Florida's Latest News

Joe Gruters confident GOP is unified, in strong position for 2022

The Republican Party of Florida is “as strong as it has ever been,” Chairman Joe Gruters said Wednesday. He’s confident the party will for the first time overtake Democrats in Florida voter registration very soon.

“We’ll flip Florida by the end of the year, certainly by the election,” he said referencing the 2022 midterm. “That’s a good indication of where the state is going with good conservative leadership from top to bottom.”

That’s an abundance of confidence and enthusiasm from a party chair most recently in the news because of a sexual harassment complaint against him. A third-party investigation cleared Gruters, unable to find any first-hand account to back up the accusation. But when news broke, it fed days of rumors of tumult in Tallahassee.

Ron DeSantis tells Laura Ingraham media ‘misinformation’ on COVID-19 could be hazardous to health

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday’s Ingraham Angle warned against what he called media “misinformation” about the fight against COVID-19, using a roundtable with hospital CEOs from earlier in the day to blame the media for getting details wrong again.

This time around, DeSantis said the media had a narrative that was wrong on both hospital capacity and the risk posed to children by COVID-19. And that narrative could prove harmful to public health.

“It’s important, when media’s spreading this misinformation and actually lying, it could deter someone from going in to get care for things like heart problems and strokes,” DeSantis said.

Florida hospital CEOs say COVID vaccines are working

Hospital leaders across the state came together Wednesday to say COVID vaccines are working.

Although Florida hospitals see an increase in COVID admissions, leaders said patients are mostly young unvaccinated people, not seniors who are a highly vaccinated group in the state.

“Vaccinations absolutely have made a difference,” said Dr. George Ralls, chief medical officer with Orlando Health. “We did see a significant flip in the percentage of patients over 65. For this current wave, about 55% of our inpatients are between 40 and 64 years old.”

At a virtual roundtable Wednesday morning led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s hospitals leaders said they do have vaccinated COVID patients, but they are mostly people with underlying conditions or who are admitted for other illnesses and test positive.

Spirit Airlines says it’s rebooting after days of mass cancellations

Spirit Airlines has issued a statement apologizing to customers and promising a reboot — after four straight days of mass cancellations of flights in Fort Lauderdale and beyond.

The Miramar-based airline blamed “overlapping operational challenges including weather, system outages and staffing shortages” and said they rebooted their system and expect cancellations to progressively decrease over the next few days.

“We’ve implemented a more thorough reboot of the network, allowing us to reassign our crews more efficiently and restore the network faster. As a result, cancellation numbers will progressively drop in the days to come,” the airline said in an emailed statement.