Florida's Latest News

‘Fraudemic 2.0’: Insurance schemes are evolving, not disappearing

A panel of insurance, legal and medical experts at the Florida Chamber’s 2025 Annual Insurance Summit offered a blunt assessment of the state’s fight against auto-insurance fraud: PIP reform worked, but the fraud rings adapted fast.

Moderator Ashley Kalifeh, a Partner at Capital City Consulting, said the long-plagued PIP system — an acronym for the state’s mandated $10,000 personal injury protection coverage — is finally stabilizing as cases with one-way attorneys fees work through the courts. But even the reforms highlight how distorted the old market had become.

Kalifeh noted that one lawyer filed 70,000 PIP lawsuits in 2021, illustrating how lucrative the previous system was to the lawyers the Florida Chamber refers to as “billboard attorneys.”

“Rates are decreasing but the universe of claims that still retain the old fee statute is just whittling down,” Kalifeh said.

While PIP is no longer the primary battlefield, panelists said the exploitation simply shifted over to bodily injury claims.

Bodily injury, or BI, is the part of an auto insurance policy that pays for injuries at-fault drivers cause to someone else in a crash, including their medical bills, lost wages and, in litigation, their attorneys fees and other damages.

There's one more election in 2025. Early voting begins in three Miami-Dade cities

In Hialeah, Miami and Miami Beach, there’s still one more election to go this year. Tuesday, Dec. 9, is the date of the runoff election in those cities, where a handful of races with multiple candidates were undecided in the Nov. 4 general election.

Early voting locations are open this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in all three cities. Secure ballot boxes will be available for voters who wish to drop off a mail-in ballot, too. All mail-in ballots must be received by the Elections Department by 7 p.m. Tuesday in order to be counted. Check below to see the early voting sites in your city.

Hialeah

Early voting in Hialeah will take place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library, 190 W. 49th St.

On Friday, the site will open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday, the site will open at 9 a.m. and close at 4 p.m.

Hialeah voters have two races on the ballot: Councilmember Group III: Jessica Castillo or Gelien Perez Councilmember Group IV: William “Willy” Marrero or Javier Morejon

Kat Cammack's Unauthorized Spending Bill Passes Oversight Committee

Representative Kat Cammack's (R-FL) Unauthorized Spending Accountability (USA) Act has passed out of the House Oversight Committee, which she calls "commonsense."

The bill, which Rep. Cammack introduced shortly after taking office in the new Congressional session in January, puts all unauthorized programs on a pathway to sunset in 3 years and requires any new authorizations or reauthorizations to include a sunset clause, meaning funding must always end once a program is unauthorized.

Additionally, Congress is required to review these authorizations every 3 years, ensuring that programs that were supposed to end years ago do not continue receiving funding.

After all, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found in July that 1,264 authorizations were set to expire at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2025, yet 451 of those programs received $500 billion in continued funding.

"I'm grateful to Chairman Comer and my colleagues for advancing this critical bill," Rep. Cammack said in a statement. "For too long, Washington has allowed billions of taxpayer dollars to flow to programs that haven't been reviewed or reauthorized in years—sometimes decades."

Florida House explores congressional redistricting as Senate waits for Governor’s guidance

The House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting is beginning to consider what a new mid-decade map might look like.

Chair Mike Redondo called Thursday’s meeting an educational “listening and learning” session, in which committee members would be educated on how redistricting works. He noted that committee members don’t know when that decision will come or what it may bring.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for a Special Session in 2026 to focus on redistricting as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in Louisiana v. Callais early next year. That case could overturn prohibitions against racial gerrymandering and invalidate districts drawn to protect minority access.

Because of DeSantis’ Special Session push, Senate President Ben Albritton says he and his Senate colleagues will wait to begin the redistricting process. But Redondo bucked the Governor’s desire to wait, given the timing of elections.

“Given the fact that we are less than a year away from the election, not to mention the fact that the candidate qualifying period for federal offices in late April, it would be irresponsible to delay the creation and passage of a new map, especially until after Session. It would also be irresponsible to any who are called to civil service. And most importantly, it would be irresponsible to the citizens of Florida.”