International
Florida primary will set US Senate race but largely focus on state and local races
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Compared with the wild twists and turns of the presidential election, Florida’s primary Tuesday will be relatively tame. The only statewide race on the ballot is for the Senate seat held by Republican Rick Scott, who will learn who he’ll face in November.
Local races will be the main motivator to get people to the polls, including school board seats as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes for conservatives to win seats in several districts.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the Florida primary:
U.S. Senate
While Scott technically has a primary, he is expected to win easily over two minor candidates with little name identification or money. He has the power of incumbency along with the backing of his party and has already spent about $27 million on his reelection, including millions of his personal money.
The leading candidate in the Democratic primary is former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who in 2018 became the first Ecuadorian American and first South American born woman elected to Congress. She lost her seat after one term.
Mucarsel-Powell has the backing of party leaders and has raised $12 million for the race. Scott is already campaigning as if she will be his opponent, but she first faces Navy veteran and businessman Stanley Campbell, Army veteran and businessman Rod Joseph and Brian Rush, a former four-term Florida state representative.
Congress
Incumbents are running for 27 of the state’s 28 House seats and all should be safe in the primary barring any surprises. The one open seat is now held by Republican Bill Posey in a conservative district along Florida’s central Atlantic coast.
Posey announced his retirement hours after former Senate President Mike Haridopolos qualified for the race. He immediately backed Haridopolos, who now faces tech businessman John Hearton. The winner of the GOP primary will be the favorite to win in November. Democrats Sandy Kennedy and Daniel McDow are seeking the Democratic nomination.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz’ bid for a fifth term also is gaining some attention, largely because former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s political committee has spent $3 million attacking Gaetz and backing primary opponent Aaron Dimmock. McCarthy’s meddling in the race comes after Gaetz led a group of eight far-right Republicans who toppled McCarthy from the speakership with the help of Democratic members.
The attacks on Gaetz have been brutal and stem from a House Ethics Committee investigation into sexual misconduct and drug use. But the allegations aren’t new and Gaetz has a loyal following in the district that includes Pensacola and much of the Panhandle. Since winning office in 2016, Gaetz has easily won primaries with between 65% and 80% of the vote.
State and local races
For the first time ever, Florida Democrats have fielded a candidate for all 120 House and 40 Senate seats. Although it’s an admirable achievement and will force Republicans to spread their money around, Democrats lost control of the Senate in 1992 and the House in 1996.
Republicans have built a supermajority in both chambers. A few seats might change parties after November, but Republicans will likely maintain their dominance in the Legislature.
School board races will face added attention in several districts with DeSantis endorsing 23 school board candidates across 14 counties this cycle and targeting 14 incumbent members. It’s part of his agenda to counter what he calls “woke” ideology in public schools.
By the numbers
At the voter deadline for the primary, Republicans outnumbered Democrats 5.3 million to 4.3 million, with 3.5 million voters choosing not to register with a party.
As of Friday morning, nearly 1.6 million of Florida’s 13.5 million voters had cast votes by mail or at early voting sites, which indicates a low overall primary turnout. Republicans have cast about 733,00 ballots, compared with about 515,000 Democrats.
Ryan Salame and Caroline Ellison, FTX executives convicted for their roles in the notorious crypto fraud led by their former boss Sam Bankman-Fried, have both shaved time off their lengthy prison sentences.
Salame, a former top executive of FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency trading platform, pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges in September 2023, and was sentenced in May to 7 1/2 years in federal prison. He began his sentence in October. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons currently lists his release date as March 1, 2031, more than a year earlier than his initial release date in April 2032. Business Insider first reported Salame’s new release date.
Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the former CEO of FTX’s hedge fund arm, Alameda Research, was sentenced to 2 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to seven federal counts of fraud and conspiracy and was a key witness against Bankman-Fried. Her current release date is listed as July 20, 2025, three months earlier than her initial release date.
Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, does not have a release date listed on the prisons website.
The Bureau of Prisons didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, in several past statements about early release dates, the bureau has told CNN that it does not comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but inmates can earn good conduct time that is calculated into their projected release date.
Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court. Inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, including participation in various prison programs.
FTX was a high-profile crypto startup that allowed people to buy and sell digital assets. It had its name emblazoned on an arena in Miami and on every Major League Baseball umpire’s jersey. The exchange had several celebrity endorsers and was widely believed to be a gold-standard for safety and security.
But FTX collapsed in November 2022 when customers pulled their funds as rumors spread about FTX’s unusually close ties to its founder’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda
This time last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the doldrums.
“He started very low,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked closely with Netanyahu. “The lowest point that he had.”
Many Israelis accused him of being asleep at the wheel on October 7, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some even said he enabled it by funding Hamas.
His political support was dismal – even if the Gaza war let him brush aside calls for an election. Polls suggested support for his Likud Party was down 25% from just three months prior.
On its face, the year that followed was hardly uplifting. It brought tens of thousands of deaths, regional conflict, indictments, and accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. And yet, Netanyahu ends the year having transformed his standing in Israel.
“I am running a marathon,” he told a Tel Aviv courtroom earlier this month, facing charges – which he denies – of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. “I can run it with 20 kilos on my back, and I can run it with 10 kilos on my back.”
International
‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration
Fear and uncertainty are spreading across many US college campuses ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, with some schools advising international students to return early from winter break amid promises of another travel ban like the one that stranded students abroad at the start of Trump’s last term.
In a country where more than 1.1 million international students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2023-24 academic year, the former president has pledged more hardline immigration policies upon his return to the White House, including an expansion of his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
International students generally have nonimmigrant visas that allow them to study in the US but don’t provide a legal pathway to stay in the country.
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