Florida legislators said they were doing good for the public when they made it harder for policyholders to sue their insurance company over denied claims. They asserted that it would relieve market turmoil, attract new companies and reduce the nation’s highest homeowner rates. That’s highly debatable, because the law (last session’s HB 837) doesn’t require companies to pass along their savings. But that’s their story and they’re sticking to it.

Now, at least one legislator who voted for that bill aims to do well by cashing in. Republican Sen. Joe Gruters approached colleagues about investing in a start-up company, Village Protection Insurance. A solicitation he forwarded described a “unique and lucrative opportunity for investors.”

Gruters, 46, of Sarasota, is a CPA and former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida who was state co-chairman of Donald Trump’s first Florida campaign in 2016. The senator reported a net worth of $2.8 million last year.

Deepening the distrust

Other companies are also luring legislators to invest, according to the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times.

You might be asking, “Is this legal?” The answer is yes. But it’s wrong on two important levels: Public opinion and public policy.

Public opinion of politicians and distrust of institutions is dangerously low throughout the nation. Among the reasons, Pew Research reported, is that 63% of those polled believe that all or most elected officials run for office to make a lot of money.

What Gruters proposes deepens the distrust.

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, alluded to it when he said why he wouldn’t invest in Gruters’ company or in any other.

“I just don’t want to be directly involved with profiting off of what is less restrictive, or more favorable, conditions for insurers,” Pizzo told the Times and Herald. The appearances “probably aren’t great,” but he said policyholders wouldn’t care if their rates come down.

Insurance is highly regulated by a division of the Florida Department of Financial Services, which executes the laws that legislators pass and depends upon them for its appropriations. For legislators to also be investors creates the possibility of improper influence on regulators and self-dealing through lawmaking.

There’s nothing new about state legislators angling to enrich themselves from their positions.

In the 1960s, a Miami company, State Fire & Casualty was known to be in financial difficulty, but state Insurance Commissioner Broward Williams held off on declaring it insolvent and putting it into receivership. The reason, as it appeared, was that the chairman of the House Insurance Committee, Rep. Carey Matthews, a Miami Democrat, was the insurer’s general counsel.

Acceptable ‘by current standards’

The scandal led to a U.S. Senate investigation, Williams’ electoral defeat in 1970 and Matthews’ indictment in 1971 on 19 counts of securities, mail and wire fraud. He resigned from the Legislature, pleaded guilty to one count and got five years’ probation.

Over the years, many legislators have been licensed insurance brokers. Rep. J. Hyatt Brown, a Daytona Beach Democrat and House speaker in 1977-78, headed a brokerage that became the sixth-largest in the country.

Although the state insurance division can revoke licenses, that aspect of regulation is not nearly as extensive as its authority and responsibility to assure the financial soundness of the companies they represent.

Even there, experts say, investments by Gruters and other legislators would not cross a legal or ethics barrier.

But public opinion is much different.

“At its worst interpretation, Gruters’ behavior is probably deemed acceptable by current standards,” said Bonnie Williams, a former executive director of the Florida Commission of Ethics, in an email to the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board.

She added that if the legislation was controversial — as the insurance bills were — “a legislator would be hard-pressed to argue that his subsequent interest was a coincidence.”

The optics look bad

The bar to reach a conflict of interest in the Florida Legislature is intentionally very high because they can hold outside jobs, according to Ben Wilcox, research director of Integrity Florida, a watchdog group. He noted that legislators often sponsor bills and serve on committees that could benefit their own personal income. Senate rules require senators to vote unless a bill would provide them a “special private gain or loss.”

What Gruters is doing would not be a conflict of interest under Senate rules. But the optics look bad to Floridians struggling with sky-high insurance premiums.

“I’m sure he will spin it by saying he’s trying to make insurance more affordable, but to the public, it will look like he is seeking to profit from homeowners desperate to find affordable insurance coverage,” Wilcox said.

The Legislature is scheduled to convene for 60 days a year, but legislative service is increasingly time-consuming, with frequent special sessions, committee meetings in the months preceding the session and frequent public appearances and gatherings with constituents. Legislators are paid $29,697 a year.

As a result, Florida’s low-salaried “citizen legislature” is highly unrepresentative of how most Floridians live. A 2018 study by the Tampa Bay Times found that nearly half the legislators serving were lawyers or chief executives. Only nine reported lawmaking as their primary income source, but few could survive on that paltry salary.

This imbalance will continue as long as Florida perpetuates the myth that governing the third-largest state is not important enough to be full-time work — and so will the temptation for legislators to do well for themselves.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

DeSantis banned the TikTok app from government devices. He restricted Chinese citizens from owning land in Florida. In what critics saw as a political stunt, he cut off state subsidies to prestigious private schools in Weston and suburban Orlando, claiming they are controlled by an investment firm with ties to China.

One of the laws DeSantis signed in May was Senate Bill 264, which prohibits Florida government entities from doing business with the People’s Republic of China and other foreign “countries of concern.”

But as with so many of the governor’s political pronouncements, the reality is much more complicated than it appears.

A Broward County connection

Our story begins at Fort Lauderdale’s Executive Airport, of all places.

