The Florida Roundup - The Epstein files, Keeper and Killer podcast and weekly news briefing 

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke about the latest in the push to release the Jeffrey Epstein files with the Miami Herald’s Ben Wieder (00:00). Then, we spoke with U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, who represents the district where Epstein lived and operated (14:06). And we shared an excerpt from WLRN's new four-part podcast series exploring mental illness and the criminal justice system through one family’s tragic story (19:50). Plus, Douglas Soule with "Your Florida" joined us for an update on the Florida House’s proposals to reduce or eliminate property taxes (32:52). Later, a look at educational news from around the state (37:28) and a look back at the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network's Megan Borowski (44:34).

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 Danny Rivera. Tom Hudson is out this week. You can call us and text us throughout this show for at 305-995-1800, or email

us at Radio at the Florida Roundup.org. Now, Jeffrey Epstein, Florida's most infamous sex offender. Ever since the Miami Herald investigation in 2018 highlighted the sweetheart deal Epstein reached with prosecutors in Palm Beach County, Epstein has been a ghost that has haunted the politicians and the powerful in this country. Epstein's closest associate sent to federal prison, a top cabinet member resigned. A member of a member of of the royal family in the United Kingdom was stripped of his titles. Countless careers thrown into question. But what the victims of Epstein have been calling for is a full accounting of everyone involved, a full release of all the records about what actually happened in Palm Beach all those

years ago. This week, those victims had a major victory when Congress nearly unanimously voted to release the files. President Donald Trump's name is all over the Epstein emails released earlier this month, and he called for the entire thing a hoax until he reversed himself under the threat of defections from his own party, and now he says he wants to release the files, and he signed the release of those files into law. Joining me now to talk about this is Ben Wheater, investigative reporter in McClatchy's Washington Bureau, and

for the Miami Herald. Ben, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. So first question to you, you know, you and in the team really at the Miami Herald and McClatchy, I've been at the very forefront of reporting about abuses committed by Jeffrey Epstein. You know, your team really broke this all open with these investigations in 2018 and you've been following the fallout since then. How significant is the nearly unanimous vote to release the files this week i do think it's significant because um you know it is a signal that um politicians are finally saying hey we need to really get to the bottom of this you know there have been um there's been reports uh that the justice department

has done looking back on what happened and and trying to characterize whether there were whether there was prosecutorial misconduct and how they handled this case in the first place. But being able to see everything allows people to make up their own minds. And we saw, for example, when they released a report several years ago on that, the executive summary that was initially released to the public

painted a rosier picture of the conduct or at least was less critical of the prosecutors making the key decisions than the full report, which was not publicly released, but which we obtained. So I think, you know, that is, you know, that is one example of why I think it is important that we see all the material so that people can make their own decision and not have these things summarized by officials who, you know, may have an interest in protecting their colleagues. Right. And with the more information, I mean, through summaries, a lot of information gets

stripped out, of course. And then, you know, when you can see the whole picture. there might be details that are pertinent right um so a lot of big names are in the most recently released emails uh just earlier this this month and the back and forth with academics like larry summers and noem chomsky um have made a lot of headlines um i mean what's the fallout been from some of those mentions and does that give us a taste or does that give us a you know a hint of what might be coming when more documents are released down the line yeah i think it does absolutely i mean i think the key thing to remember about the emails that came out last week is that these were emails which were all uh the earliest emails were from 2009

and the significance of that is that these were all emails after geoffrey epstein is a convicted sex offender so anyone who is in these emails conversing with geoffrey epstein is on you know full full you know should be should be well aware of exactly what he's been accused of and obviously you know as you reported um you know he negotiated a deal that that minimized both the consequences uh and the charges that he ultimately pleaded guilty to but but regardless i mean his conduct is not a mystery or a secret you know if you're president trump if you're former president bill clinton you know you can say hey i knew the guy but i knew the guy before he was ever convicted of anything um you know once i found out you know once i realized who he was i

