Niki Isaak was approximately 33 miles into the Central Florida Classic bike ride near Brooksville in October when a group of motorcyclists entered the bike path and began riding dangerously close to her.

Despite there being a wide-open road, one motorcyclist narrowly passed Isaak on the right shoulder, another pinned her in on the left, and a third finally hit her from behind.

The sudden impact smashed her body to the ground, puncturing her anal canal and fracturing her tailbone, among other injuries. She was immediately rushed to HCA Florida Bayonet Point Hospital, where she remained in the trauma center for three days before being released to return to her home in Fort Myers.

Two months later, she is still doing physical therapy and has created a GoFundMe page to help with the medical bills now totaling more than $400,000 as she tries to pick up the pieces in her life.

“The impact is so big,” she said in a Zoom conversation last month. “It’s ruined our lives in so many ways, and we don’t even know the outcome. I just hope people can see that it’s just getting worse.”

Despite the seriousness of the accident, the offending motorcyclist was only charged with a citation for careless driving, a moving violation.

Frustration among cycling advocates 

“What is the response of the local law enforcement officers? Nothing,” fumes Matt Scarborough, Isaak’s attorney who specializes in defending cyclists involved in accidents. “We’re seeing in my practice that cyclists are just being ignored. If this was a motor vehicle vs. another motor vehicle causing this much damage to somebody, I think it would be a much different story.”

One of Scarborough’s other cases involves pro triathlete Gabrielle Suver, who was cycling along the side of a county road in Lake County on  Nov. 15 when a driver sideswiped her, resulting in a broken back, a fractured neck, a broken leg, fractured kneecap, liver laceration, scapula and sternum fractures and concussion, according to WESH-TV. She was released from the hospital this past Sunday after 28 days.

For decades, Florida’s roads have been listed as the most dangerous in the nation for pedestrians and bicyclists, and there has certainly been more awareness regarding safety concerns in the Sunshine State. But observers lament that conditions aren’t getting better.

A recently released report from the Bicycle Accident Lawyers group concluded that Florida remains the most dangerous state in the nation for bicyclists, looking at combined 2022 and 2023 data. And there were another 207 bicycle fatalities in 2024, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

These troubling statistics continue despite the fact that Florida lawmakers in 2006 passed a law requiring motorists to give cyclists at least three feet of space when driving along or passing them.

Cynics question how often that’s being enforced. Just 130 motorists were cited for violating that law in 2024, according to the annual uniform traffic citation report produced by the state.

Florida’s 3 foot rule

“The 3-foot rule is not the 3-foot rule,” says Tampa attorney Steele Olmstead, who has represented injured cyclists. “The statute says that the motorist has to pass at a safe distance. Not less than 3 feet? Well, cops fall back on that and go, ‘Oh, well. I can’t get out and measure it. I couldn’t tell whether it was 3 feet or not.”

Florida statute 316.083 (2) says that that any driver overtaking a bicycle or other nonmotorized vehicle or an electric bicycle occupying the travel lane must pass that vehicle “at a safe distance of not less than 3 feet or, if such movement cannot be safely accomplished, must remain at a safe distance behind the bicycle or other nonmotorized vehicle or electric bicycle until the driver can safely pass at a distance of not less than 3 feet and must safely clear the overtaken bicycle or other nonmotorized vehicle or electric bicycle.”

Olmstead says he “might have” won one case over the past decade in which a motorist received a ticket for unsafe passing.

Officials say increasing bicycle deaths is a national problem but note that there is a greater proximity to higher speed roads in Florida.

“There’s often a transition from a 20-25 miles per hour neighborhood development that’s relatively self-contained or something like a quasi-gated community, and then you’re immediately on a 45 mph road,” said Ken McLeod, policy director for the League of American Bicyclists. “And at 45 mph, any mistake by a driver is more likely to cause a death for a person biking or walking.”

And while more Florida cities have incorporated separated paths for people to bike and walk, there remain plenty of unprotected bike lanes. “All it takes is driver looking down at their phone and drifting down into the bike lane at 45 mph, and you have a crash that could be a fatality, because you have that high speed and that kinetic energy potential is there to cause the death,” McLeod said. “If it was 35 or 30, you have a lower chance of death when that crash occurred.”

The League of American Bicyclists “Benchmarking Report” released in December 2024 showed that the percentages of bicyclist deaths have increased in Florida from an average of 143 between 2014 and 2018 to 197 between 2019 and 2023, a 38% increase.

And, according to preliminary data compiled by the state of Florida, as of Dec. 13, there had been 185 bicycling fatalities this year (along with 9,277 injuries from bicycle crashes).

(A group called “Ghost Bikes” places white-painted bicycles at sites where someone was hit or killed while riding.)

Some law enforcement officials say the fault often lies with cyclists. In a YouTube video posted last month, Pinellas County Sheriff Sgt. Jessica Mackesy said that at least four cyclists were critically injured or killed in crashes with vehicles because they didn’t stop at a stop sign or a red light.

“Physics doesn’t care if you’ve done it 100 times before. A 4,000-pound vehicle versus a bike, there’s only one outcome,” Mackesy said. “And looking both ways isn’t enough when there’s a driver who has the right of way and expects you to stop. Stop means stop—on the road, on the trail—every time.”

The Florida Department of Transportation last updated its Pedestrian and Bicycle Strategic Safety Plan in October 2021. In it, the agency reported that, between 2016 and 2020, 90% of all pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities and serious injuries on state roadways occurred in just 25 of the state’s 67 counties. (The top five counties for fatalities and serious injuries were Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Hillsborough, and Duval).

Potential solutions?

Pinellas County Democratic Rep. Lindsay Cross is a cyclist who can be seen riding her bike to the Capitol during the legislative session. She says there are common-sense things that government can do to enhance safety for pedestrians and cyclists, such as creating more protected bike lanes and pedestrian crosswalks, but she believes part of the problem is with how local governments develop communities.

