The midterm elections could transform the Florida Supreme Court, but probably won’t.

Next month voters can choose to evict up to five of the court’s seven justices. In theory, Floridians could respond to the court’s regressive designs by firing most of the designers.

They could do what the Sun Sentinel urged in an editorial last week: Remove Justices Charles Canady, Ricky Polston, Jamie Grosshans and John Couriel, all key players in the court’s “harsh new majority.” The newspaper recommends keeping moderate Justice Jorge Labarga, “whose principled but lonely dissents in high-profile cases have exposed the majority’s radical activism.”

Yet it will be astonishing if any of the four conservatives lose at the polls.In the 44 years that Florida voters have been empowered to retain or reject appellate judges, they’ve never once dropped a Supreme Court justice.

This campaign season, editorials in some major newspapers call for rejecting the four arch-conservative justices, arguing they’ve broken trust with the public. Traditional media aren’t as far-reaching and influential as they used to be, however.

Proven vote-getting techniques like splashy advertising productions, social media saturation and a vigorous ground game seem to be reserved for the many higher-profile campaigns in the run-up to Nov. 8. It’s hard to compete for airtime with Gov. Ron DeSantis versus Charlie Crist or Rep. Val Demings versus Sen. Marco Rubio.

PARIENTE’S SPOT-ON PREDICTION

The justices told the Orlando Sentinel editorial board that the smear campaign was part of then-Gov. Rick Scott’s plot to reshape the court in his own partisan image.

“I think it’s a smokescreen for the real issue, which is a political party wanting to control all three branches of government,” Pariente told the board.

The counterattack worked. The justices won retention with 67-68 percent of the vote.

But their mandatory retirement at the end of 2018 let incoming Gov. DeSantis finish the job of transforming the court from majority-liberal to supermajority-conservative.

Today, as Pariente foretold, Republicans dominate all three branches of Florida government.

Karl said the high court’s post-midterm agenda is obvious.

“I fully anticipate that the Florida Supreme Court will uphold the 15-week abortion ban,” he said, “and reverse the 1989 case [the In re: TW decision] that found our Florida constitutional right to privacy guarantees the right of a woman to make her own health care decisions.”

If you were to dive to the bottom of the ocean somewhere between Hawaii and Mexico, you might see a field of sunken treasure. Here, in what’s called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), much of the seafloor is covered with fist-sized rocks that contain valuable metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel.

These dull-looking rocks formed over millions of years, as metal that was dissolved in seawater grew around a bit of matter, such as a shark tooth (similar to how a pearl grows around a grain of sand). Known as polymetallic nodules, they are abundant in the CCZ, though you can find them in several regions of the ocean. And you don’t have to dig to reach them; they sit on or near the ocean floor, looking plump for the picking.

Those metals — particularly cobalt — are currently mined from the ground, and have been linked to environmental destruction and human rights abuses. That’s why proponents of deep-sea mining see harvesting nodules as a good thing; they claim it can be less harmful than stripping metals from the Earth.

But by mining the ocean floor, the industry could just be swapping one form of environmental destruction for another.

Scientists still don’t know much about the impacts of deep-sea mining, and what they do know suggests that it could be incredibly destructive, underscoring a core tension in the race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: Some technologies come at the expense of biodiversity and it’s often not clear how to weigh the trade-offs.

Incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) leads his Democratic challenger, Mandela Barnes, by 1 percentage point in their battleground race, according to a new CBS News-YouGov poll.

The poll found that Johnson garnered the support of half of likely voters, compared to Barnes’s 49 percent support.

Democrats view the seat as one of their best pickup opportunities in November’s midterm elections as they hope to maintain or improve their razor-thin majority.

Recent polling has similarly shown Johnson and Barnes neck and neck in their race, which the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as a “toss up.”

Despite Johnson’s lead in the new survey, his likability rating clocked in lower than Barnes’s.

Forty-three percent of voters said they liked how Johnson handles himself personally, compared to 49 percent who said the same of Barnes.

But the poll found both of their ratings registered underwater, with 57 percent saying they dislike how Johnson handles himself personally and 51 percent indicating the same for Barnes.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - On Tuesday, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a bipartisan bill into law that will make college more affordable for students by providing thousands of dollars.

Whitmer signed the MI New Economy bill that will make thousands of dollars available to Michigan high school graduates planning to further their education.