I stopped talking him. You can make that claim. If you're conversing with him after 2009, if you're palling around with him, as we saw so many of these people doing, who knew full well who this guy was. And you mentioned President Trump. You know, the President Trump was mentioned more than anyone else

in the dump from the House Oversight Committee earlier this month. But, I mean, there was no direct communications with him that we saw in that to is that right absolutely no it there was not and it's interesting i mean epstein is sort of positioning himself as as kind of like someone who who just intuitively knows knows more about trump than anyone who kind of knows where the bodies are buried he's positioning himself is almost like this trump whisperer but you know it's hard to to tell from these emails you know does he really know what he's talking about or is he just kind of you know puffing himself up and making himself sound like he knows more than he actually does

I mean, remember, this is a guy who palled around with Nobel Prize winning scientists and liked to pretend that he knew as much about their subjects as they did. So, you know, this is a guy who was not shy about boasting about his own, his own knowledge, whether it was legitimate or not. And, you know, in the previously released emails, there were, I mean, I searched through them, and there are a lot of people mentioned in them, sometimes in passing, sometimes just people in these very wealthy circles in Palm Beach County. and whatnot. Have we seen any fallout of all of people that are just kind of mentioned in the same breath as, you know, or emails from Epstein? Well, already we've seen Larry Summers, who the former treasury secretary, former president of Harvard, Harvard is trying to sort of distance himself from him. I mean, it's not news that Larry Summers and Epstein had a relationship. That was known already. But when you see the, when you actually see the emails, when you see the communication

between them. You know, Larry Summers at some point is like asking him for dating advice. When you see the, you know, the degree to which this, they were, they were not just, these weren't just casual acquaintances. Because in the past, a lot of academics have said, well, you know, Jeffrey Epstein was a wealthy guy. We were trying to raise money from him. And they would sort of try to present it as well. This was just me doing my job, you know, on behalf of my institution. But when you see that there, there is what appears to be a real friendship there, I think it puts it in a different light. And you do start to, I think a lot of institutions like Harvard, you know, they start to say, well, hey, is this someone we do want

associated with our institution? If, you know, this is the judgment he showed in continuing, you know, a relationship with someone like Epstein that was, again, not merely a professional relationship, but appears to have been very much a personal relationship. And Ben, you know, so many of these really horrific things that, that Jeffrey Epstein did, you know, a lot of this took place here in Florida. A lot of the victims lived here at the time, obviously. This is very much for us here a local story. What have the victims and survivors responded

to this vote to release these files? I think they're happy that they are out. I mean, it's interesting. There have been a few rallies in Washington with victims of EPS And, you know, one of them, one of the, one of the victims that said, you know, listen, we weren't necessarily asking for Epstein to be back in the news. You know, it can be traumatic to be, you know, going to checkout at the supermarket and seeing, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, your abusers face on magazines at the checkout aisle. I mean, that that's not something that victims necessarily ask for. But I think, I think there's a sense that, you know, hey, if we're going to have this conversation, let's let's have it. Let's let's let's have the conversation we've been trying to have now for two decades. Let's try to get all this information out. You know, they were kept out of the process, you know, when Jeffrey Epstein negotiated his deal with prosecutors, you know, nearly 20 years ago. And if the information, you know, at this point, you know, their argument is, you know, we were never given the full picture.

Well, let's finally get the answers we've been searching for for two decades because, you know, if nothing else, you know, I think they'd like the world to see what happened to them and have a full accounting for who is accountable for it. And, you know, there are, President Trump just rather recently did order some investigations into Democrats mentioned by these files. So there are, on some level, open investigations that could be reflective in these documents. Could that result in some kind of a loophole with what gets released or what it gets withheld or redacted from the public seeing what's in there? That's certainly a concern. And I think, I think, you know, it could be used to justify not releasing information. And I'm sure for the victims, that would be a frustrating outcome. Because, again, to have all of this dragged into the news again,

to have, you know, the most traumatic moments of their lives kind of brought back into the public eye, and then to yet again not get the accountability and the transparency that they've been fighting for for decades, I think would be devastating for many of them. So it remains to be seeing what will be out there. But there are so many questions we have about, you know, the initial investigation, what missed opportunities there might have been along the road. And then ultimately, the second investigation that led to a second round of charges against that scene, there are so many questions we have that these files could answer. But yeah, it's a real question as to what will actually be in there when they release it. And so what's the next step in this process?

Do we know any timelines or things of that sort? They were supposed to be. So the initial, the way that the bill that was signed, they were supposed to be released within 30 days. So we'd be talking about sometime in mid-December is when they should theoretically be coming out. But again, it sort of depends on what will be in there, whether it would all come out at once.

