Free Republic

Former Florida House District 20 candidate Elijah Manley surrendered to authorities Thursday and was booked into the Broward County Jail on two counts of making written threats to kill or cause bodily injury. Manley, a 27-year-old Democrat, faces the charges over social media posts he made shortly after losing the August election, according to an arrest warrant obtained by CBS News Miami. Investigators said the warrant stems from a series of Facebook posts exchanged between Manley and two other people. According to the warrant, one post said: "Every Democrat needs to get behind the Democratic nominee for Senate. Anybody not...

Imtiaz Mohammad is running as a Republican – but he calls Pakistan his “motherland” and says anything he does will be “related to Pakistan.” After losing as a Democrat, he switched parties. His real goal: elect as many Muslims as possible – commissioners, congressmen, everything – until politicians must come begging the Muslim voting bloc. He wants all Muslims “on one page.” He is not running for Americans. He is running for Islam and Pakistan. Why is the Florida GOP still featuring him? Florida, do better. ... Mohammad, a Pakistani immigrant and former Democrat (Bernie/Squad supporter, ICE abolitionist, sanctuary-state advocate),...

A 71-year-old man was fatally savaged by a 12-foot alligator while fishing on the shoreline in Florida on Friday afternoon. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission identified the victim as Steven Hamilton of Winter Garden, according to FOX35. Emergency crews rushed to the scene at around 5 p.m. after Hamilton was mauled by the beast while on the shoreline of Lake Apopka, 15 miles northwest of Orlando.

When an anti-abortion activist held a sign depicting a fetus in utero with the caption "What about her body and her rights?" to the side of a University of South Florida weekly open-air market, campus police didn't just order him into a so-called free speech zone, as did Tucson, Ariz. police when an evangelist showed up to a nonsectarian Christmas street festival. USF police arrested and jailed Tyler Newton for 14 hours on Sept. 23 at the behest of campus officials for standing with his sign and sharing his "abolitionist" views with passers-by, a new First Amendment lawsuit claims. Describing...

Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to campaign in Florida next week for Democrat David Jolly. This will be Clinton’s first public appearance on the 2026 trail outside of earlier New York events. David Jolly spent the last year calling the Epstein file dump “dripping with depraved criminality” and telling Republicans to do the right thing. Now he’s happy to stand next to Bill Clinton the guy Epstein visited at the White House 17 times, who flew on the Lolita Express 26 times, who paid Paula Jones $850k, and who got impeached over the Lewinsky cigar. The outrage only applies...

A quartet of public opinion polls in recent days show Republican Byron Donalds with a continuing, albeit narrow, lead over Democrat David Jolly in the race for Florida governor. In the U.S. Senate race, Republican Ashley Moody enjoys a larger advantage in her contest with Democrat Angie Nixon. The four polls, all taken within the last two weeks and released in the past week, have different sponsors and methodologies. Taken together they’re positive for Republican candidates but not overwhelmingly so. Donalds and Moody are both ahead, but neither has hit 50% in averages of the surveys. The four-poll average in...

The Atlantic's hurricane drought is over, and it is now the longest on record. Isaias reached hurricane strength over the Gulf Wednesday night, according to the National Hurricane Center. That is later than the first hurricane of any season on record, surpassing the 7 p.m. Oct. 7 mark set in 1905. Isaias is the ninth named storm of 2026. The first eight were all tropical storms, three of them hit the Gulf Coast, and none reached hurricane strength. In mid-September, Tropical Storm Fay came closest to hurricane status, peaking at 70 mph, 4 mph short of the Category 1 threshold....

Republican Byron Donalds holds a 7-percentage-point advantage over Democrat David Jolly in the Florida governor’s race, according to a new NBC South Florida/Telemundo Station Group poll, while Republican Sen. Ashley Moody is up by 10 points in her matchup against Democratic challenger Angie Nixon. Donalds, a congressman from the southwest corner of the state, is at 48% in the poll, compared with Jolly’s 41%, in a race in which Donalds has had a commanding financial advantage. (That advantage is just inside the poll’s margin of error, but Donalds has the edge in most of the range of possibilities.) Moody is...

Nixon, a Jacksonville Democratic Socialist and Florida state representative running against Sen. Ashley Moody in the Nov. 3 special election, released a statement defending the Islamic center and school after a Friday public meeting drew roughly 300 people. The room filled to fire-code capacity, with others waiting in hallways.

