SUMMARY: Hurricane Milton recently struck Florida, causing record tornadoes and widespread destruction, particularly in South Florida. The National Weather Service confirmed 15 tornadoes, including rare EF3 storms. Homeowners face lengthy recovery processes. Many residents are urged to obtain flood insurance as recent storms complicate claims, with only about 20% of Floridians currently covered. In election news, a survey indicates over half of Florida’s Hispanic voters support Donald Trump, driven by economic concerns. Additionally, community efforts continue to honor the legacy of Rebecca Kurtman, who established “Becca’s Closet,” providing free prom dresses to girls in need, maintaining her dream 20 years later.
In this week’s edition of Headliners: Right now, recovery efforts continue following Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida– as …
SUMMARY: Walt Disney World will open GEO-82, an adult-exclusive lounge at EPCOT, on June 4. Located inside Spaceship Earth, it offers views of World Celebration Gardens and a menu of classic cocktails and small plates. Reservations open May 6 for guests 21+. Special experiences include the GEO-82 Fireworks Experience with views of Luminous The Symphony of Us. The cocktail menu features unique drinks like Caramelized Leek Martini and Brown Butter Old Fashioned, alongside exclusive Bourbon flights and non-alcoholic options. Food offerings include cannellini hummus, artisanal cheeses, funghi flatbread, crab gâteau, and truffled ahi tuna.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-28 07:34:00
(The Center Square) – U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement officers in Miami, working with multiple Florida law enforcement agencies, arrested nearly 800 illegal foreign nationals.
“In a first-of-its-kind partnership between state and federal partners, ICE Miami and Florida law enforcement arrested nearly 800 illegal aliens this week during the first four days of #OperationTidalWave – a massive, multi-agency, immigration enforcement crackdown,” it said.
Among those arrested were “a Colombian murderer, alleged MS-13 and 18th Street gang members and a Russian with a red notice for manslaughter,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a White House press briefing Monday morning.
Florida is the only state in the country where all state and local law enforcement agencies in all Florida counties are participating in ICE’s 287g program. This includes the Florida Department of Law Enforcement state troopers, sheriff’s offices and police departments in all 67 Florida counties.
“I think the main reason why this operation is significant is because it’s the first of its kind,” Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, told ABC News. “It’s one that not only we’ve been doing what we have, but we have surged all our federal partners together along with Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement [and] Removal Operations, which are all the enforcement arms of ICE, but we’re also using all our 287(g) partners in the state of Florida. We’re using state, local and county law enforcement agencies to assist us in our operations.”
Of the nearly 800 arrested, Florida law enforcement officials were involved with 275 arrests of illegal foreign nationals who already had final orders of removal from a federal immigration judge and hadn’t been removed from the country.
In response to the operation, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “Florida is leading the nation in active cooperation with the Trump administration for immigration enforcement and deportation operations!”
“State troopers, local police officers, county sheriffs – they’re our eyes and ears,” Lyons said. “They encountered these criminal aliens out and about during their regular duties, and they’re able to go ahead and identify those public safety threats for us.”
The Trump administration has been prioritizing the most dangerous criminals for removal first, The Center Square reported.
Previous ICE arrests in Florida were of a Cuban intelligence officer and violent foreign nationals previously deported multiple times. They include men from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico who’d been arrested for human smuggling, convicted for violent crimes and previously served prison time, The Center Square reported.
ICE agents also arrested alleged Chinese spies, human smugglers and violent criminals, including a Chinese-Canadian national charged with three counts of using an unmanned aircraft to photograph defense installations and equipment at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations agents are also disrupting maritime smuggling events, arresting illegal foreign nationals from China, Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
In another multi-agency operation in Palm Beach County, ICE and Border Patrol agents arrested illegal foreign nationals with convictions for a range of crimes. Their convictions included drug possession, prostitution, illegal re-entry, resisting an officer, robbery, probation violation, fraud (illegal use of a credit card), larceny, cocaine possession, driving under the influence and possession of stolen property. Those arrested and processed for removal were citizens of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela – all living in the U.S. illegally, The Center Square reported.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
The article emphasizes law enforcement and immigration crackdown efforts, highlighting cooperation between federal and state agencies and focusing on arrests of criminals among illegal immigrants. It presents a perspective that supports strong immigration enforcement and praises government actions, aligning with a center-right viewpoint that prioritizes law and order and stricter immigration control policies.
On Thursday, April 17, a 20-year-old boy, a student, walked around FSU’s sunny campus, firing a handgun. Two dead; six injured.
The response from our elected leaders? The usual: “Thoughts and prayers.”
The governor of the State of Florida said he was “praying,” adding, “We are all Seminoles today.”
First Lady Casey DeSantis: “Praying.”
Sen. Rick Scott: Also “praying.”
The president of the United States called the attack “terrible, a shame,” then blew off any suggestion of gun control reform, saying he’s a “big advocate of the Second Amendment.”
Maybe he missed the praying memo.
I teach at FSU; and that Thursday afternoon, I was locked down in my office.