Obviously, the Justice Department has said in the past that a lot of the material contains the names of many victims. And so they would try to redact that information to protect the names of these victims from coming out. Now, theoretically, you know, the Justice Department has had this material for a while and has known that this day could be coming for quite some time. So you would think they would have already started doing some of that work. But, you know, we'll see if as we get to that 30-day mark, if they try to argue that they need more time to redact the material. But certainly that's the expectation that it would be coming out in the next few weeks.

And numerically, do we know or have an idea of how many documents we might be talking about here? It's a good question. I don't know off top of my head, but it would be thousands. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, this most recent batch of emails was more than 20,000 documents. So you'd have to think that you're talking about many, many thousands of pages of documents that would be coming out in this time. I mean, you know, I covered closely the Galea Maxwell trial. And, you know, they talked about just the reams of material that the government had in its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend and accomplice, Gleine Maxwell. So if that's a any indication, there's going to be massive amounts of information that will be released. And, you know, you're based in D.C. Releasing all these Epstein documents has, from my vantage point, oddly enough, become one of the most bipartisan issues in the country today. There really is strong bipartisan support on getting all this out there, airing it out in public, letting people have an eye in a window into what really went on.

How is this all playing out in the nation's capital? I mean, it is remarkable. It is one of the few times when you really seen, you know, stalwart, you know, Maga, you know, Make America great figures like, like Marjor, Taylor Green, directly challenge President Trump. I mean, it's truly remarkable that this is the moment, this is the issue that has, has caused some of these legislators who otherwise have been, you know, among President Trump's most vocal supporters to come out and question him, I think it's,

I think it is remarkable. And I think, you know, one thing that's remarkable about these emails, for example, is the relationship that Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon, one of the architects of MAGA, appear to have had. So it is a remarkable moment in the MAGA movement, which, you know, at this point we date back to about a decade. It's really kind of a civil war moment potentially. And, you know, that's been fascinating to watch. Ben Wheater is an investigative reporter in McClatchy's Washington Bureau and for the Miami Herald. Ben, thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me.

Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel represents Palm Beach County in Washington. We spoke to her yesterday about the vote to release the records and what that means for her district, where many of Epstein's crimes took place. Congresswoman, thanks for coming on and talk with us. Yes, happy to be with you. So this was a big week in Washington, to put it lightly on this topic of Jeffrey Epstein and the reverberations of the many court cases and whatnot. So many of these crimes and alleged crimes took place in your backyard in your district. What's your reaction to things getting to this point? I say this is a step towards justice for these thousands of women who are.

young girls when they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and most likely by many of his associates. You know, as we look to this next chapter and the release of some of these records, if not all of them, do you hope or expect that this will be the final chapter of the story? Or is this the start of a new chapter of, you know, this really unfortunate saga that's happened in your district? You know, I think this is a very good message of just standing up. to power. You know, common sense tells me that terrible, awful things go on all the time all over the world. So this isn't going to stop all that. But given the acrimony of the day, it was at least some comfort to see bipartisan, you know, in the Congress. And I mean, I think there was only one vote

against doing this coming together to release these files. And again, I want to just stress this. This should not be politicized, and this is about justice for these young women. And Congresswoman, you mentioned that one vote against it. It was Louisiana Republican Representative Clay Higgins. He was the only one that voted against releasing these files. And he said, in defense of his vote, he said, quote, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files released to a rabid media will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt.

And in the emails released just a few weeks ago, many of your constituents, wealthy people in Palm Beach County, were mentioned, sometimes just in passing. My question to you is, how do you anticipate that aspect of it, with the release of records involved with the Epstein cases? How do you expect that will be received in some of these wealthy circles in your district? You know what? I really am not a fortune teller. I do not know. I think, listen, it should never have had to come to this. But I do think, number one, had the prosecutors been forthcoming,

if the Palm Beach County prosecutors had been subpoenaed to testify under oath, had the Palm Beach Police Chief been brought in to testify under oath, had the Palm Beach County Sheriff been brought in, I think a lot of this could have been revealed. I mean, there is, there is a very important, question. Why did this happen? Why did this man get a slap on the wrist? The public deserves to know this because this can never happen again. I think it is very, I mean, listen, it is not a good thing that people who, you know, what you call innocent people or people who might have bumped

into Epstein at Mara Lago, all of a sudden they get their names drained into that. That is very, very, very unfortunate. It is likely to happen. Do you recognize that? You know, because I have not really read any of that, I don't know. But this is one of these situations where it's not going to be perfect, but there has been a tremendous injustice. And I think we all, not just the, you know, the victims, the survivors, but the public, I mean, I know, I want to know.

