jewish students would talk to black people who live through segregation. The purpose was to learn history from someone who went through it. Three years ago, they launched the program. Gilbert, who's now 74, was one of the elders that first year. That one-on-one experience with this kid asking really personal type questions about my lived life and coming from, not a critiquing thing, but wanting to know.

I got very emotional. I broke down. I was dropping water. I was crying. The reason it's so powerful is they're sharing things with teenagers that they themselves suffered as children, things they often haven't been able to talk about for decades. Shepard Englander is the CEO of the Jewish Federation in Sarasota

and connects Holocaust survivors with the program. It's only been in their later years that they have, realize that as painful as it is to talk about the horrors of losing their parents and siblings in front of them and having to live in holes or underbuildings or in the forest, that it's their responsibility to make people understand what happens when society breaks down and good people don't fight for each other. One of the Holocaust survivors is Helga Melmitt. She's 98 and was born in Berlin. As part of the Impact Theater program, she went on a trolley tour of Newtown with other Jewish elders, black teenagers, and local historians. And we went to see some of the places in

Sarasota where black people could and couldn't go. They can now, but the beach was prohibited to them. Melmed remembers when certain places became off-limits for Jews, too, like movies, parks, and stores. Then, Nazis burned down her school. She says when it was time to share her story with a local teenager, she told of how she was sent to a labor camp in Poland called the Lodz Ghetto and nearly died of starvation. My father was killed in the ghetto by the soldiers for target practice, and my mother got very sick and passed away on my birthday. She was 14 then, and she tells this story to teenagers now so they can learn from history. Because it's important to think things out for themselves and do the right thing rather than just follow the crowd.

The students are moved by the experience and create a piece of art, poetry, or dance based on what they learned. The culmination of the program is a performance where students share their art. Grace Prophet is a sophomore. She interviewed three of the Holocaust survivors as part of the project and chose piano two. to play in their honor. Knowing my history and what my people went through when they were persecuted and hearing what they went through during the Holocaust made me realize that we didn't go through similar things, but we experienced similar emotions and breakthroughs.

The students showcased their art, music, and dance at the Jewish Federation. I'm Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota. And that is our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WLRN. in Miami and WUSF in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Denise Royal. WLRN's vice president of radio is Peter Maers. The program's technical director is M.J. Smith. Engineering help each end every week from Doug Peterson, Harvey Bissard, and Ernesto J.

Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at Aaronlevos.com. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening, and above all, supporting public media in your slice of Florida. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend. Support for Florida Roundup comes from the Everglades Foundation, working to restore and protect Florida's $1 trillion asset that helps to bring clean water to Floridians. Learn more at evergladesfoundation.org.