A few weeks before the bill-signing ceremony targeting China, the DeSantis administration quietly signed multimillion-dollar contracts to lease a sleek high-tech aircraft to track down and detain illegal immigrants, especially in the Florida Keys.

The DeSantis administration’s aircraft of choice was a twin-engine, high performance, diesel-powered jet known as a Diamond DA62, made by Diamond Aircraft, an Austrian firm which in 2017 was purchased by Wanfeng Aviation Industry Co., headquartered in China.

On many days, as the flight tracking website flightaware.com shows, Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents board the plane at Fort Lauderdale Executive, where we photographed it recently. From there, they often fly down to Marathon in the Florida Keys in search of undocumented immigrants.

Operation Vigilant Sentry, or OVS as it is called, claimed to have arrested 20 undocumented arrivals in Key Largo a couple of weeks ago — 17 of them Chinese nationals.

A very pricey arrangement

The state’s one-year contract is with the Bank of Utah, a trustee for the aircraft’s owners. It isn’t cheap. State records show Florida will pay $2 million through next May (the cost to replace the plane would be $4 million). The contract, obtained through a public records request, was signed by DeSantis’ chief of emergency management Kevin Guthrie and FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass.

More apparent contradictions in DeSantis’ record on China became a flashpoint in a Republican presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday.

Rival Nikki Haley asked DeSantis why he scrubbed the website of Florida’s economic development arm to remove positive references to China as a leading trading partner of Florida.

Don’t try to find it. Suddenly missing from the website of Select Florida (formerly Enterprise Florida) is a three-year-old report, finished in DeSantis’ first term, that called Florida “an ideal business destination for Chinese companies.”

A more recent report emphasized Central America, South America, the Caribbean and Mexico as trading partners and the need to lure business away from China.

The sanitizing of the website was first reported by The Messenger, and the website factcheck.org looked at both candidates’ claims and found both to be slightly misleading.

The state’s response

The governor’s office referred questions about the aircraft contract to the Division of Emergency Management (DEM), an agency directly under DeSantis’ control.

In response to questions from the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, a DEM spokeswoman said in an email: “The plane that DEM leased was from the Bank of Utah … In no way did we send a nickel to China. The narrative you are trying to pursue is purely false.”

No, Florida is not directly doing business with China here. The state is doing business with a bank that is doing business with an unknown plane owner who’s doing business with China. The middlemen just allow DeSantis to keep his hands ostensibly clean, and show how porous this ban on doing business with Chinese companies really is.

The state is shelling out a lot of taxpayer money for a politically inspired program that is obviously not a core function of state government: immigration enforcement.

The state is leasing an aircraft made by a company owned by the Chinese, to carry out a signature DeSantis priority of searching for undocumented immigrants. It’s a transparent DeSantis strategy to highlight President Joe Biden’s failure to secure the southern border.

Call it a coincidence if you want. But the state’s leasing of an aircraft made by a Chinese-owned company to hunt for Chinese nationals crossing our border vividly illustrates China’s economic reach in Florida, whether DeSantis likes it or not, and reveals the limits of his “crackdown on Communist China.”

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. Send letters to the editor to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

The going rate is $50,000 for every year people languish in prison before being exonerated for crimes they did not commit. That’s less than $6 an hour, much less than the minimum wage.

The necessity for this reality is a deeply flawed system where wrongful convictions are commonplace. There have been 3,326 exonerations since records have been kept since 1989, including 85 in Florida. How many more are out there?

Florida is making amends for its two latest miscarriages of justice, Nos. 84 and 85, (including 13 in Broward, more than any other county). Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation providing $817,000 to Leonard Cure, who served 16 years in prison for a robbery someone else committed in Dania Beach, and whose claim was strongly supported by State Attorney Harold Pryor. Robert DuBoise of Tampa, who lost 37 years of his life, three on death row, for a murder he had nothing to do with, will receive $1.85 million. They did time for crimes they didn’t commit, and the real criminals got away.

Inadequate relief

Both men also qualify for 120 hours of free tuition at a Florida college, university or career center. That and the money are well-intentioned, but they hardly make up for years of lost liberty, inability to earn a living and save for retirement, and the anguish of being punished severely for what they knew they hadn’t done. If the right people had not helped them they would still be locked up for life.

They should have received the standard benefits promptly after their exoneration three years ago but were barred by a so-called clean hands provision that denies these benefits to people who had either one other violent felony conviction or more than one for a nonviolent crime. It doesn’t matter how irrelevant those records might be.

A bill eliminating the clean hands rule (SB 382) cleared three House committees and the full Senate without a dissenting vote in this year’s session but died before the House voted on it. There’s no excuse for that.

Finality over fairness

Neither is there any excuse for a criminal justice system with too few opportunities for people to successfully challenge wrongful convictions. The appeal process is a thicket of procedural hurdles, harsh precedents and dead ends that exalts “finality” over fairness. In the normal course, there’s no opportunity to prove that an old conviction, upheld on appeal, was still a miscarriage of justice.

Cure and DuBoise owe their freedom to the nonprofit Innocence Project and to conviction review units established by former Broward State Attorney Mike Satz and former State Attorney Andrew Warren in Hillsborough. Their purpose is to reopen doors of justice that have slammed shut. Only four other circuits have similar programs. All 20 should have them, and there should be one with statewide jurisdiction, too.