I want to know why did my local prosecutors do it? what they did. I'm just telling you, it was shocking to me when I read this transcript. And I know some of them, and I just, I was astounded. We deserve answers. Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel represents much of Palm Beach County in Washington. Representative, thank you so much for your time and for coming on. You're welcome. Thank you for checking in. And we will continue to follow these developments closely over the coming weeks. Still to come on the floor, Florida Roundup, a new four-part podcast looks at a young man's struggle with mental illness and what justice looked like for him after he committed an unthinkable time. And we'll get

an update on state lawmakers' efforts to reduce or eliminate property taxes. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. We'll be right back. 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. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Danny Rivera.

Next week, our winter reading special. Here from three authors, including Carl Hyacson, who spoke to us about the difficulty of separating Florida from fiction in his novels. Join us to hear that conversation and more next week. Now, mental illness and the criminal justice system. You're about to hear an excerpt from a new four-part series from our partner station, WLRN, in Miami. The name of the podcast is Keeper and Killer, and it follows the story of a horrific murder in the Florida Keys. WLRN's Jenny Stolettovich takes it from here.

When Ariel Paholic picked the gravesite for his youngest son, Pascal, he decided on a wind-swept corner, a big coppick key, in the lower keys. This pot was available on the corner, the, what is it, the north-west corner. Mangroves and mudflats border one side, the gulf and miles of mostly undisturbed backcountry, lie to the west. The cemetery is one of only two in the lower keys, a place where most people come to escape suffering and death. Beyond the graves, seagrass meadows cradle the island, clouds sail over and off toward the horizon.

Pascal was a great lover of nature. He loved the environment and cared about the environment. And within the context of this terrible heart-wrenching tragedy, having him be buried in a place that would have, have some meaning to his life and to us remembering him was important. This is Keeper and Killer, a new podcast from WLRN that examines how a brother's murder in the Florida Keys test the criminal justice system. It won't be an easy story to listen to. Pascal was murdered by his older brother who was plagued by mental illness.

It's every family's very worst nightmare. Court records show years of discord and dysfunction ending in unthinkable violence. So why are we telling you this story? Because we wanted to try to understand how a kid spirals out of control. We wanted to understand how mentally ill people are treated in a criminal justice system designed for the mentally fit, and the reality of the decisions that judges, prosecutors, mental health experts, and parents are forced to make. I'm Jenny Stilettovich. I'm the Environment Editor at WLRN.

My beat led me to this story when the brother's dad, a fisheries biologist, told me what his family had been through. So I started talking to the family and experts, looking at records and following the trial. Over the course of these four episodes, I dive into this case and this family's story. Pascal's family decorated the grave with hand-painted stones and conch shells. His dad, Ariel Paholic, hung wind chimes. Pascal's mom left a tiny engraved bench. It reads, if tears could build a stairway, I'd march up to heaven and bring you home again. On the afternoon Pascal was buried, a few dozen people gathered at the cemetery.

Because of COVID, the mourners stood apart from each other at an awkward distance. Members of Pascal's Boy Scout troop attended in uniform. Ari wore his, and Pascal was buried in his. And they all took off their neckerchiefs and laid them on top of his casket when he was buried. One of the attendees took a video. It can be difficult to listen to. Pascal's mom, Jocelyn of Ovomo Naguima,

ask why and speaks in Fong, her first language from her homeland in Central Africa. Why? How can such a simple question be so hard to answer? Jocelyn believes one day her older son Daniel will tell us. There's something way underneath this. I believe Daniel has a story to tell. It's just to hear it for him.

12 days before the funeral on May 7th, 2020, Daniel Weisberger murdered Pascal, his little brother. It was the middle of the night while he was asleep in his bed in the room that they shared. Daniel used a knife to cut his brother's neck, nearly in half. Daniel was 17. Pascal was 14. They'd grown up sharing a room their entire lives and were as close as two brothers could be.