"The MI new Economy vision focuses on fundamentals; with goals to lift 100,000 families out of work in poverty," Whitmer said.

The governor signed the bill at Lawrence Technical Institute in Southfield.

Under the MI New Economy, students can receive a scholarship to achieve the 60 by '30 goal: 60% of those over 25 years of age to earn a post-secondary degree or skill by 2030.

"This scholarship is going to apply to all of the graduates from our high schools starting next year. So this will open up doors on financial barriers real for so many people, and this will help us level that barrier so more people can pursue skills," Whitmer said.

Starting in 2023, qualifying high school graduates can get up to $2,750 for community college, $4,000 for private college, or $5,500 for a public university.

Imagine: It’s your big day in court. Maybe you’re a brand-new attorney, or new to this courtroom. Maybe you’re representing yourself. You walk in and, before you can be heard, everyone in the room, at the judge’s request, has to stand as a chaplain leads the courtroom in prayer. You can’t sit down during the prayer, and the doors are locked. You can only leave if you ask the bailiff—an officer of the court—for permission, or if you can find a tiny button that opens the doors in order to let yourself out.

To any normal person, this prayer is the dictionary definition of “coercive”—a First Amendment violation so obvious that, if it were to appear on a law school exam, you’d assume it was a trick question of some kind. But to the brain-poisoned judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, this is a totally acceptable and extremely constitutional set of circumstances. Thanks to their recent decision in Freedom From Religion v. Mack, judges in Texas are free to establish as much religion they like.

Wayne Mack is a Montgomery County Justice of the Peace, a job that entails presiding over certain lower-level civil and criminal matters. Before he took the bench, Mack was a Pentecostal minister, and ran for office on a platform of opening his courtroom with prayers each day and improving access to chaplains in the judicial system.

He kept his promise. The case, which the Fifth Circuit decided on September 29, was heard by Reagan appointees Jerry Smith and E. Grady Jolly and Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee. (Jolly concurred on a procedural issue, but otherwise dissented.) As the majority explains, the first thing a visitor to Mack’s courtroom sees is a message on the door of the courtroom and a nearby television screen: “It is the tradition of this court to have a brief opening ceremony that includes a brief invocation by one of our volunteer chaplains.” It continues: “You are not required to be present or participate.”

Once inside, the doors magnetically lock and can only be opened by pressing a small green button—which, the opinion notes, “visitors often overlook.” (One would think if Mack can post multiple signs about the fact everyone is going to have to pray, he’d have the power to make the exit signage clearer.) Anyone who wants to leave but can’t find the button must ask the bailiff to let them out. Then, they have to remain outside for the duration of the prayer, and are only allowed back in after Mack has been seated on the bench. Anyone willing to stay must stand for the prayer’s duration.

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to decide whether fetuses are entitled to constitutional rights in light of its June ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide, steering clear for now of another front in America's culture wars.

The justices turned away an appeal by a Catholic group and two women of a lower court's ruling holding that fetuses lacked the proper legal standing to challenge a 2019 state law codifying the right to abortion in line with the Roe precedent. The two women, pregnant at the time when the case was first filed, sued on behalf of their fetuses and later gave birth.

Lawyers for the group Catholics for Life and the two Rhode Island women - one named Nichole Leigh Rowley and the other using the pseudonym Jane Doe - argued that the case "presents the opportunity for this court to meet that inevitable question head on" by deciding if fetuses possess due process and equal protection rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court relied on the now-reversed Roe precedent in finding that the 14th Amendment did not extend rights to fetuses. The Roe ruling had recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protected a woman's ability to terminate her pregnancy.

lorida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican Legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage.

DeSantis threw out the Legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republican-controlled Legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through.

DeSantis’ office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map.

A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state Legislature and may also have violated Florida law.

DeSantis aides worked behind the scenes with an attorney who serves as the national GOP’s top redistricting lawyer and other consultants tied to the national party apparatus, according to records and interviews.

Florida’s Constitution was amended in 2010 to prohibit partisan-driven redistricting, a landmark effort in the growing movement to end gerrymandering as an inescapable feature of American politics.

Barbara Pariente, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who retired in 2019, told ProPublica that DeSantis’ collaboration with people connected to the national GOP would constitute “significant evidence of a violation of the constitutional amendment.”