Nothing other than apparent disinterest prevents Attorney General Ashley Moody and 14 other state attorneys from implementing review programs. If they don’t, the Legislature should demand it.

Like many other exonerees, Cure and DuBoise had prior criminal records that drew law enforcement’s attention. Cure’s picture was in the sheriff’s files, and a witness picked him because she said the robber of a Walgreens was a well-dressed Black man. A picture of Cure fit the bill.

Even though no physical evidence linked Cure to the crime, the court allowed that wildly erroneous identification to overcome Cure’s well-documented alibi that he was at work far away. With a fresh look at what evidence there was and wasn’t, the Broward conviction review unit said Cure should not have been convicted. A court agreed.

DuBoise was convicted of rape and murder on the basis of a dentist’s bite-mark testimony disdained as “junk science” and on the perjury of a jailhouse informant. Warren, the ex-prosecutor who created the Hillsborough unit, agreed to DNA testing that exonerated DuBoise and implicated two others who are in prison for other crimes. On the day Warren identified the other men, DeSantis suspended him from office on ludicrously pre-textual charges.

Signed into law

The compensation for Cure and DuBoise were two of six claim bills signed into law this month. Eight other claim bills failed without votes, which illustrates another festering Florida problem that must be fixed.

Claim bills are a vestige of the ancient rule that “the king can do no wrong.” Known as sovereign immunity, the law sets a limit of $200,000 for claims against a government agency from any one person or $300,000 if there are multiple claims. Attempts to increase obsolete and arbitrarily low payment caps fail year after year.

Those caps and binding even when an agency admits fault and wants to settle — as the South Broward Hospital District did in the case of Jamiyah Mitchell, a  teenager who suffered brain injury at birth and has learning disabilities.

The family had to hire a paid lobbyist, but the district paid her family $200,000 and will pay another $795,000 under another claim bill DeSantis signed (SB 16).

No system is perfect. But the arbitrary, needlessly drawn-out claim bill system should be replaced with a court of claims, like the federal government’s, to deliver justice more promptly and fairly.

It took four years before the Legislature compensated Jamiyah Mitchell’s family. She will soon be 15 years old.

The Orlando Sentinel’s Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Trump's contempt for United States national security, captured in a single photograph: pic.twitter.com/j9GY2ttwFC

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) June 9, 2023

A Department of Justice photograph shows more than two dozen white bankers’ boxes, perched one on top of another, in a bathroom at The Mar-a-Lago Club, with a shower curtain and vanity in the background. According to the 49-page indictment, the illegally stored records included a Pentagon “plan of attack” and a classified map related to a military operation.

The picture is damning in its sloppiness and the casualness with which Trump treated sensitive national security information. It was released on Friday as the government unsealed a federal indictment that accuses Trump of 37 separate criminal charges related to mishandling hundreds of classified documents. Trump will formally answer to the charges Tuesday afternoon at a federal courthouse in Miami — the first time in U.S. history that a former president is facing federal crimes. One charge, corruptly concealing a document or record, carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years; Trump is 76 years old.

It’s historic. It’s unprecedented. And naturally, it did not immediately destroy Trump’s presidential ambitions. On the contrary, the norm-shattering Trump will exploit a grave indictment for his political advantage and use it to galvanize his MAGA political base and raise money. Who would publicly announce his own indictment, as Trump did, unless he saw a political upside?

In any other decade …

“In any other decade, this would be more than enough to kill a presidential contender in the crib,” Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told the Associated Press. “That’s no longer the case, particularly for Donald Trump … This comes as a surprise to very few Republicans.”

In the greatest country on earth, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination stands accused by the government he once led of violating the federal Espionage Act. That’s breathtaking enough all by itself.

But it gets worse. This is Trump’s second indictment in three months, following the 34-count filing in New York relating to secret hush money payments to two women who said they had trysts with Trump. At least two other criminal investigations of Trump are still pending.

It is a sad and weighty moment when a former president is charged with crimes against our country. That it could have happened to Richard Nixon 49 years ago, and in many people’s opinions should have, no longer matters. It should be a point of pride that we have a Justice Department that is willing and able to uphold the principle that no one is above the law.

To that end, the Justice Department must also pursue, with equal vigor and utter transparency, questions about President Joe Biden’s handling of classified material dating back to his service as vice president.  Thus far, experts in both Republican and Democratic camps have opined that the conduct of Biden and his associates — which led to the president self-reporting the discovery of some documents and an investigation  that uncovered others — suggests nothing that rises to the level of the reckless abandonment of multiple laws, and subsequent obstruction detailed in the allegations against Trump. But this point in history demands more: An investigation so thorough and painstaking that any rational American cannot deny its conclusions.

‘A very dark day’

Like anyone else in America, Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until the special counsel proves the charges against him beyond a reasonable doubt. These are unproven allegations at this point. Everyone else should hold their temper and their tongues and let the law play out.

But if no one is above the law, not everyone respects that.

The reactions of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (“a very dark day in America … we’re not going to stand for it”) and other Republicans are beneath contempt.