But as Daniel got older, he became increasingly more impulsive and aggressive toward his little brother, who was autistic. Daniel's mental illness deepened and eventually left him enraged. Lawyers later described the boy's lives as a pressure cooker, engulfed by a bitter divorce and decade-long custody battle. Both had regularly seen doctors and therapists for their mental help. But while Pascal seemed to thrive as he grew into a teenager, Daniel worsened. In the days after the murder, the islanders came together to memorialize Pascal in big and small ways. The upper keys may be a chain of islands, but it feels more like a small town.

Jenny Stoletovich is the environmental editor at our partner station, WLRN, in Miami. Jenny, thanks for coming on to talk about the podcast. Thanks for having me. So one of the judges you interview in the story says something haunting and revealing, and kind of about the shocking crime that you're dealing with here. Former Miami-Dade Administrative Judge Steve Lifman tells you, people don't just break. And a lot of this podcast is an exploration of how true that is

and how there's always a trail of clues about something like this, foreshadowing. Why is that something that you wanted to explore? Because I think it's true. You're right. They don't just break, as Judge Lifeman told me. And this, for me, was really kind of a case study. And I wanted to humanize this story. But we wanted to try to understand how this happened.

You know, what were the steps that led to this? What was this kid's history and this family's history? And you were right. There were many, many clues, and they went back years. And what kind of upbringing and conditions did Daniel Weisberger, who committed this awful crime have that contributed to reaching this breaking point? So he had been diagnosed very young with mental health issues and through the years saw different therapists, psychiatrists, doctors repeatedly as his behavior worsened. He was in and out of doctors' offices.

He underwent some treatment, but as one psychologist told me, he never got the right treatment. And that seemed to be one of the flaws in the system that Judge Lifeman alludes to that quite often, especially with kids, it's very hard to accurately diagnose them and get the treatment. Daniel was born on the Gulf Coast but moved to the Treasure Coast to Martin County when he was really young. And then his parents divorced had a pretty long drawn-out divorce and custody battle. The father ended up getting custody and moved the kids to the keys, to the upper keys. There are not a lot of services in the upper keys. They were mostly seen at a free mental health clinic by a licensed mental health counselor, sometimes a psychiatrist, they had the same pediatrician.

But I think that highlighted the struggle for getting this kid the right care that may have altered the course of the story. and how common is it for someone to plead not guilty by reason of insanity for any case or a murder for that for that matter and what does that actually look like in practice in the state of florida Florida uses something called the McNaughton rule, which is a 200-year-old rule that still exist, and hasn't changed very much. And I think that complicates it. It's fairly rigid. The rule is that if you didn't know what you were doing or didn't know it was wrong, you can qualify for this not guilty by reason of insanity. It's rarely successful. I've heard one of the attorneys told me only. 2% of cases succeed. When I looked into it, the statistics, though, are not even reliable. And that was another factor that, you know, it was interesting about this case, because if there's no avenue for people who are severely mentally ill to deal with the criminal justice system,

what happens to them? And in the first episode, you talk about a notorious case, the case of Kenny White, who is a 12-year-old in Miami who killed his brother and his mother in 1983. But White was not sent to prison. He was given treatment and placed on probation for 40 years. And miraculously, Kenny White turned his life around. And the judge in that case told you, there's got to be a moral to the story. What do you see as the moral to the story that you tell in this podcast, which parallels that story in a lot of ways? Oh, good question. I often found myself, one, what is the moral of the story and what is the answer and what what do people have to learn from

this because it is such a tragic story it was so hard on everyone involved was rehashing it really going to help people and judge Gerston provided some some guidance on that I was really glad I got a chance to talk to him because I wanted to know you know how did he reach that decision there's a lot of factors that go into when there when a horrendous crime is committed instead of choosing incarceration, giving a defendant a treatment plan, because ultimately the goal is to get them better and get them to a point where they can have a productive life. Judges, though, also face consequences for their sentences.

So if they give a sentence like this and somebody is released from incarceration or whatever kind of confinement they have and they commit another crime, that's on that judge. And Judge Gerson was very, very cognizant of that. And I even after the sentence was announced, I contacted him again. And he sent me a very brief response that just said, the story is not over. So Florida has executed 16 people this year, more than double the previous record for the state in a single year. Florida's leading the nation in executions.

