Steve Bousquet
Steve Bousquet has covered state government and politics for three decades at the Sun Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald. He was the Times' Tallahassee bureau chief from 2005 to 2018 and has also covered city and county politics in Broward County. He has a master's degree in U.S. history from Florida State.
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State Health officials reported 3.406 new COVID-19 cases and 22 deaths Monday. Nearly 6.4 million people in Florida have been vaccinated including nearly 2.7 million who have received a first dose and nearly 3.7 million who have completed the series.As of Monday, all adults 18 and older are now eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Sixteen and 17-year-olds also became eligible for the vaccine, Monday, but teenagers are restricted to the Pfizer version of the vaccine and must have parental consent.Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order, Friday, banning businesses from using vaccine passports to require people to prove they’ve been vaccinated in order to receive services.The Florida Legislature is taking up budget proposals this week and how to use Florida’s share of federal funds stemming from the American Rescue Plan remains a point of contention in budget negotiations.Lawmakers in the state House and Senate are considering several pieces of legislation to limit local-government emergency orders, create a personal-protective equipment stockpile and establish an Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund for use by the governor.Sarasota city commissioners are taking steps to reinstate a mandatory mask ordinance amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. -
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried became Florida's first statewide elected official to get publicly vaccinated on Thursday. The only Democrat on the Cabinet went to a testing site at the Al Lawson Multi-Purpose Center on the campus of Florida A&M University. -
Tensions over changes to election laws escalated in the Capitol Monday as Republicans advanced major revisions to voting by mail and counting ballots. As Steve Bousquet reports, those changes drew sharp criticism from Democrats and election supervisors as well. -
Across Florida, in-person voting began Monday in advance of the August 18th primary election as 28 counties, including Leon, kicked off a two-week period of early voting. -
The Florida Department of Health reported 563 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, Wednesday, bringing the statewide total number of cases to 38,002.… -
Hundreds of thousands laid-off workers who can’t get their unemployment money from the state of Florida got more bad news Wednesday. A state judge says she had no authority to order the immediate payment of jobless claims. -
Governor Ron DeSantis has called it “a jalopy” and “a clunker,” and says it was “in tatters.” He’s talking, of course, about Florida’s online system for handling claims for unemployment benefits, which cost taxpayers 78 million dollars and still doesn’t work right. Now, that system is going to be placed under a long-awaited microscope. -
Governor Ron DeSantis has brought in hundreds more state workers. He's added computer servers. He created a paper application system. And still, massive... -
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been a frequent presence on television throughout the coronavirus crisis, and a leading cable TV company wanted to use...
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The Big news in Florida Monday wasn’t only about the pandemic. It was also about one of the state’s most important news outlets, announcing it would...