Once again, Republicans posture as if Trump, and by implication any other Republican president, should be exempt from the law. That is a hideously irresponsible message to send to the American people. In addition, the threats by Congressional Republicans to attack the Biden administration for allowing the law to work must be taken seriously.

The principle that no one is above the law is embedded in the Constitution in Article I, Section 3: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States; but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to law.”

Federal prosecutors want to try Trump as soon as possible, to avoid any possibility of interference with the 2024 presidential election. It already seems too late for that.

In the latest sign of how Trump retains a cult-like grip on the Republican base, most of his rivals for the nomination rushed to his defense Friday, led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who tweeted: “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.”

Of all our statewide elected officials, though, none was as pathetic and obsequious as Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who tweeted, “He’s a former President for God sakes … beloved by tens of millions of Americans,” as though Trump’s popularity among his and Patronis’ base voters should guarantee legal immunity.

As Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a brief and highly unusual public appearance Friday: “We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.”

Especially to Donald J. Trump.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. 

He’s much safer there than in the state he left behind.

The new gun law DeSantis touted for political points — then disappeared behind closed doors to sign amid a rash of politically inconvenient mass shootings — takes effect July 1.

Floridians will then be free to carry hidden guns they don’t know how to shoot.

Background screenings for, say, domestic violence restraining orders won’t be required before being allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Neither will training to ensure gun owners concealing those firearms know how to use them.

More than seven in 10 Floridians didn’t want this bill, a poll by the University of North Florida showed.

Just as a special few ignored the wishes of the many, a special few will enjoy safety from its consequences: Guns aren’t allowed on the state Senate floor. Or the House. Or where committees debate laws. Or almost anywhere state elected officials gather.

They get to work in a bulletproof bubble.

The rest of us have to live outside it.

Gun deaths all over

The rest of us are not safe; not standing outside a restaurant (Miami Gardens; January, 10 wounded), or fishing with a buddy (Ruskin; March, one killed) or Easter egg hunting (Orlando; April, three killed, five wounded) or celebrating MLK Day (Fort Pierce; March, one killed, seven wounded.)

Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, was not psychic; he merely set aside politically expedient fiction for fact. Warning fellow state senators of the price others will pay for the new anti-safety gun law, the former Miami-Dade prosecutor said gun violence so permeates the state that he could guarantee a Florida teenager would be shot that night.

It was March 30.

Just before midnight, Layla Silvernail, 16, was found on the side of the road with gunshot wounds. She was one of three Florida teens to be fatally shot within 48 hours.

The day the anti-safety gun bill was filed in the House, 10 people were shot near a school bus stop in Lakeland.

Twenty-four hours after a House committee greenlighted the bill (HB 543), an Orlando gunman murdered a child and a TV journalist. The journalist was covering a shooting.

The child, T’Yonna Major, 9, had attended Pine Hills Elementary school with Cameron Bouie, 7.

One month, two weeks and four days after T’Yonna was fatally wounded, Cameron was killed on Easter Sunday.

The same day, Orlando men exchanged gunfire at an Easter egg hunt. Three died.

Between April 3, when DeSantis signed the gun bill, and April 14, when a political ad on his behalf accused Donald Trump of being soft on guns, two road-raging Florida fathers opened fire at each other. Bullets collapsed the lung of one 14-year-old daughter and hit another, 5, in the leg.

The National Rifle Association held its annual convention April 14 in Indianapolis.

DeSantis wasn’t there, but he would have been wrapped up in safety. The Secret Service created a very big anti-bullet bubble by banning guns in the speakers’ area, given the presence of Trump and Mike Pence.

DeSantis’ staff would have understood, having secretly sought to bar guns from the governor’s own election night celebration.

The Secret Service didn’t mind anyone knowing, because the Secret Service is in the business of protecting people. Sensible rules about firearms are one way to protect people.

The people DeSantis flew off to see halfway around the world know that.

Fewer guns, fewer gun deaths

South Korea recorded 10 firearm deaths in 2019. Florida recorded more than 2,000.

In Japan, one person was shot and killed in all of 2021. One. In Florida, two people were killed on the first day of 2023.

Last week, when DeSantis’ plane would likely have been lifting off the tarmac for Asia, teenage Instacart driver Waldes Thomas Jr. and his girlfriend got lost around 10 p.m. in Broward and turned into the wrong driveway of a man with a gun.

The Southwest Ranches man fired, striking Thomas’ car several times. The shooter says he was not trying to kill anyone.

Do not confuse that with a happy ending.

Mass shootings are defined as incidents where four or more are shot. Florida ushered in 2023 with five mass shootings in one month.

DeSantis timed his overseas travels so that he was in Israel for its 75th anniversary.

Gun permits there require background checks, training and health evaluations. Amid talk of easing requirements, the former head of the Internal Security Ministry is warning: Don’t go too far.

“We don’t want to be like America,” he said.

Or worse — like Florida.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and  Anderson. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com.

It was the social workers who pushed her and her twin brother into the arms of Jorge and Carmen Barahona; the system that dismissed the guardian who raised red flags; the legislature that for years starved the Department of Children and Families of money for protection; the family court that blessed her adoption by the couple, instead of sending her to loving relatives.