And according to Governor Ronda Santis, who just signed the death warrant for another execution this week, the justification is law and order and bringing justice. to families, to the victim's families, in his words. The story you tell complicates that narrative when we're thinking about what justice really means. Right, right. Justice for the victims. In this case, the victim was the family. Right. Justice for society. How do you keep a society safe? But how do you treat people who are sick and needy and vulnerable who have an illness and a treatable illness, what's justice for them? And in this case, the judge found Daniel guilty.

But when he sentenced him, he said he clearly has suffered enough mental illness to have impacted his behavior. And he also said a sentence should be defined both by the defendant and the crime. They're all different. Jenny Stilettovich is the environmental editor at WLRN in Miami and the host of the new podcast Keeper and Killer. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Jenny, thanks for coming on.

Thank you, Danny. I'm Danny Rivera. You are listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. Turning now to property taxes, this week, a Florida House Committee advanced a series of property tax proposals. Douglas Sol is with the Your Florida Reporting Project

with our partner station, WUSF. Doug, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So, Doug, there's eight measures that have gotten the green light to move forward so far. Which are the most substantial ones on reducing property taxes? There is now a legislative staff analysis for each of these proposals. They show projected fiscal impacts. Inphasis on projected, the one expected to have the biggest, most immediate impact is one that would eliminate homestead property taxes except for those going to local schools that would have an annual fiscal impact of more than $18 billion in tax revenues. There's another version that would phase that homestead property tax out over time.

Other plans increase exemptions and one slows down how much your assessed taxable value on your home goes up. And you mentioned $18 billion estimated impact if one of these goes into effect. Charles Chapman with the Florida legal cities said that the proposals, quote, create instability, increase taxpayer inequities, and risk the quality of life for residents who choose to live in states. What does he mean by that? So it's not just Chapman saying this. Many local officials from different political ideologies even are saying similar things. Property taxes fund a lot of local government services. Cutting that funding, unless that money is

somehow raised elsewhere, is going to mean there has to be cuts. The proposals do say the cuts can't be made to law enforcement. But there's a lot of other services communities provide. A lot of people would love to pay less taxes, I'm sure. But a lot of people will likely be taken aback if the quality of their trash service or parks, for example, the benishes. Right. Or even something like libraries here in Miami-Dade County are paid through property taxes. So that's- Yeah. Yeah. And these are all concerns local governments have. And so does anyone think that all of these options on the table will survive, or do we expect some of them to die off over time? We don't know what the Senate wants to do.

I asked Senate President Auburn's spokeswoman yesterday, and I haven't got an answer, nor has anyone. House lawmakers leading the charge on this are making it clear that we're still early in the process. The session doesn't start until January, and that session doesn't end until March. We don't know if all of these plans will survive to more directly answer your question. We don't know if any of them will, because there could be something entirely new pitched. Right. And Governor DeSantis clearly wants to get a big win on something related to

property taxes. And this will be his final session as Florida governor. What does he say about these proposals on the table now? Governor Ron DeSantis is going to be very, very angry if something doesn't make it on the ballot. DeSantis does not like how there's this big list of proposals, though. He only wants one to make it on the ballot. More than one, he believes, means risking them all to fail. Property tax reductions, mind you, do have to be approved by voters and, you know, they have to approve, they have to receive 60% of the vote from them. And did any of these measures receive bipartisan support or were they mostly, the votes mostly along party lines? This is not bipartisan, at least from what I saw at the meeting where they approved these proposals in

the property tax committee yesterday. Democrats in the House are strongly against them for similar reasons that so many local government leaders are. They say the impact of these measures isn't fully understood, but they believe it'll be very bad. Republicans, meanwhile, say the tax. Sorry, we're going to have to leave it here. We will continue to follow these important developments as they move through Tallahassee. Douglas Sol is with the Your Florida Reporting Project with our partner station, WUSF. Thank you so much, Doug. Thanks for having me on. Have a good one. Up next, education news from around the state in a quick look back at this year's hurricane season.