State Supreme Court draws a map

It took years of litigation for the details of the scheme to come to light. But in 2015, the Florida Supreme Court responded with force. In a series of rulings that ultimately rejected the Republicans’ efforts, the court laid out the stringent new requirements under Fair Districts, making clear that partisan “practices that have been acceptable in the past” were now illegal in the state of Florida.

After ruling that the Legislature’s process was unconstitutional, the court threw out the Republicans’ congressional district lines and imposed a map of its own. That is how Lawson’s district came to be.

“It was important,” Pariente, who authored the key opinions, told ProPublica, “to make sure the amendment had teeth and was enforceable.”

In 2021, state legislative leaders were more careful.

The Senate leadership “explained to us at the beginning of the session that because of what happened last cycle, everything had to go through the process,” Sen. Joe Gruters, who is also chairman of the Florida Republican Party, told ProPublica.

In November, the state Senate proposed maps that largely stuck to the status quo. Analysts predicted they would give Republicans 16 seats in Congress and Democrats 12.

“Were they the fairest maps you could draw? No,” said Ellen Freidin, leader of the anti-gerrymandering advocacy group FairDistricts Now. “But they weren’t bad Republican gerrymanders.”

That didn’t sit well with the governor

DeSantis wasn’t satisfied. “The governor’s office was very pissed off about the map. They thought it was weak,” said a well-connected Florida Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be candid. “They thought it was ridiculous to not even try to make it as advantageous as possible.”

lorida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican Legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage.

DeSantis threw out the Legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more favorable to Republicans. The plan was so aggressive that the Republican-controlled Legislature balked and fought DeSantis for months. The governor overruled lawmakers and pushed his map through.

DeSantis’ office has publicly stressed that partisan considerations played no role and that partisan operatives were not involved in the new map.

A ProPublica examination of how that map was drawn — and who helped decide its new boundaries — reveals a much different origin story. The new details show that the governor’s office appears to have misled the public and the state Legislature and may also have violated Florida law.

DeSantis aides worked behind the scenes with an attorney who serves as the national GOP’s top redistricting lawyer and other consultants tied to the national party apparatus, according to records and interviews.

Florida’s Constitution was amended in 2010 to prohibit partisan-driven redistricting, a landmark effort in the growing movement to end gerrymandering as an inescapable feature of American politics.

Barbara Pariente, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who retired in 2019, told ProPublica that DeSantis’ collaboration with people connected to the national GOP would constitute “significant evidence of a violation of the constitutional amendment.”

State Supreme Court draws a map

It took years of litigation for the details of the scheme to come to light. But in 2015, the Florida Supreme Court responded with force. In a series of rulings that ultimately rejected the Republicans’ efforts, the court laid out the stringent new requirements under Fair Districts, making clear that partisan “practices that have been acceptable in the past” were now illegal in the state of Florida.

After ruling that the Legislature’s process was unconstitutional, the court threw out the Republicans’ congressional district lines and imposed a map of its own. That is how Lawson’s district came to be.

“It was important,” Pariente, who authored the key opinions, told ProPublica, “to make sure the amendment had teeth and was enforceable.”

In 2021, state legislative leaders were more careful.

The Senate leadership “explained to us at the beginning of the session that because of what happened last cycle, everything had to go through the process,” Sen. Joe Gruters, who is also chairman of the Florida Republican Party, told ProPublica.

In November, the state Senate proposed maps that largely stuck to the status quo. Analysts predicted they would give Republicans 16 seats in Congress and Democrats 12.

“Were they the fairest maps you could draw? No,” said Ellen Freidin, leader of the anti-gerrymandering advocacy group FairDistricts Now. “But they weren’t bad Republican gerrymanders.”

That didn’t sit well with the governor

DeSantis wasn’t satisfied. “The governor’s office was very pissed off about the map. They thought it was weak,” said a well-connected Florida Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be candid. “They thought it was ridiculous to not even try to make it as advantageous as possible.”

A Pasco County judge threw a wrench into the county’s remaining School Board race on Monday, declaring that the well-funded candidate endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis did not qualify for the ballot.

State law requires school board candidates to reside in the district they are seeking to represent by the end of the qualifying period, which was noon on June 17.

Circuit Judge Susan Barthle found that Alvaro “Al” Hernandez, a Humana executive backed by much of the county Republican establishment, did not meet that mandate, according to lawyers who attended a hearing in her courtroom Monday.

Neither Hernandez nor his attorney could be reached for comment.