Twelve years after the 10-year-old girl was tortured to death, stuffed in a bag and thrown in a truck bed, Florida is failing her yet again.

Jorge Barahona, her adoptive father and accused murderer, is successfully escaping trial.

Because Barahona is already held in a Miami-Dade County jail, there is an argument that a trial is a moot issue. As long as a jury does not get an opportunity to decide otherwise, he will remain behind bars until he dies.

But justice is about more than sentencing. It’s not just the specter of the death penalty Barahona is evading.

Nubia will come alive for the last time in a trial. It’s her messy pink bedroom we would see, her ravenous hunger and uncombed blonde hair, her bruises and her fading courage.

It’s Nubia’s voice, ignored by so many when she was alive, that Barahona would be forced to listen to. It’s Nubia who will finally be seen.

This is not merely a child abuse case. What Nubia and her brother endured was torture, with multiple types of physical and psychological abuse over a long period of time, ending with permanent disfigurement, disability or death.

Breaking bones is only a means to an end. Breaking a child’s will to live is the goal.

Hers may not be the worst child torture case in Florida, but in 2011, Nubia’s murder made national headlines after Jorge Barahona’s truck was found on the side of a Palm Beach County road. Her decomposing body was tossed in the back. In the front, Barahona doused himself and her twin with scarring chemicals, then pulled off the highway and waited for the convulsing child to join his sister in death.

The ensuing investigation found state accomplices everywhere.

When family members wanted to take in the twins after they were removed from their biological parents, the state gave them to the Barahonas instead.

When teachers reported concerns about Nubia’s hunger and dirty clothes, Florida’s refusal to regulate homeschooling allowed the Barahonas to sweep her from public classrooms and prying eyes.

When a court-appointed guardian ad litem for the children raised red flags and tried to keep the adoption from going through, he was dismissed.

There is a litany of reasons why the case has not gone to trial. One longtime lawyer withdrew, citing a criminal investigation into billing. Two others dropped the case. A new lawyer must sort through almost 1,000 docket entries in the case file and more than a decade’s worth of depositions, pleadings and investigative documents.

A spokesman for the Miami-Dade state attorney claims to have been told that the defense will essentially start from scratch.

From jail, Barahona continues to claim innocence. His 2021 handwritten letter to an appeals court is shot through with victimhood, citing conspiracies, hidden evidence, bad lawyering.

Assume, for the moment, that Barahona is not guilty. Assume he never laid a hand on Nubia. He would still have been a silent witness to her murder. As long as he never goes to court, he remains free to live in a self-comforting cocoon of indignant innocence.

It’s a peculiar kind of freedom, but he’s free all the same.

As long as Barahona does not have to sit in a courtroom, he does not have to see the faces of jurors when they first look at photographs. He won’t have to look at them either.

Barahona will never be forced to listen to a clerk read aloud multiple counts of child abuse and first degree murder. Never have to sit silently as his now ex-wife, who has already confessed to murder and agreed to testify against him, reveals the daily horrors the couple worked so hard to keep secret.

There’s also this. More than one child lived in the Barahona home. Nubia’s brother and a third child would be young adults now, old enough to see the same judicial system that enabled their abuse continuing to spare their alleged abuser the discomfort of a trial.

More than the state systems failing them, they understand Barahona is not the one being denied a chance to tell his story in a court of law. Nubia is, too.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee.

That’s one of the first hits the public is likely to take now that the Chaos Caucus in the U.S. House refuses to allow Congress to raise or extend the national debt ceiling. These are the same people who put the House through 15 roll calls in order to extract humiliating concessions from their party leader, Kevin McCarthy, leaving him Speaker in name only. Now, they would plunge the nation into chaos to get what they want.

Their price is a form of extortion that would make a Mafioso blush. They demand deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs considered sacrosanct everywhere except on the far-right political fringe where their immensely wealthy dark-money donors dwell.

It’s a one-sided “bargain” because tax increases are not on the table. Not for the sake of Social Security or anything else, such as paying for Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the very rich. President Joe Biden is right to refuse to negotiate on such terms.

The threat is to put the U.S. into default, like some third-world country, with its economy ruined and its international leadership only a memory.

The Chaos Caucus includes three of Florida’s 20 Republican House members: Matt Gaetz, the Panhandle’s enfant terrible, Byron Donalds from Naples, and newly elected Anna Paulina Luna of St. Petersburg.

Florida would be hit hard

People in Florida depend heavily on Social Security and Medicare. Only California, with almost twice the population, has more recipients than Florida’s nearly 5 million.

Younger people are also the intended targets of this assault, which contemplates raising the retirement age to 70. That could have disastrous consequences for workers in construction, farming and other labor-intensive occupations in this state. People are living longer, so many now need to work longer, and pervasive employment discrimination exists against workers in their 50s and 60s.

It’s time for the more responsible House Republicans — Florida’s in particular — to put down the Chaos Caucus. If they don’t, the reckoning will be severe.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already implemented what she calls “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the nation’s bills and postpone a catastrophic default.

Those include delaying required contributions to federal employee retirement and savings accounts, which would be made up later.