This is the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. We'll be back in a few. 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 Danny Rivera. Three school districts will be part of a new statewide program that uses drones in an effort to improve safety at K-12 schools. From our partner station's Central Florida Public Media,

Danielle Pryor has more. Broward and Leon's school districts and Volusia County schools in Central Florida have been chosen to participate in the Campus Guardian Angel Pilot program. The program will use, used drones designed by the company Campus Guardian Angel to distract and disarm an active shooter in the event of a mass shooting and to collect audio and video of potential threats.

CEO Justin Marston says the drones, which can be deployed from near the ceiling in seconds after a panic button has been activated, use an escalation of force process. So we start off with the siren and we tell the person to drop the gun, lay on the ground, surrender. If they don't surrender, our next step in that escalation is to use pepper spray. Florida is the first state to deploy the technology and is committed $557,000 to the effort. In Orlando, I'm Danielle Pryor. And should local districts build new schools when there's a chance that charter schools could demand space in them? Carrie Sheridan with our partner station WUSF looks at how this debate played out at a recent Hillsborough County school board meeting.

Southern Hillsborough County is growing fast. Schools are overcrowded and the area hasn't built a new middle. school in 15 years. New schools do not open at capacity. They just don't. Board members Stacey Hun urged the board to slow your role, you know, slow it down. Be thoughtful. Be cautious.

She said, just wait a few months until the next legislative session ends. That's because of Schools of Hope, a new law that allows charters to set up inside any public school with unused space rent-free. The public would pay many costs for the charter like food, transport, security, and utilities. Board member Lynn Gray says she met with legislators and the details are being ironed out. There's no definite movement as to what's next

and how it's going to be done. So, you know, what I think about that whole situation, it's evolving and we can't just say no to every project because of what if and what may happen. The board voted five to two to go ahead with building the new schools. One, will be a middle school for about 1,600 kids in Wymama. The other is a new school called Just Elementary on the banks of the Hillsborough River. A new middle school will go up there too at the current site of Stewart Middle. Neither site has received a letter from a school of hope. 22 schools in the county did.

I'm Carrie Sheridan in Tampa. And a bill requiring public elementary school students to be taught and tested uncursive writing is gaining traction in the Florida House. Bill's sponsor Republican Representative Toby Overdorf says many historic documents are written in cursive. In current standards, don't go far enough. I can learn about it. I can the teacher can literally draw a cursive on the board. However, I'm not practicing that cursive as a student.

I don't have that proficiency as a student. The measure was approved by the House last session, but died in the Senate. Researchers at the University of Central Florida are exploring alternative ways to study dementia. which often requires invasive measures like a spinal tap. From Partner Station's Central Florida Public Media, Joe Mario Pedersen tells us how UCF neurologists and musicians are working together on a novel way to better understand brain wellness. That's the sound of the Pegasus String Quartet made up of three graduate students

and a professor from UCF's School of Performing Arts. The musicians are rehearsing for their upcoming performance on Friday, the second of three concerts that are part of a first-time collaboration with the neurology department. In the audience will be healthy patients and patients of varying degrees of dementia. The idea here is to collect their saliva before and after the performance to track their brain's response to the music. If we can improve their brain function by the music, that'd be great. That's Dr. Kiminobu Sagaya, head of UCF's neuroscience department. He's also one of the researchers who developed this new kind of test allowing scientists to use saliva to best.

understand dementia. Segoia says cells carrying biomarkers are found in saliva, and those biomarkers show what neurons are saying to each other, in this case when music is playing. They're using this transmitter to talk in each other, and then if they got excited, we're supposed to see those increase. But medically speaking, all that neuron chatter cannot be heard or seen through simple measures. You don't want to do the spinal tap, right? That's very painful, and then it could be dangerous. An MRI could successfully map the brain and regions affected by dementia and music, but those are costly and the noise from the machine could be distracting and skew results.

How can you put those people while they're praying or they're listening to the music into the function of MRI? That's almost impossible. Sagaya says one of the main goals with this experiment is to hopefully see not only how music affects the brain, but also if certain kinds of music impact the brain differently. That's something he says researchers don't know. Nobody knows yet. But after knowing those, maybe they start listening to those music more frequently in the daily life, and that prevent the progress of the disease.