Tropical Storm Isaias has formed in the Bay of Campeche. Hurricane Watches will likely be required for a portion of the U.S. northern Gulf coast later today. Additional strengthening is in the forecast. Mash the graphics below to enlarge. All links and images are self-updating. NHC Public Advisories NHC Discussions Tropical Tidbits by Levi Cowan

A US judge dismissed a federal case on Thursday that accused a Jamaican national of illegally voting, finding the law criminalizing noncitizen voting was unconstitutional and delivering a blow to the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged election fraud. The ruling by Miami-based US District Judge David Leibowitz applies only to the case of Florida resident Chelsea Cox, who was charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 election. It is not binding for judges in other cases. It marks a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration on noncitizen voting, a cornerstone of its push to highlight alleged election...

The Brief A man died Friday after being shot by a Pasco County deputy in Hudson following a trespassing call at a local plaza. The man pulled a 7.5-inch butcher knife and refused six orders to drop the weapon before a deputy opened fire, according to deputies. Authorities said the suspect had 18 previous arrests in Pasco County, including 11 felony convictions. HUDSON, Fla. - A man is dead after a Pasco County deputy shot him behind a Hudson shopping plaza Friday afternoon when he refused to drop a butcher knife. Deputy-involved shooting on Little Road What we know: Col....

A US judge dismissed ​a federal case on Thursday that accused a Jamaican national of illegally voting, finding the law criminalizing noncitizen voting was unconstitutional and delivering a blow to ‌the Trump administration's campaign against alleged election fraud. The ruling by Miami-based US District Judge David Leibowitz applies only to the case of Florida resident Chelsea Cox, who was charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 election. It is not binding for judges in other cases. It marks a setback for President Donald Trump's administration on noncitizen voting, a cornerstone of its push to highlight alleged election...

A judge who admitted to hundreds of violations of Florida's judicial ethics code left the bench without suspension or fine and kept a partially taxpayer-funded pension. The Florida Supreme Court noted that Tennis had "written hundreds of checks" in violation of the code's prohibition on political donations. AFlorida judge who retired rather than face disciplinary action will keep her partially taxpayer-funded pension. Diana Tennis, a former judge on Florida’s 9th Circuit Court, retired on September 4, 2026, to avoid being suspended and fined for making more than 900 political donations totaling $29,000 since 2016 – all to Democratic candidates and...

Republican Rep. Maria Salazar (FL-27) recently dropped an ad directly confronting President Donald Trump about his immigration agenda. Salazar has been none too pleased about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, detentions, and mass deportations of certain people and groups, particularly those who had their temporary protected status revoked. However, she made the assumption that she would be cheered on by her voters, Republican moderates and so-called moderate Democrats. A week later, that ad has aged like curdled milk. It seems that Salazar's Miami constituents, for whom she claimed to be speaking, are letting her know that she does...

Americans cannot defend the United States without the help of illegal migrants, said Republican Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) on Monday. Salazar’s comments came as she joined Democrats to tout her “Dignidad” amnesty for at least 15 million illegal aliens, saying: Let them stay … Let them continue contributing to the number one economy in the world, so we can continue being the number one military in the world. [If] we don’t have the economy, we don’t have the guns, and we cannot defend ourselves. There is little evidence that the nation’s stock of at least 15 million illegal migrants —...

Concert Information and Ticket Reservations (tickets are free) CELEBRATING AMERICA ACROSS THE SOUTHEAST: HOMETOWN FAVORITES

A Florida man pleaded guilty for his role in a COVID-era healthcare fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced Thursday. Hasan “Lucas” Seyhun, 45, of Miami, Florida, admitted guilt Wednesday to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud for his part in documenting more than $500 million in fake claims to government-backed health programs, according to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) news release. Seyhun previously served as the chief operating officer of New York-based Fast Lab Technologies (Fast Lab), which provided “no cost” COVID-19 tests during the pandemic that customers could purchase online via the company’s...

A Florida woman who was wrongfully arrested and held in jail for nearly two weeks in connection to a deadly hit-and-run shared her story with U.S. Congress members. Lindsey Isaacs addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism on Wednesday, part of its hearing, called "Always Watching: Flock's Nationwide AI Surveillance Network." What they're saying: "I came here today because I want you to understand that surveillance technology does not exist in a vacuum. Information collected by technology can become part of an investigation that affects a real human being," she said. She's talking about her own story....

Shareholders of The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the paper’s parent company on Wednesday morning, arguing the paper has failed to meet its obligation: to tell readers the truth and correct itself in a timely fashion when it doesn’t. The suit, filed by the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) in New York County Supreme Court, asks a judge to force the Times board of directors to hand over internal records the company has refused to produce for four months, the majority of which pertain to the paper’s...