Every penny of the national debt represents something approved at one time or another by both parties in Congress, including measures to save the economy during the housing meltdown of 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic two years ago.

Not out of line

Even at $31 trillion, the debt is not out of line with the size of the nation’s economy.

About a fourth of it is money we owe ourselves, as bonds held by Social Security and the Federal Reserve. The rest is borrowing from the public and foreign countries.

Even a temporary default would be costly in the long run, inflating the debt more than any act of Congress might, because lenders would demand higher interest when borrowing resumed.

That’s what happens to ordinary deadbeat debtors — if they can borrow at all.

When the government has to pay higher interest, it has a cascading effect on individuals, businesses, states, counties and cities. That is a surefire formula for a deep, lasting recession.

Congress has raised or extended the debt limit 78 times since 1960 rather than take the nation into the chasm of catastrophe. There was brinkmanship on occasion, but regardless of party, everyone knew that default was out of the question and reason would prevail.

This is more worrisome because common sense is lacking among members of the Chaos Caucus.

This manufactured crisis illustrates why the debt limit should simply be repealed. Denmark is the only other Western country with one. Ours began as a condition demanded by Congress in 1917 for agreeing to issue bonds for fighting World War I. It was never intended as a brake on spending.

Congress should consider a long-term strategy for controlling the debt — but not at the point of a gun.

The little-noticed Section 4 of the 14th Amendment arguably gives the president authority to disregard the debt ceiling, which he should consider if the Chaos Caucus won’t budge. It reads, in part: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Congress wrote that to insure that former Confederates returning to Congress could not repudiate the bonds that had saved the nation from an insurrection. There wasn’t another until Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob invaded the Capitol to try to overthrow a presidential election.

Most members of the Chaos Caucus voted to give those insurrectionists what they wanted. Their present conduct is no less dangerous.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Page editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoint Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

There’s so much at stake: A historic gubernatorial election that may be one of the highest-stakes contests in Florida history because of the consistent (and convincing) speculation that Gov. Ron DeSantis has his eyes set on a bigger prize. The balance of power in Congress, which could turn on the outcome of several Florida races. Ditto for the state Legislature and Florida Cabinet, though it would be indeed surprising if Republicans lose control there.

Add the dozens of races for city and county positions, along with a more heated than usual fight over the fate of the Florida Supreme Court and the appellate court that serves Central Florida.

And then there’s democracy itself: We’ve seen distressing signs that current Republican leadership thinks it’s just too darn easy to vote in Florida, and they aim to fix that — by breaking down avenues that people use to make their voices heard.

It’s a good thing, then, that nearly a third of local voters have already made sure their voices count. We’ve been yelling our heads off for the past week about the need for Central Floridians to grab the opportunity to cast their ballots early in the midterm elections. And many more local voters have done so, with most counties in the region showing turnout of around 30 percent between early voting and vote by mail.

It’s not overwhelming, but it’s better than local officials expected when elections supervisors gathered in Orlando last week to sound the alarm about record low turnout. (Osceola supervisor Mary Jane Arrington, who warned about a potential storm as “one of those things that comes up,” looks particularly prescient in hindsight.)

“We did pick up significantly but in order to reach a 60% turnout, we need almost 85,000 voters tomorrow,” Lake County Supervisor Alan Hays said Monday. “I hope they do come, but I’m not counting on it.”

For those who have yet to cast their ballot, today is the last chance. Election Day voting will be taking place today from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at hundreds of local precincts across the region. It’s a good idea for voters to check their local supervisor’s website to make sure they end up at the right place, since many will be also worried about re-battening the hatches they just unbattened, in anticipation of Tropical Storm (or possibly Hurricane) Nicole.

We are, at this point, all yelled out. The phrase “last chance” pretty much says it all. Tend to your own safety and that of your family first, but if you can make it to the polls, please do.

Fix broken verification system

We have learned of one last-minute maneuver that illustrates what might be at stake.

As returned mail ballots poured into their offices two weeks ago, Florida election supervisors got something else in the mail: a letter from the notorious state Office of Election Crimes and Security in Tallahassee. The subject: “Felons,” it said.

The state called on supervisors to take “all of the necessary measures” to prevent certain ineligible people with felony convictions from voting, including those still on probation and not protected by Amendment 4, which restored the right to vote to most ex-felons four years ago.

The letter said it was a follow-up to previous state shipments of documents questioning the eligibility of some voters and urged supervisors to begin the process of formally challenging those voters’ eligibility. It was signed by Scott Strauss, who became director of the security office following the death on Sept. 23 of former director Peter Antonacci.

Let us be clear: No ineligible voter should vote. But by waiting until two weeks before an election to act, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration sowed more confusion and uncertainty, on the heels of an elaborately staged and legally suspect roundup of voters, most of them Black, who were accused of voting illegally. As the letter noted, due process protections necessarily make challenging a voter’s eligibility complicated and time-consuming, as it should be.

This last-minute October surprise smacks of voter intimidation and is yet another glaring example of a broken voter verification system. A top priority for the Florida Legislature in 2023 should be passing a law and providing money for a central database to track the eligibility of each voter — not pressuring counties to remove voters from the rolls two weeks before an election.