To help with this study, Sagaya has enlisted his wife, Ayako Yonatane, a violinist who leads the Pegasist string quartet. Yonatane has been teaching classical music at UCF for over 30 years. Because I'm a performer, I don't really. believe I don't, I have that much influence, you know, but I think the music itself has the power. Yonitane will be playing classical music, but also some memorable classic pop songs, too. Like Beatles, Arba, or those things, not Swift Taylor's now, but because people, old people can sort of of have a memory of those pieces. Yonitane and the quartet played a few weeks ago in the first round of experimental trials for

patients and heard that nonverbal patients were responding to the pop classics. So when we did the concert, the first one, people start kind of like sort of moving their hand. Sagaya, Yonatane, and all the researchers working on this project are hoping that these final two concerts glean even more insight into the impact of music on memory loss patients. That was Joe Mario Pedersen with Central Florida Public Media. I'm Danny Rivera, and you're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio Station. The hurricane season is almost over, and it's been a relatively quiet one in Florida.

So, dare I ask, if we can breathe a sigh of relief? Here to help us understand is Megan Borowski. She's a senior meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. Megan, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. So we're nearing the end of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, and it feels like there wasn't much activity. Is that an accurate assessment?

Well, honestly, it's kind of a mixed bag, depending on how you want to look at what happened this season. In terms of number of storms, we had 13 named storms, five hurricanes and four major hurricanes. Now you compare that to normal. Average would be 14 named storms, so we're one below so far this season, seven hurricanes, so we're two below,

but three major hurricanes who were actually one over for that. And then also we had three category five hurricanes this season, which is the second most on record for the Atlantic. So maybe a little bit below average for total storms, but the storms that did develop, a few of them were monsters. And I did say it feels like there wasn't much activity.

And to that point, there were several named storms in the Atlantic this season, but none of them made landfall in Florida or the entire U.S. for that matter. Why? How is that possible? Well, so very early on and in the season, you might not be able to even remember so early. It was right around Independence Day. We did have tropical storms, Chantal, make landfall with South Carolina. But that was it. Thankfully, knock on wood, because we had a heck of a season last season. Part of it would be a big reason is the steering winds in the atmosphere, high pressure over the eastern Atlantic, helping to steer storms away.

And then also toward the last several months, October, namely we had cold fronts and troughs digging into the eastern half of the United States, helping to deflect away storms, most notably Melissa, keeping that storm away from Florida. And how did the season compare to the preseason forecasts? So a little bit lower than what the seasonal forecast thought, at least compared to NOAA. You know, they gave a range of 13 to 19 named storms. So we have 13. So we're kind of, you know, we're in that ballpark. But they predicted six to 10 hurricanes. We got five.

But they predicted three to five major hurricanes. We had four. So just a little bit off in the terms of total number of hurricanes and, you know, lower. on the lower end of total named storms, but I think they did a heck of a job considering we had a couple of curveballs thrown at us during the middle of hurricane season. And can we glean anything from this 2025 season that can help us prepare for the 2026 season that I hate to even call attention to yet? I almost feel like it's too early to make any assessments.

It looks like we're transitioning from an El Niño into a Lanina, which is not the best for us for hurricane season, but a lot of factors that we have to look at during. in the offseason. You'll probably see those preseason outlooks come out early spring of next year. That's when we can really dive in. At this point, I think just knock on wood that we haven't had any impacts in the U.S. and also send support to Jamaica and the islands after getting hit by Hurricane Melissa. Important to remember that. Megan Barowski is a senior meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. Megan, thanks for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Finally on the roundup, with Florida's shorelines largely

spared for this hurricane season, the conditions were ripe for a fruitful turtle nesting season. We're waiting on the final numbers for the nesting season that wrapped on October 31st, but preliminary numbers are looking good. Leatherbacks set a new record this year with 2,022 nests statewide. And though the season is over, make sure to watch out for and give plenty of space to those late nesters. That's our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WLRN public media in Miami and WUSF in Tampa. The show is produced by Bridget O'Brien and Denise Royal. WLRN's vice president of radio is Peter Mayors.

The program's technical director is M.J. Smith. Engineering help from Doug Peterson, Harvey Brassard, and Ernesto J. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at Aaron Leibos.com. If you missed any of today's show, you can download it and pass programs on the NPR app. Thank you for calling and for listening. 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.org.