It was frightening, yes; it was also horribly familiar. This is America: Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Uvalde, Nashville, Parkland.
The Tallahassee Democrat reported that several survivors of the 2018 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting were on campus that day.
Robbie Alhadeff’s sister Alyssa died at MSD: “Something has to change,” he said.
Graduate student Stephanie Horowitz saw people running and knew instantly what was happening.
Jason Leavy was a freshman at MSD when Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people. He knew, too, and started barricading his classroom door.
“It’s the least surprising thing in the world, honestly,” he said.
Every one of those kids has been through multiple active shooter drills. Many faculty have, too.
We are supposed to shove desks against our doors, turn off the lights, “harden” our schools and churches and college campuses and act as though we’re grateful when politicians express their insincere and frankly insulting “sympathy.”
Nobody wants their feeble prayers and, as for their thoughts, if the violence-loving reactionaries in charge of this state were actually capable of thoughts they’d realize things do not have to be this way.
Priorities
From the state Capitol to the U.S. Capitol, politicians shrug: Guns matter more than people; children, high school students, college students — they don’t give the big money to political campaigns.
The Second Amendment trumps all the others.
We’re supposed to accept there’s nothing anyone can do: This is just the way things are.
As The Onion’s evergreen mass shooting headline goes, “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
But the kids ain’t all right; the kids are scared — and furious.
Florida State University students marched to the Capitol on April 23, 2025, less than a week after a gunman opened fire on their campus, calling for legislation on guns and school safety. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
Last Tuesday, a group of FSU students braved the morally noxious fumes of the Capitol to demand sensible gun control, red flag laws, firearm storage legislation — commonsense stuff like that.
Madalyn Probst, president of the FSU College Democrats, said, “The fact that they are able to sit in this place and prioritize weapons over my life, my friends’ lives, and the lives of my community around me is deplorable.”
Problem is, the grown folks in charge don’t care.
“The fact that they are able to sit in this place and prioritize weapons over my life, my friends’ lives, and the lives of my community around me is deplorable.”
– Madalyn Probst, FSU College Democrats
The Florida House has approved a bill allowing 18-year-olds to buy guns, repealing a law they passed after the murders at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.
We don’t let them drink, but hell, they can get themselves a nice Taurus 9mm semi-automatic handgun — just like the one used to kill three and wound five at Michigan State University in 2023.
Here at FSU, you can still see the mountains of flowers and teddy bears where the wounded and dead fell. Yet the governor — who has the emotional intelligence of a poison dart frog —continues to push what he calls “Second Amendment Summer.”
If you’re buying a gun or ammo between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, you don’t have to pay sales tax.
Because we want more people packing heat.
‘Protecting’ children
The FSU atrocity was Florida’s sixth mass shooting and the 27th school shooting in the nation.
This year. So far.
The grown folks in charge are obsessed with “protecting” children from fluoride and potentially life-saving vaccines.
No letting them near books like “And Tango Makes Three,” lest they want to become gay.
No letting them discover trans people and queer people are real and deserving of dignity.
They can’t stand the thought of high schoolers reading Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” or “The 1619 Project,” lest they learn about the horrors of slavery.
They are terrified college students might study sociology, delve into political theories suggesting organizational models for the state that don’t insist our version of rapacious capitalism is the best, or encounter books that challenge religious or cultural orthodoxies.
As for sex, they don’t even want to think about it — unless, of course, the teenaged daughter gets pregnant or the teenaged son gets an STD.
They insist on shielding kids from a slew of normal human realities, but not gun violence.
It’s OK for young people to grow up knowing how to barricade themselves inside a classroom or learn strategies for evading a mass shooter but not appreciate poetry or play a musical instrument or master a foreign language.
It’s OK for them to live scared of that loner kid or that angry-looking guy or some person they can’t see, someone who wants to spill as much blood as possible.
The freedom to get a gun any time for any reason is more important.
So, we have Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Uvalde, Nashville, Parkland, and now FSU.
United Against Hate
One of my students reminded me there was supposed to be a “United Against Hate” symposium in honor of Maura Binkley on April 17.
Maura Binkley was the student shot and killed at a yoga studio in 2018 along with another woman.
The symposium was to promote campus safety, but it had to be canceled.
The FSU building where it should have taken place was a crime scene.
Maura Binkley was murdered by a guy who hated women.
The young man who allegedly walked around campus shooting his classmates hates people of color — he’s a Trump supporter and a white supremacist.
He told a fellow student Black people were ruining his neighborhood.
The United States government manufactures hatred against anyone who’s not a white Christian, embracing violence against its citizens.
Nowhere is safe.
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Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Left-Leaning
This content shows a clear left-leaning bias through its critique of political leaders and policies, particularly those related to gun control and Second Amendment rights. The author condemns the “thoughts and prayers” response from politicians and advocates for stricter gun control measures. The piece also expresses frustration with the prioritization of guns over human lives, while highlighting the inadequacies of current political leadership in addressing mass shootings. Additionally, there is a strong criticism of conservative positions on issues like education, gender, and race. The tone and arguments presented are indicative of progressive viewpoints on these matters.