The front end is ‘broken’

“The front end of the system is broken,” said Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which led the Amendment 4 campaign. “This appears to be a last-minute effort to deal with voter verification, something that should have been done on the front end a long time ago.”

Voting rights groups have made public records requests for “challenge letters” in all 67 counties. They received more than 1,900 such letters from the first 12 counties that responded (Broward and Palm Beach were not among them).

Voters who are challenged should call the coalition at 877-MYVOTE-0, or the national election protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.

Common Cause Florida said the state needs to create a verification system “instead of playing a game of ‘gotcha’ with the lives of vulnerable Floridians.”

We agree. A felon who still owes a fine or restitution from decades ago may not be aware of that, and navigating the maze of the justice system is a virtual impossibility. The Office of Election Crimes and Security increasingly looks like the Office of Voter Disenfranchisement.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Anderson. Contact us with your post-election thoughts at insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Abortion: DeSantis signed a 15-week ban on abortion with no exceptions for victims of rape, incest or human trafficking. “I’m proud of the 15 weeks that we did,” DeSantis said in a recent debate. Crist opposed the law and said of the lack of exceptions: “That’s callous, it’s barbaric and it’s wrong, and Florida deserves better.” Crist said he would sign an executive order his first day in office to protect abortion rights. DeSantis has declined to say whether he would seek additional abortion restrictions if he’s re-elected.

Antisemitism: Hours after antisemitic incidents last weekend at a UF-Georgia football game and on an I-10 overpass in Jacksonville, Crist issued a statement that said: “I am disgusted and horrified at the hateful, antisemitic rhetoric displayed in Jacksonville … Hate should have no home in Florida, period.” Despite having the state’s most powerful megaphone, DeSantis said nothing, even though he was at the game. Two days later, a spokesman said weakly: “Governor DeSantis rejects attempts to scapegoat the Jewish community. It has no place in Florida.”

COVID-19: Determined to keep Florida “free,” DeSantis ran roughshod over local officials for imposing mask and vaccine mandates. Crist’s approach is the opposite. He supported mandates as a way of “listening to science.” Early in the pandemic, DeSantis’ own staff urged him to require masks, as we reported, but he wouldn’t. DeSantis criticized a group of teens for wearing masks, calling it “ridiculous” and “COVID theater.” Crist said criticizing the students was “the ultimate expression of the actions of a bully.”

Elections: Citing the need to “strengthen election integrity,” DeSantis pushed for a new Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate allegations of election fraud and wants to double its funding next year. He also signed bills that would limit ways people could request and return ballots, and met privately with a group that wants to shut down mail balloting and early voting altogether. (More on that below.) Crist says the office is a blatant effort to intimidate Florida voters, and he would abolish it He also would have vetoed the elections bills DeSantis signed.

Environment: Despite pledging to put clean water in Florida on a “war footing,” DeSantis’ response has been as lukewarm as day-old dishwater. He vetoed tens of millions of dollars in local water projects. To his credit, however, he secured $3.3 billion for restoration of the Everglades, above his goal of $2.5 billion. Crist wants to restrict fertilizer use and runoff that leads to toxic algae blooms and favors local environmental protection over state control. The Everglades Foundation board is closely aligned with DeSantis and the Sierra Club supports Crist.

Guns: If re-elected, DeSantis says he will sign an “open carry” law, so unlicensed gun owners can display weapons. Crist opposes open carry and supports expanded background checks and a ban on assault weapons; DeSantis opposes both. DeSantis said he would have vetoed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act because of portions that enacted a red-flag law and raised the age to buy rifles and shotguns to 21. Crist said he would strengthen the red-flag law.

Insurance: Homeowners have seen property insurance premiums skyrocket under DeSantis, a criticism echoed even by Republican Sen. Rick Scott, and fears of a market collapse persist, even after DeSantis signed new industry-friendly changes. Florida has among the highest rates in the U.S., and they will rise again because of damage from Hurricane Ian. Crist fought insurers as a populist Republican governor (2007-2011), and his claim that rates fell by 10% during his term was rated Mostly True by Politifact.

Medicaid: DeSantis opposes expanding Medicaid to an estimated 800,000 uninsured low-income Floridians. Crist would seek expansion if elected, and has said he would veto any state budget that does not include Medicaid expansion.

Migrants: DeSantis spent public money to charter jets to transport Venezuelan asylum-seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a decision that brought lawsuits in Florida and a criminal probe in Texas. “Our message is we’re not a sanctuary state,” DeSantis said. Crist called it “disgusting and vile,” and that he would not have done it.

Redistricting: DeSantis forced the Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional district map to eliminate two Black-majority districts in North and Central Florida. Crist said it deliberately disenfranchised Black voters and opposed it. The investigative website ProPublica has reported that the DeSantis-drawn map could produce a net gain of four seats for Republicans in Florida, more than any other state.

Running out of time

No matter which side of the governor’s race you’re on, you’re running out of time to make your voice heard. Tomorrow is the last day for early voting in Lake, Brevard and Volusia counties. But you can still take advantage of the most convenient option for voting in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties through Sunday. All early voting sites will have secure dropoff locations for mail ballots that haven’t yet been returned. It’s probably too late to return them by mail.

