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Despite market improvement, homeowners still seeing insurance rates rising

One year ago, ABC Action News committed to covering the State of Insurance in Florida, helping you navigate rising rates, dropping policies, and denied claims. We first spoke to Pinellas Park single mom Marisa Borgia in January 2024. Then she told us she had to get two part-time jobs to afford her rising property insurance costs.

Then, she told us from 2020 until 2023, her insurance rates doubled not once, but twice. She printed out copies showing her premium breakdown:

2020 - $763
2021 - $1494
2022 - $1485
2023 - $2909

"I'm absolutely dreading the next renewal coming up," Borgia said. So, almost exactly one year later, we came back to Marisa to see if, despite insurance leaders' claims that the market is improving, her rates are still rising. "This year it went up to $3595," she said. "Another $600 in 2024. So not that we doubled again, but it's still a huge increase." 

DeSantis Picks Florida’s Attorney General to Replace Rubio

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Thursday named Ashley Moody, the Republican state attorney general, to replace Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate, elevating a close ally to Mr. Rubio’s seat after he is confirmed as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s secretary of state.

“I wanted somebody with a demonstrated record of delivering results,” Mr. DeSantis said in Orlando before announcing Ms. Moody as Mr. Rubio’s successor. The announcement came one day after Mr. Rubio’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee went smoothly. He is expected to win confirmation easily in a vote of the full Senate.

Ms. Moody, like Mr. DeSantis, was elected to statewide office in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. She had been seen as a front-runner for Mr. Rubio’s seat, appearing by Mr. DeSantis’s side at recent public events in which she and the governor endorsed the incoming Trump administration’s hard line on immigration.

Ms. Moody, 49, is a fifth-generation Floridian. Before being elected attorney general, she was a circuit court judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa. She had previously worked as a federal prosecutor. Ms. Moody and her husband, a law enforcement officer, have two sons.

Gov. DeSantis urges local, state agencies to get ‘ready, willing and able to assist’ with Trump’s immigration policies

Governor Ron DeSantis held a news conference Wednesday morning to urge state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate and support President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which are anticipated to be announced on day one of his presidency.

During the news conference held in Polk County, DeSantis said the state has an obligation to fully support the federal government with its mission of ending the “illegal immigration crisis once and for all.”

“We gotta be ready, willing and able to assist,” DeSantis said. DeSantis, who called the legislature into a special session on the week of Jan. 27, emphasized the need for new laws to enhance law enforcement’s role in helping the federal government.

DeSantis also expressed his support for a proposed state bill, that would repeal a decade-old law that allows some undocumented immigrant students, known as “Dreamers,” to receive in-state tuition rates at Florida universities and colleges.

Trump adviser says president-elect is exploring options to “preserve” TikTok

Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, said in an interview on Wednesday that the president-elect is exploring options to “preserve” TikTok.

Waltz made the comment when Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked him about a report from The Washington Post that said Trump was considering an executive order to suspend enforcement of a federal law that could ban the popular platform nationwide by Sunday.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a legal challenge to the statute brought by TikTok, its China-based parent company ByteDance, and users of the app. The Justices seemed likely to uphold the law, which requires ByteDance to divest TikTok on national security grounds or face a ban in one of its biggest markets.

“If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear: Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use and has been great for his campaign and getting his message out. But number two, he’s going to protect their data,” Waltz said.