“They’re all focused on having a car,” she said. “People by and large will choose places that are more walkable, that have mixed uses where you can walk to your grocery store or to a coffee shop. People like that, but a lot of the new development doesn’t have that as an option. You’ve got to drive to get into your community. You probably have to go a couple of miles to get to a grocery store.

“Maybe there’s sidewalks in your community, but they’re not leading to anywhere. They’re just a loop within the community. So, I think fundamentally, we need to shift the way our development is happening, so it’s geared towards people moving at a slower pace. Cars are also going to have to slow down and make it safer. That also helps to just enhance our quality of life, make it more accessible for people who are aging to have those options.”

John Sinibaldi Jr. is president of the St. Petersburg Bicycle Club. He has been hit twice by motorists while biking, the last time in 2010 when a collision with a distracted driver led to two lower-back surgeries and two cervical spinal-fusion surgeries. He offers two changes that he thinks could significantly improve bike safety in Florida.

“I would increase communications dramatically between the state and the people who drive on our roads,” said Sinibaldi, whose late father, John Sinibaldi Sr., was a two-time Olympic cyclist in 1932 and 1936. “That would include visual things like billboards and public service announcements on TV. That would  include better driver education before you get your license, [and] driver education when you renew your licenses.”

His other idea is less prescriptive, and more philosophical.

“The second thing is we have to get our local police out of the mindset that if a motorist in a car hits a cyclist, the default option should not be to just assume that the cyclist did something wrong. And yet that’s often the case,” he said.

The Phoenix reached out to law enforcement agencies in Florida for reaction.

“Law enforcement works to enforce the law, and they will treat everyone with respect in that process, that includes both motorists and cyclists,” said Logan Lewkow, deputy executive director of operations for the Florida Sheriffs Association. “You can look around the state — sheriffs’ offices have created visibility enforcement programs specifically to make roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists. The safety of pedestrians and cyclists is very important to law enforcement.”

The Florida Highway Patrol did not respond to a request for comment.

Legislation

The Florida Bicycle Association says its top legislative goal is for the state to pass a comprehensive “Hands Free” law that would make it illegal to hold a phone while operating a motor vehicle. The group says such legislation must go beyond “texting and driving” to encompass all activities that take a driver’s hands and attention away from the road, including scrolling through social media, streaming videos, and any other non-driving activity requiring manual interaction with a handheld device.

Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, sponsored a bill to do just that during the 2025 session, which passed in the Senate, 37-9. But its House companion never moved at all.

No similar bill has been filed yet for the 2026 session.

Bills addressing bike safety have been introduced for the coming Florida legislative session, but only regarding electric or e-bikes, a relatively new phenomenon resulting in a spike in injuries around the state.

Lots of people—from kids to seniors—began using e-bikes during the COVID pandemic. “A new subculture” of seniors who never rode a bike before are using e-bikes seeking the freedom they’re looking for, Sinibaldi said, adding that he sees younger people who have lost their licenses or can’t drive for whatever reason who are also using these new bikes.

“They’re terrorizing the Pinellas Trail—there’s no other way to put it—because they don’t know anything about trail etiquette,” he said. The trail occupies old railroad right of way between St. Pete and Tarpon Springs.

A bill (HB 243) sponsored by Republicans Yvette Benarroch from Collier County and Kim Kendall from St. Johns County would require a person using or renting a class 3 electric bike to hold a driver’s license or learner’s permit. Class 3 electric bikes are the fastest legal bikes with a maximum speed of 28 miles per hour. Anyone caught purposefully modifying an E-bike to boost its motor-powered speed would face a fine up to $100. Subsequent violations could go up to $250.

And Hillsborough County Republican state Rep. Susan Valdés filed legislation last week (HB 667) that would require anyone under 18 to wear a helmet while operating or riding an e-bike.

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Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried is blasting proposed legislation introduced this week by Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blaise Ingoglia aimed at increasing local government spending transparency—specifically, a provision that would allow removal of local officials found to have committed “financial abuse.”

The legislation, scheduled to be filed ahead of the coming legislative session in the Florida House by Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, and in the Senate by Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach, would increase local government transparency and formally establish Ingoglia’s Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO) effort into statute.

The proposal includes a provision that would codify the state’s CFO’s ability to recommend removal of any elected official who is found to have committed “financial abuse, malfeasance or misfeasance.”

“I have heard zero from our new CFO about what he plans on doing to hold our property insurance companies accountable,” Fried said on a Zoom conference call on Thursday. “Instead, he’s bullying our local governments, creating fictitious formulas, and now he wants to overreach even more by putting a clause in there about removing elected local officials.”

More than any recent governor, Ron DeSantis has aggressively exercised the power within his office to remove elected officials from office, including school board members, sheriffs, and most controversially, two Democratic state prosecutors, Andrew Warren in Hillsborough County and Monique Worrell in Orange and Osceola counties.

Worrell rebounded from her 2023 suspension, winning re-election by a large margin in 2024.

“We see how Ron DeSantis has abused that power throughout his eight years in this administration, and so that is just them bullying our local governments that are the ones who are closest to the people,” Fried added.

In addition to those above listed suspensions, Attorney General James Uthmeier threatened other local governments officials in Florida earlier this year in Orange County and Key West when they raised objections to signing 287(g) agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the case of Orange County, Mayor Jerry Demings said in August that he signed an updated agreement with ICE under “protest and extreme duress” after Uthmeier threatened the mayor and all six county commissioners that their failure to do so would result in their removal from office by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Other provisions in the legislation introduced by Ingoglia at a press conference in Tampa on Wednesday include allowing the Department of Financial Services to pursue financial penalties from local governments if they don’t respond to inquiries “promptly,” including by withholding any state funds until they do so.

“If we ask for the information on a Monday, and we’re giving you five days to compile the information — get it in five days; if you don’t, then you face a $1,000 a day penalty,” he said at the press conference.

The legislation comes as Ingoglia continues to make the case that local governments have been engaged in “excessive and wasteful spending” by comparing their fiscal year 2024-2025 budgets with what they were spending in 2019-2020. So far, after reviewing the budgets of 11 local governments this year, he says they have engaged collectively in $1.86 billion in alleged wasteful and excessive spending.

Local government officials who have received those FAFO audits have questioned the accuracy of the methodology used by the CFO’s auditors. Ingoglia has called such criticisms “bogus” and “not well thought out.”

Fried argued that if Ingoglia were serious about cutting excessive government spending, he should look inside the DeSantis administration’s own spending excesses. She referred to a Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald story published last week reporting that the DeSantis administration spent $36.2 million in taxpayer funds last year to purchase ads against the proposed marijuana and abortion ballot measures, both of which were contested by the governor.

“If [Ingoglia] wants to talk about saving dollars and making sure that the people are getting a return to the taxes they have put into this state, he should be focused on what’s happening in Tallahassee,” she said. “Ron DeSantis stole $38 million from the people of this state, and so that’s really where the attacks should be. That’s where his energy should be.”

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Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Blaise Ingoglia previewed legislation Wednesday meant to increase spending accountability and transparency for local government officials, with penalties for noncompliance including fines and removal from office.

Ingoglia has been crisscrossing the state for months with his FAFO (Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight) team, auditing spending by some of the state’s largest counties and municipalities. To date they have reviewed spending by 11 local governments and say that they have found more than $1.86 billion in alleged wasteful and excessive spending.

Ingoglia has been clear that part of the effort is to show taxpayers that extensive wasteful spending is taking place. His assertion of such excesses, he believes, should quell arguments by local government officials that a proposed reduction in property taxes for homestead properties will harm essential local services.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he wants to put a measure on the statewide ballot next November that would eliminate of substantially reduce property taxes on homestead properties but has yet to release his own proposal(s). He has, however, ridiculed the proposals on the issue already moving their way through the Florida House as “milquetoast.”

Ingoglia introduced his proposal during a press conference in Tampa that featured state Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, who said she will sponsor them in the Florida House during the 2026 session.

“Over the last five years, we have seen property taxes increase by nearly 50%, and this at a time when Florida’s families are being asked to tighten their belts,” she said. “To be direct, tax dollars have become a drug for local governments. And, like any addiction, as long as the supply is unlimited, the behavior will not change.”

The provisions in the legislation

The proposals discussed on Wednesday that will be sponsored by Miller in the House and Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Beach, would include:

• Codifying FAFO into statute to increase accountability and transparency in local government and make this effort a long-term permanent initiative. “Protecting taxpayers should not have an expiration date, and neither should FAFO,” Ingoglia declared.
• Grant government employees, contractors, subcontractors, and taxpayers whistleblower protections when reporting waste, fraud, and abuse of local tax dollars.
• Allow the Department of Financial Services to pursue financial penalties from local governments if they do not respond to inquiries in a “timely manner,” including the withholding of state funds until they comply. That office would have the power to issue subpoenas (as Ingoglia’s office did this summer with officials in Orange County).
• Require local governments to upload all of their contracts into a centralized state financial system.
• Require local governments to submit annual financial efficiency reports to include information such as cash on hand and how much goes to investment accounts and nonprofit organizations, and to list salaries of every local government employee.
• Codify that the Florida CFO can recommend to the governor and state Cabinet removal of any elected official found to have committed financial abuse, malfeasance, or misfeasance.

Miller said that whenever the conversation about cutting back on excessive government spending takes place, she has been “immediately bombarded by naysayers and their supporters with arguments as to why it is impossible. It’s just astounding.”

Ingoglia spent considerable time during the news conference ridiculing local government officials “and their leftist big-budget apologists” who have questioned the methodology of his team’s audits.

‘Fictitious’ claims?

Last week in Palm Beach County, Ingoglia claimed his team of auditors identified $344 million in “excessive, wasteful spending” in the most recent fiscal year—the highest amount across the 11 local governments his agency has reviewed this year.

That received strong pushback from Palm Beach County Administrator Joe Abruzzo, who called the claims “fictitious,” and sent Ingoglia a public records request asking for detailed information about how the calculations were made, according to Stet News.

Local government officials have repeatedly questioned what the CFO is identifying as being “wasteful” and “excessive” in their spending practices. Ingoglia has promised those governments that detailed audits identifying that spending are coming, but they have yet to be released.

“Will there be specific instances outlining line items in the budget that they are spending? Yes, but that is why this information and this piece of legislation is vital, because it allows us to get more information quicker than we would have before,” he said.

Among the local governments Ingolia’s team has audited to date, Tampa, the state’s third largest municipality, hasn’t been one of them. But Ingoglia said if he is elected next year and then re-elected in 2030, he’ll eventually get to every local government that draws taxpayer funds.

“Whether it is a city, a county, a taxing jurisdiction, a school board, a board that has its own millage rate, its own taxing authority, that will not escape my grasp over the next nine years,” he said. “I’m going to be looking at everything.”

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil-rights organization, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order issued last week designating the group as a “terrorist organization.” CAIR is asking the court to block the executive order and declare it unconstitutional.

The CAIR-Foundation and CAIR-Florida filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee on Monday.

DeSantis issued his executive order on Dec. 8, designating CAIR a “terrorist organization.” The order directed Florida’s executive and Cabinet agencies, as well as every county and city, to deny local or state contracts, employment, funding, benefits, or privileges to CAIR and anyone known to provide “material support” to CAIR, including “expert advice or assistance.”

The order directs the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) to undertake “all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities in Florida” against terrorist organizations designated in Section 1 of the executive order, which includes the Muslim Brotherhood.

“This executive order does not present facts, it does not cite investigations, it does not point to any criminal findings. It simply declares guilt by proclamation,” said Hiba Rahim, interim executive director for CAIR-Florida, during a press conference at the organization’s Tampa headquarters Tuesday.

“It does not matter whether you agree or disagree with our policies or our advocacy. What should concern every American is the implication of allowing a government official to apply criminal designations without due process. This is not how things work in America. In this country, allegations come with evidence and evidence is tested in court. And it is judges, not politicians, who decide what is lawful.”

CAIR has never been declared a foreign terrorist organization by any federal agency.

In alleging that DeSantis has violated the Constitution, the lawsuit contends that he has:

• Illegally usurped the exclusive authority of the federal government to designate American organizations as terrorist groups based on allegations of material support for foreign terrorist groups.
• Violated the Constitution’s guarantee of due process by unilaterally designating CAIR a criminal actor and then ordering immediate punitive, discriminatory action against CAIR and its supporters without any chance to appeal that punishment or designation.
• Violated the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech by punishing Americans who seek to provide CAIR with material support, including speech in the form “assistance” and “advice,” and retaliating against CAIR for speech he finds objectionable, including the organization’s past lawsuit against him and its activism in support of Palestinian human rights.

CAIR-Florida and DeSantis do have a history in the courts. In November 2023, one month after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, CAIR National and CAIR-Florida filed suit against Florida officials including DeSantis, challenging state directives to deactivate Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at Florida public universities. In January 2024, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the case was not valid because the ban had not been enforced.

Florida joins Texas

During Tuesday’s news conference, CAIR officials said that in filing the lawsuit, they weren’t just standing up for Muslim rights, but constitutional rights for others as well, and noted that they have been joined in the lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and the Michigan law firm Akeel & Valentine.

Saying the executive order calls on the FDLE and FHP to prevent all “unlawful activity” by CAIR, attorney Omar Saleh added that he thought such laws were already in place. “But Gov. DeSantis wants to add additional penalties, just in case you’re Muslim or if you support a Muslim group, and it doesn’t work that way in this country,” he said.

DeSantis’ executive order listing both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as “terrorist organizations” came three weeks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a proclamation prohibiting CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood and its members from purchasing or acquiring land in the state, accusing them of supporting terrorism and undermining Texas laws through harassment, intimidation, and violence.

On Nov. 24, President Trump issued an executive order that sets in motion a process by which certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood “shall be considered for designation as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” CAIR has previously said that it has no association with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Texas U.S. Republican Sen. John Cornyn announced Monday that he wants to eliminate CAIR’s tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, saying in a written statement that the group “is a radical group of terrorist sympathizers with a long history of undermining American values.”

CAIR was established in 1994 and now has 25 chapters around the state, including in Tampa and Miami. CAIR officials were asked Tuesday to speculate about why they are now being targeted by two states and a U.S. senator.

“This has been happening much longer than a month ago, but it’s picking up a lot more because public officials are being more brazen in showing what their true thoughts are about Islam and Muslims,” said Saleh. “When Texas happened, we knew Florida would be coming, because we know that’s what the governor’s sentiment is.”

Thania Clevenger, national chief operating officer for CAIR, agreed that negative allegations regarding the organization aren’t new, but said they have been growing steadily since the Hamas attack on Israel two years ago.

“The impact against the community has been growing steadily since Oct. 7 with the Palestinian movement,” she said. “Our work has been effective. We have sued governors across the country who are ‘Israeli First.’ And so that action has brought more scrutiny to CAIR.”

‘Discovery rights’

When asked for comment, the governor’s press office sent the Phoenix previous statements DeSantis has made over the past week on social media and in person regarding his decision to issue the executive order.

“I welcome the lawsuit because what will happen is, that will give the state of Florida discovery rights to be able to subpoena the bank records. … And honestly, it gives us even more reason. … And so this is something that our attorney general is ready, willing and able to fighting on this, DeSantis said on Dec. 9 in North Miami Beach.

“They have every right to sue, and then we’re going to have a right to get the information that we need to make sure. But our agencies are on notice about how any of our programs or any of our operations are impacted, or not impacted, and so to the extent that they can be, then they’re going to have a basis to be able to protect the people and the taxpayers from that.”

DeSantis added in that press conference that “people forget CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror financing trial in the history of the United States of America. If there were any other situation where that happened, then people would be up in arms, but somehow that’s something that just gets forgotten.”

“A lot of it is financial,” he went to say. “That’s why I think a lawsuit is something that we very much welcome for that.”

That was a reference to a 2008 federal conviction of five former leaders of a U.S.-based Muslim charity named the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

CAIR had been included in the list of un-indicted co-conspirators in the case. The organization was not indicted, however, and on its website CAIR says that “the U.S. Attorney who led the Holy Land Foundation case confirmed decisions to indict were based only on evidence and law—not politics.”

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Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried took a victory lap Wednesday, fresh off seeing Miami voters elect former Miami-Dade County commissioner Eileen Higgins as mayor, the first time a registered Democrat has taken the seat in decades.

Higgins defeated former Miami City Manager Emilio González Tuesday by more than 18 percentage points, 59%-41%.

That race was technically nonpartisan, but there was no question about party affiliation with such an intense national focus on the contest.

González received endorsements from President Trump and Ron DeSantis and campaigned with Rick Scott, while national Democrats like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Arizona U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego came down to Miami to stump for Higgins.

“The message that was delivered last night here in the state of Florida is that the pendulum is swinging towards Democrats and is powered by the people on the ground and our candidates and our electeds every single day,” Fried said in a Zoom conference call with reporters Wednesday morning.

“And so we’re thrilled by the victories that we saw all over our state from Miami Beach all the way up to the SD 11 overperformance. These are all showing that the pendulum is swinging in our favor.

Senate District 11 swing

The “SD 11 overperformance” referred to the special election in Florida’s Senate District 11 Tuesday night to replace Blaise Ingoglia, who vacated the seat this past summer after being appointed by DeSantis as the state’s chief financial officer.

Republican Ralph Massullo defeated Ash Marwah by 18 percentage points, 59%-41%, in a district encompassing Citrus, Hernando, Sumter and part of Pasco County.

In November, Ingoglia had defeated Democrat Marilyn Holleran, 69%-31%, meaning Tuesday’s result had shifted 20% towards the Democratic candidate.

Fried specifically referred to the results in Hernando, where Ingoglia resides. Massullo won that county by just six percentage points, whereas in November Ingoglia took Hernando by 34 points. “That isn’t because it’s a special election. It’s because people are tired of chaos. They’re tired of elected officials not showing up for them,” she said.

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power said Fried’s excitement wasn’t warranted.

“This is a great Nikki Fried tradition to take one lean-D race and try to turn it into momentum,” he said in a text message. “Everyday Floridians are rejecting the far-left Democrat Party. It’s why we now have a 1.4 million Republican voter advantage.”

Given that disadvantage, Fried has said throughout the year that Democrats will need support from independents and disaffected Republicans to win legislative and congressional seats in 2026. She argued that’s what happened in some parts of Florida Tuesday night.

“Because these coalitions that came together all across the state were Democrats, Republicans, Independents,” she said. “And that’s how we’re going to build a better Florida and make sure that we’re turning the page of 30 years of one-party control of this state, which is why this state is so unaffordable.”

It should be noted that while a Democrat had not been elected mayor of Miami since the late 1990s, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the city (Miami-Dade County did flip Republican earlier this year). And while it is accurate that voters there had elected Republicans in every election since 2009, Manny Diaz, who served as Miami mayor from 2001-2009, was a political independent who went on to chair the Florida Democratic Party from 2021 to 2023.

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who lost two previous races for Congress in Florida, said on X Tuesday that Higgins’ victory meant that “a bright red city in a bright red state just went blue.”

She went on to predict: “Midterms will be a bloodbath.”

DCCC weighs in

Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced Wednesday that it had added Republican Laurel Lee’s 15th Congressional District in the Tampa Bay area to its list of “districts in play” in 2026. The other GOP Florida seats in play, according to the DCCC, are Cory Mills’ District 7, Anna Paulina Luna’s District 13, and Maria Salazar’s District 27.

“Laurel Lee represents the worst of what voters hate about Congress—an out-of-touch politician who cares more about prioritizing the wealthy and well-connected over helping Florida’s working families,” said DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene in a statement.

“As Republicans continue to push their failing agenda that leaves everyday Americans behind in favor of Laurel Lee’s wealthy donors, Democrats will fight to ensure that next November, Florida’s 15th Congressional District will elect a representative that cares about them and their issues.”

Republicans control 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts and are threatening to take more if they are successful in redrawing Florida’s congressional map sometime before next year’s midterm elections. Fried said she’s not worried if that happens.

“The fact of the matter is people are seeing through their chaos, they’re seeing through their corruption, and regardless of what those seats look like, I do believe that we’re going to be able to hold on to our Democratic seats and flip a whole bunch more,” she said.

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A nearly two-year investigation into a Panhandle state prison has concluded that overcrowding and understaffing has resulted in a high concentration of complaints by inmates about excessive force and staff misconduct.

The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) examines Gulf Correctional Institution near Wewahitchka, which houses approximately 1,600 men. Certain staff members contributed, the report says, to what the SPLC labels “the culture of violence” through overly harsh punishments and degradation of people under their supervision.

The specifics include:

• Property restriction, stripping inmates in solitary confinement down to their underwear, taking all their property, and leaving them to sleep on a cold, steel bunk for up to three days.
• Denying meals for innocuous misconduct and delivering “air trays” to people in solitary confinement; for the benefit of the prison cameras, officers deliver a meal tray covered by a lid, with no food under that lid.
• “Standing on the grate,” a practice of forcing people to stand over the storm drains in the yard for hours, sometimes stripped to their underwear or with their arms and legs in uncomfortable positions.
• “Catfishing,” a practice in which officers order barbers to shave off all of someone’s hair and eyebrows.
• Administering chemical agents like pepper spray to various parts of the body, including the mouth, ears, groin, and buttocks.
• Verbal abuse and harassment, including racial slurs and threats of physical and sexual violence.

The SPLC team identified at least 200 incarcerated victims or witnesses and interviewed 95 of them, the report says. They requested and reviewed more than 20,000 pages of prison, health care, and Office of Inspector General reports covering at least 1,100 incidents over the past decade.

The authors added that the FDC resisted their efforts to gather information.

“In response to public records requests, FDC demanded payment of exorbitant fees — often thousands of dollars — before production. After payment, FDC took months to produce records, only then revealing that it had frequently forced the SPLC to pay for duplicates, records that SPLC did not actually request, and unjustified redactions.”

The report adds that, despite those barriers, “for the 27 victims and witnesses at Gulf who had corroborating prison records and were willing to come forward, the team documented their stories in declarations sworn under penalty of perjury.”

Those first-person accounts are included in an appendix to the report.

“Officers respond to small and big provocations with vicious beatings — punching people all over their bodies,” said Kelly Knapp, a senior staff attorney for the SPLC, in a video interview provided in the online summary. “Hitting them with their walkie-talkies. Choking people. Spraying them at close range with pepper spray in their eyes and their mouth and their ears. Sometimes pulling down their pants and spraying pepper spray between their buttocks.”

“I think if one-tenth of that is true, it highlights the fact that we have a department of chaos, and that these institutions that are anemically understaffed are the worst actors, and the places where the state has failed its citizens the most,” former Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes told the Phoenix after reading the report.

Knapp said that with a vacancy rate for officers at around 50%, correction officers at Gulf are “overtaxed and overburdened.”

Staffing shortages

Florida prisons have faced significant staffing shortages throughout the years. They house more than 89,000 inmates, a population that has increased by more than 10,000 since 2021. That is expected to rise by another 4,100 over the next three years.

“We are managing today with relatively the same number of staff we had 10,000 inmates ago, so you can imagine what that’s doing to the staff and inmate ratios,” FCD Secretary Ricky Dixon told lawmakers in October.

The report says that as of September 2023, the operational staff vacancy rate at Gulf Correctional was 58%, tied for third highest in the state, according to consultants hired by FDC.

“The burden of overcrowding and understaffing often results in dangerous consequences for people incarcerated at Gulf,” the report says.

“Without adequate officer and investigator staffing, prison gangs thrive and perpetrate violence at the facility. Nearly every person interviewed reported that gangs essentially run the institution, with some officers afraid to intervene in attacks, indifferent to the violence, or complicit in their actions. For example, interviewees reported that certain officers frequently allowed people to enter through locked doors into dorms or cells without authorization to assault others at the facility or transfer contraband.”

Marc Caruso worked as a Florida corrections officer from 2010 to 2020.

“They need a whole new leadership from the top down,” he says in a video interview provided in the online summary of the report.

“The officers are tired. They’re burnt out. They know that we need new leadership. It’s the only way to make change in the department. You have to start at the top. You have to have a secretary that’s willing to take a bold stance on getting rid of the corruption in the department. And he has to have the backing of the governor. That’s the only way to do it.”

Since leaving the Legislature in 2022, Brandes founded and heads the Florida Policy Project, a think tank that focuses on statewide issues including criminal justice reform. He said the report “highlights how desperate the Department of Corrections is to address staffing and how, frankly, the Legislature has failed to adequately fund both the staffing and the oversight of these chronically understaffed facilities. “

“They’re setting themselves up for massive litigation over inmates being harmed because of the lack of staffing,” he adds. “At some juncture, it becomes unreasonable, and I think the courts would find that as well.”

The report lists three reforms that could reduce the level of violence in Florida prisons:

• Reducing the prison population to “ensure a safe and management staff-to-prisoner ratio;
• Investment in greater oversight of facilities and staff.
• Improved working conditions and training for correctional staff.

The Phoenix reached out to both the governor’s office and the Department of Corrections for comment but did not receive any response.

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ST PETERSBURG — Could Gwen Graham add heft to David Jolly’s candidacy for governor by becoming his running mate in Florida next year?

That question occurred when the former Tallahassee-based U.S. representative appeared with Jolly last week during a political rally in Pinellas County that drew 400-plus attendees.

Jolly has been crisscrossing the Sunshine State since entering the Democratic race for governor in June, and the event at 535 Nova — a wedding venue — was his 130th public gathering since he entered the contest, but the first time he appeared with Graham, the closest thing to Florida Democratic Party royalty. She’s a daughter of Bob Graham, the former Florida governor and U.S. senator who died last year at 87.

In an interview before the Thursday event, Gwen Graham, who served in Congress with Jolly from 2015-2017, said it was a “no-brainer” that she would support the former Republican for governor.

“I would not be standing here if I didn’t know he could win,” she said. “This election is too important. We’ve got to have a candidate in November who can win so we can start reversing the damage that has been done to the state that I love and my father loved, and David can win. So, I’m going to do whatever I can to help him do that.”

Many political analysts considered Graham the favorite to capture the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018, but she ended up losing to then Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by three percentage points in that year’s primary election. She went on to serve in President Joe Biden’s administration as assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs at the U.S. Department of Education from 2021 to 2025.

In introducing Jolly to the audience in St. Petersburg last week, Graham said she was nervous because it was her first public appearance since the death of her father, who served as Florida’s 38th governor from 1979 to 1987 and in the U.S. Senate from 1987 to 2005.

“I hear my dad’s voice in David’s commitment to the values that I have grown up with and lived,” she said in her speech.

“I hear David’s voice talking about what he cares about for the future of this state. So, while David knows this race will be difficult, the moment is too important. We must all stand together and do our part to define what Florida will look like as a state for the next century.”

Jolly deflected when asked before the event whether he was considering Graham to serve as his running mate, but did say, “We’re going to name a lieutenant governor candidate very early. We’re not going to wait until the primary. And I hope we see Gwen Graham in office again in the state of Florida.”

Considering a Jolly-Graham ticket

Longtime Hillsborough County Democratic strategist Victor DiMaio served at one time as a press secretary for Bob Graham. Having Gwen Graham on Jolly’s ticket makes sense on several levels, he said.

“Gwen would be an excellent choice if that’s what [Jolly] decides to do,” he said. “It didn’t hurt other governors who have selected women as lieutenant governors.”

Angela Birdsong, president of the Hillsborough County Democratic Black Caucus, believes Gillum would have defeated Ron DeSantis in 2018 if he had selected Graham, instead of Chris King, to serve as his running mate.

“She would bring in more conservative Democrats, and independents would love her,” Birdsong said of Graham’s appeal in 2026. When asked if that ticket might prove to be too moderate for Florida Democrats, Birdsong disagreed. “I’m with Jasmine Crockett — I think that we’re going to have to run some vanilla candidates for a while.”

(Crockett. a progressive Democratic member of Congress from Texas, said in an interview on Sirius/XM radio in May that, following the Democratic Party’s losses to Donald Trump with Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, “we just want to win.”

(She added, “So, there’s a lot of people that are like, ‘You know what? Like, let’s go find the safest white boy we can find.’ I mean, I’m just saying.”)

Some political consultants believe a Democratic gubernatorial ticket consisting of Jolly, a former Republican, and Graham, a political moderate, may offer a general election appeal to a Florida electorate that has moved considerably to the political right during the past eight years.

But it might be a dead letter within the more progressive precincts of the Florida Democratic Party.

Carolina Ampudia is a former chair of the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Florida. She sees a Jolly-Graham ticket as “a pathetic retreat, not a step forward.”

“Jolly has a Republican record and ties to Scientology. Graham voted to fast-track the Keystone pipeline and built her career on centrism. Neither of them represents the communities that have been fighting on the frontlines for labor rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+ protections, public education, or environmental survival,” she said in a text message.

“Florida doesn’t need a rebranded Republican and a legacy name,” she continued. “We need leadership that reflects the courage and clarity of the people — not the fears of consultants and donors.”

Florida’s last two elected governors, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott, both named women as their running mates (DeSantis selected Jeanette Nuñez in 2018 and Scott picked Jennifer Carroll in 2010). Charlie Crist selected female running mates in his two unsuccessful bids as a Democrat for governor in 2014 and 2022 (Annette Taddeo in ’14 and Karla Hernández-Mats in ’22).

Meanwhile, discussion about a potential running mate for Jolly comes amid a challenge for the Democratic nomination by Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who announced his candidacy a month ago. No major polls comparing the two Democrats have been published since his entry.

Uphill climb

On the GOP side, southwest Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is dominating in the polling. According to a survey of 800 likely Republican voters conducted by Florida pollster Ryan Tyson for the American Promise last month, Donalds, who has been endorsed by President Trump, received 43% support while a majority of the electorate (51%) remained unsure. Former House Speaker Paul Renner received 2% of the vote. Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, who has not formally entered the race, received 1%.

A poll conducted by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab of 728 likely voters between Donalds and Jolly in October (before Demings entered the contest) showed Donalds leading both Jolly and Demings by double digits.

The eventual Democratic nominee will be a decided underdog. Florida has not elected a Democrat to lead the state since Lawton Chiles in 1994.

Even before he entered the race for governor in June, Jolly had been talking about affordability, which has emerged as a buzzword in U.S. politics following Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayor’s race last month.

Thursday night, Jolly said concerns about the quality of life for everyday Floridians encompasses “more than affordability.”

“Affordability is, ‘Am I going to be able to afford rent or housing this week or this month.’ That is real. That’s a crisis. But we’re at a generational inflection point,” he said.

“I think that if Republicans continue with their policies, we’re going to lose the middle in the state of Florida and people are going to begin leaving at a quicker rate than we’re already seeing.”

Among the issues he addressed during his 50-minute-plus speech was the state’s universal school choice program, which expanded significantly in 2023 and was found by a state audit to feature “a myriad of accountability problems.”

“They don’t have to provide an individual education program,” Jolly said of private schools that accept state tuition subsidies.

“They don’t have to provide excellence in academics. Trigonometry in the 10th grade. Access to the trades. Access to the arts. They don’t have to provide any of that because there’s no standards on our choice schools. And so, just like Jeb Bush 25 years ago made the argument that he’s siding with Florida’s kids and families, guess what? Now we are. Because he used to say that public schools were leaving the kids behind. Now are choice schools leaving your kids behind? That’s what’s happening in the state of Florida.”

A plan to add funding for public education 

Jolly has proposed a “10-year renaissance” in public education, advocating for a proposed constitutional amendment that would steer a portion of tourist development tax receipts into public education to pay teachers 30% more.

Tourist development taxes are levied in 62 of  Florida’s 67 counties with rates ranging from 2% to 6% on sales. State law requires at least 40% of all tourist development tax revenues collected in a county to be spent to promote and advertise tourism.

“We build convention centers with it. We advertise beaches on the Chicago ‘L’ in January. … But guess what? We don’t have a crisis of convention centers in the state of Florida, we have a crisis in education,” Jolly said.

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President Donald Trump’s unprecedented plan to redraw state congressional maps to preserve the GOP’s narrow majority in the House ahead of the 2026 election has hit some bumps, but Republicans appear confident they can flip several Democratic seats in Florida, where the first steps in that process will begin this week.

A select House committee on congressional redistricting will convene Thursday afternoon in Tallahassee. It’s the first legislative meeting on the issue since Gov. Ron DeSantis said in July that it would be “appropriate to do a redistricting” in the middle of the decade. He followed up on that in August, saying that he and Attorney General James Uthmeier supported an update to the 2020 Decennial Census.

DeSantis said Florida had been “shortchanged in the reapportionment stemming from the last census” in 2020, although no new update to that census has taken place.

Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell slammed the proposal Monday, saying the only reason it is happening is because Trump wants to “rig” next year’s midterm elections because “he wants to stop Americans from holding his administration accountable for their bad decisions.”

‘Swamp-like cynical behavior’

“Any attempt to draw new maps in Florida right now is a direct response to the president’s pressure to stack the deck before the midterms, and that is illegal in Florida,” Driskell said on a Zoom press conference for Florida reporters.

“The Fair Districts amendments to the Florida Constitution outlaw drawing maps to benefit one party over another. Redistricting decides who represents us in our government. A process that must serve the people, not politicians. This isn’t something that the people asked for. This is just the swamp-like cynical behavior that people hate about politics.”

Florida’s Fair District amendments prohibit line-drawing that intentionally favors or disfavors a political party or incumbent.

With the Democrats in superminority status in both chambers of the Legislature, Driskell acknowledged her party can’t stop GOP members but said she is putting some hope in the Senate rejecting the move.

“We don’t have the numbers to stop this, but we haven’t seen what’s going to happen in the Senate yet and, interestingly, more and more we’re watching our state Senate become a backstop to guard against some of the more dangerous whims of the legislation that we see coming out from the House.”

Senate Republicans, who hold a 26-11 advantage over Democrats in that chamber, haven’t said much about the idea of congressional redistricting since the governor’s comments over the summer.

“I’d like to see some data on the magnitude of people in the state of Florida who might be here illegally who have been part of the calculation on re-districting,” Pinellas County Republican state Sen. Nick DiCeglie told the Phoenix last month.

“I think that we should have redistricting based on United States citizens, and we’ll see how that plays out here, if possible. It’s always good to focus on U.S. citizens and see exactly what needs to be done to accomplish that.”

Senate President Ben Albritton hasn’t made any comments about redistricting, and no committee that would oversee the issue has been formed yet in that chamber.

Driskell said she has taken solace from the fact that several Republicans in Indiana have spoken critically of congressional redistricting in their state. However, after pressure from the White House, Indiana House Republicans Monday proposed a redrawing that would let their party control all nine House seats (Democrats hold two of the state’s nine seats).

The first congressional redistricting took place in Texas earlier this year. That came after Trump said during the summer that Republicans were “entitled to five more seats” in the Lone Star State.

A federal court blocked Texas last month from using its new map, ruling that it is likely an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and ordered the state to use its previous map in the 2026 election. The new map is now back in place, at least temporarily, after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito granted the state’s request to pause that federal court’s ruling.

Tampa Bay-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor says Tallahassee Republicans should be focused on lowering Floridians’ property insurance and electricity bills, not redistricting. “I think it’s a waste of time and money,” she told the Phoenix last week.

Florida Republicans represent 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts.

Ahead of the committee meeting Thursday, a group of voting and civil rights organizations calling themselves the “No Partisan Maps” coalition are scheduled to hold a protest in front of the Capitol. The Florida House Select Committee hearing on congressional redistricting will begin at 1:30 p.m.

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A 16-year-old Palestinian American youth from Brevard County was released from an Israeli prison Thursday after being held since February on allegations of rock throwing in the West Bank.

The U.S. State Department confirmed the release of Mohammed Ibrahim in a statement sent to the Phoenix on Friday.

“The Department of State welcomes the news of the release of U.S. citizen Mohammed Ibrahim from detention in Israel,” said a State Department spokesperson, who added that “the Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens.”

During a press conference in Tampa in August, an attorney for his family said that Ibrahim had originally been held in Israel’s Megiddo Prison, where they said he had contracted scabies but been denied medical treatment. Family members said he had lost more than 25 pounds since his detention began.

In a press release issued Thursday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)’s Florida chapter, the organization said it had shared a sworn statement with members of Congress detailing how Ibrahim had been “beaten with rifle butts, starved, denied medical care, and threatened by masked interrogators who coerced him into a false confession under fear of further violence.”

CAIR and CAIR-Florida are calling on the State Department, members of Congress, faith leaders, and civil-society organizations to press for a full public accounting of Ibrahim’s treatment and “concrete consequences for the Israeli officials responsible.”

NPR reported earlier this month Ibrahim had been charged with two counts of stone-throwing at a moving vehicle, which could have resulted in a penalty of 20 years. A military court had been scheduled to hear his case on Dec. 15.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that the Israeli embassy in Washington had been circulating a letter in the nation’s capital defending its nine-month detention of Ibrahim and the medical treatment. The publication said the letter had not mentioned his dramatic weight loss or that his family had virtually no contact with him since he was arrested in February for allegedly throwing “rocks at vehicles belonging to Israeli citizens” or a confession after being interrogated the night of his arrest.

In October, 27 members of Congress, including Florida Democratic U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor and Maxwell Frost, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee expressing “grave concerns” over Ibrahim’s treatment, and called on them to press the Israeli government to release him.

Maryland U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen also signed that letter.

“I was relieved to hear from his family today and to know that he’s safe and where he belongs — with his family,” Van Hollen said on X on Thursday.

The letter noted that Ibrahim was the cousin of Sayfollah Mussalet, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen from Tampa who was reportedly beaten to death by Israel settlers in July, with no one yet held to account regarding his killing.

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A day after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said that his office is investigating allegations that the Campbell’s Soup Co. uses bioengineered meat in their soups, the company is strongly denying that claim.

Uthmeier weighed in Monday following the release of comments made in a secret audio recording of a vice president of the company criticizing Campbell’s “bioengineered meat” and “chicken from a 3-D printer.”

“We have s*** for f***** poor people,” part of the recording said, as reported by WDIV Local 4 in Detroit. “Who buys our s***? I don’t buy Campbell’s products barely anymore. It’s not healthy now that I know what the f*******‘s in it. Bioengineered meat — I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer.” (Elisions by Florida Phoenix)

Uthmeier seized on the media report.

“Florida bans lab-grown meat,” the attorney general posted on X Monday. “Our Consumer Protection division is launching an investigation and will demand answers from Campbell’s.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Campbell’s directed the Phoenix to a newly created page on the company’s website that says: “The chicken meat used in Campbell’s soups come from long-trusted, USDA approved U.S. suppliers and meets our high-quality standards. Campbell’s does not use 3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or any form of artificial or bioengineered meat in our soups.”

Florida banned lab-grown meat in 2024

Florida became the first state in the country to ban the selling, manufacturing, or distribution of lab-grown or “cultivated meat” in 2024. Since then, six states have followed suit, according to the National Agricultural Law Center. The bill was sponsored by now-Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins in conjunction with the Florida Department of Agriculture.

“There are many concerns right here and, until we have those studies and there’s proof positive that this process is going to work, we want to ban this in the state of Florida because it’s just not there quite yet,” Collins told a Senate committee about the legislation.

The label on Campbell’s soups says that the company uses “bioengineered food ingredients,” but the company says that “[b]ioengineered food ingredients refers to genetically modified crops — canola, corn, soybean, sugar beets, etc. that are grown by the vast majority of American farmers. This language on our labels refers to ingredients derived from those crops, not chicken.”

Cultivated meat is animal meat (including seafood and organ meats) produced by growing animal cells directly. According to the Good Food Institute, cultivated meat is made of the same cell types that can be arranged in the same or similar structure as animal tissues, thus replicating the sensory and nutritional profiles of conventional meat.

While it’s been hailed by its supporters as better for the environment, a 2023 report from the University of California at Davis found that lab-grown or “cultivated” meat’s environmental impact is likely to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on existing and near-term production methods.

Lawsuit

Upside Foods, one of two companies in the country authorized to sell cultivated meat, filed a lawsuit against the state after it banned its product, raising claims under the Commerce Clause and the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

In April of this year, Federal Judge Mark Walker threw out four parts of that lawsuit, but did not dismiss the suit outright, according to the Associated Press. Upside Foods argued the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit earlier this month.

WDIV-TV in Detroit was the first station to report about the audio recording, which surfaced in a story about a former employee at Campbell’s, Robert Garza, who filed a lawsuit in Michigan. Garza claims he was fired after he complained about Campbell’s VP for Information Technology Martin Bally, who can be heard in a video released by the TV station blasting the quality of Campbell’s Soup and the people who buy it.

“We are proud of the food we make, the people who make it and the high-quality ingredients we use to provide consumers with good food at a good value. We know that millions of people use Campbell’s products, and we’re honored by the trust they put in us. The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate — they are patently absurd.”

Campbell’s added that “the alleged comments heard on the audio were made by a person in IT who has nothing to do with how we make our food.”

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