If you plan to vote Tuesday, make sure you know where your precinct is (some have shifted since voter ID cards went out, due to damage from Hurricane Ian). Voters who still have mail ballots can bring them to their polling place, where they will be exchanged for an Election Day ballot.

Coming Sunday, we’re going to show you some threats to easy voting that many Floridians don’t realize are on the way. But for now, we’ll just end with a one-word plea: Vote.

The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send us your thoughts at insight@orlandosentinel.com.

First at Florida International University and now at the University of Florida, search committees identified only one finalist. They said no top candidates were willing to be publicly identified except as a lone finalist.

The law passed in this year’s legislative session (SB 520) provides for only disclosing a “final group of applicants” — plural — but that didn’t anticipate the deviousness of academia. Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, author of this gross erosion of government in the sunshine, insists he didn’t mean for only one finalist.

The gaming of the search law won’t be a lingering problem at FIU, where Kenneth Jessell was a senior vice president for 13 years before becoming interim president in January.

A pariah in Gainesville

But it casts an ominous shadow over Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, the surprise anointed outsider at UF. Sasse starts out as a pariah in Gainesville with the enmity of many students and faculty, mostly for his conservative views. If Sasse is to have a successful presidency, as everyone should want, he will have to live down how he got the job.

The UF faculty was told belatedly that he and 11 others who were interviewed in secret refused to be identified publicly other than as the sole finalist. They exploited the new Florida law. Before its passage, all candidates’ names were released once they applied — as it should be.

The blanket of secrecy worked to Sasse’s advantage as the favorite of Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose chief of staff, James Uthmeier, helped usher him through the process.

The also-rans avoided having it known that they competed and lost — to their discredit. People too self-important to compete publicly for one of the best jobs in higher education in America have no business winning it. This was a total disservice to the universities and to the taxpayers to whom the universities belong.

Start all over again

Rather than accept an ultimatum, UF’s search committee should have rejected the entire lot and started over. That’s what UF trustees should do on Nov. 1, but they most likely won’t. As with most everything DeSantis wants, it’s a done deal.

Had the background intrigue been publicly known sooner, the protests over Sasse’s campus visit Oct. 10 might have been more strident.

Three days later, on Oct. 13, Amanda Phalin, the new chair of the UF Faculty Senate and a Sasse supporter, circulated a memorandum explaining what had happened.

“The Selection Committee did not choose to pick a sole finalist; a sole finalist was picked because none of the top candidates were willing to stay in the pool unless they were the sole finalist,” Phalin wrote. “In other words, none of the top candidates — all of whom were high-profile leaders — were willing to compete against two others publicly for 21 days, which is what the new state law requires.”

It’s beyond ironic that a U.S. senator who had been through two public statewide elections would be unwilling to compete publicly for a university presidency. Our two emails to his spokesman asking for Sasse’s side of it went unanswered.

In 2021, before the new law, Florida State University’s wide-open presidential search yielded a trove of strong applicants resulting in the choice of an acclaimed scientist and administrator, Richard McCullough, Harvard’s vice president for research. McCullough’s experience in securing research money made him an ideal fit for FSU.

Sasse’s pre-Senate experience as president of Midland College, a tiny, 1,700-student Lutheran school in Nebraska, doesn’t compare.

That doesn’t mean Sasse is unfit or that politicians can’t make good state university presidents. In Florida, John Thrasher and T. K. Wetherell at FSU, Betty Castor at the University of South Florida and Frank Brogan at Florida Atlantic University all earned the respect of students and faculty.

Why UF faculty are jittery

But the question about Sasse is why a politician was chosen for a university that is justifiably fearful for its future under a governor and legislature who meddle in the curriculum to make political points. A faculty survey this summer, with 623 responses, found 67% unsure of their freedom to dissent and 74% concerned over whether trustees would protect UF from “undue political influence.”

That reflects the UF administration’s attempts to bar professors from testifying in voting rights cases or even alluding to critical race theory, and the pressure from Tallahassee and UF’s own Board of Trustees chair — developer, Republican megadonor and DeSantis adviser Morteza “Mori” Hosseini — to secure a tenured faculty appointment for DeSantis’ anti-vaxxer surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo.

To Sasse’s credit, he was one of only seven Republican senators who had the integrity to vote to convict the impeached President Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. The question now is whether he can stand up to DeSantis. Given Sasse’s history of opposition to same-sex marriage and to the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the apprehension of students and faculty is warranted.

There has been considerable interest in an essay Sasse published in The Atlantic five months ago in which he took on some of the rigid traditions in higher education, such as the inflexible credit-hour standards for graduation and the exalted influence of the Ivy League. The essay has been faulted for being longer on criticism than on remedies, but the criticisms are pertinent. While we don’t agree with his blanket objections to President Joe Biden’s limited student loan forgiveness program, Sasse was spot-on in arguing that it is not an alternative to fundamental reforms.

Can a senator from the Great Plains protect Florida’s flagship university from the narrow goals and personal ambitions of DeSantis and other Florida politicians? Having had no effective choice in the matter, the university and the state can only wait, watch and hope.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee.