It’s important to set the record straight on New College, because what happened there has never been about one school.

The Sarasota honors college is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ prototype for quashing campus speech and dismantling academic inquiry. There’s speculation that it is what Donald Trump plans for Harvard.

Yet the Times article did not mention that after DeSantis stacked the college’s Board of Trustees with MAGA partisans and installed a political crony as president in 2023 who promptly hired his cronies, New College plummeted 59 places to 135th in U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings.

It did not report that New College once produced more Fulbright scholars than any other Florida state school per capita, and that in 2024, only about two of every 10 New College students graduated. The article parroted talking points on rising student enrollment but not the hiring of a student retention officer to try and keep students from leaving.

Skyrocketing costs

In the Times, New College President Richard Corcoran shrugged off $83,207 per student in operating expenses, almost four times the average of all other Florida state colleges and universities.

But there was no mention of Corcoran’s equally controversial $1.3 million annual compensation package to run a school of roughly 900 students. By contrast, the University of Florida’s president oversees 61,890 students for an annual compensation package of about $3 million. And although UF is a major research institution, its degrees cost just $150,729 to produce, state records show, while New College degrees cost $494,715.

Nor did the article reference gender studies books thrown into a dumpster without notice, or the New College trustee who applauded it as “taking out the trash.”

There were no questions about how a scholarship set aside for a person of color hasn’t been given out in years, or why four of five professors approved for and then abruptly denied tenure were minorities.

There was no note of a trustee’s description of mostly male student athletes being recruited to “rebalance the hormones and politics” on campus. The article missed the reopening of the campus cafe by a vendor with reported business ties to Corcoran’s wife, Anne, who uses coffee cups with a bible verse; there was nothing about the school accepting a “Christian” alternative to the SAT college entrance exam, offered by a company also tied to a DeSantis-appointed New College trustee.

A Charlie Kirk statue

The story does not question why, if the goal were only to balance liberal and conservative views, New College plans to erect a statue of hard-right ideologue Charlie Kirk on its front lawn.

The article quotes two current professors but doesn’t explore why other faculty members critical of the school were too frightened to speak on the record in what Corcoran described as a campus finally open to different opinions.

Everything’s fine, the article suggested. The DeSantis takeover was simply a tweak to educational philosophy.

It isn’t and it wasn’t.

There’s talk of privatizing the college, in part because the spending is unsustainable. And the DeSantis takeover was as much campaign strategy as ideology. It coincided with the launch of his failed “anti-woke” presidential campaign, generating free national publicity and MAGA bona fides far beyond Florida.

DeSantis isn’t done with New College. Far from it. His proposed state budget resurrects a plan to “give” New College 32 acres and 11 buildings belonging to the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus.

But it’s no gift: New College would also absorb the campus’ liabilities. New College’s already bloated balance sheet could be saddled with paying USF’s $53 million bill for the new dorm on the property (where most dorm rooms are used by New College students). Still, the proposed transfer is strongly opposed by many USF supporters.

For its misleading omissions, the Times story deserves a flunking grade. But then, so too do the ideological architects undermining New College.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

This year’s hunt was far less destructive, but it’s premature for state officials to call it a success. Certainly, the hunt wasn’t a “success” from the standpoint of the bears that were killed and the majority of Floridians repulsed by the hunt.

The latest hunt ended Sunday. Grim lessons were on display:

1. The hunt was less visible. In 2015, the state had check-in stations where hunters brought their bears to be tallied. This year, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission eliminated them, avoiding the spectacle of bloody carcasses and stifling the ability of wildlife advocates to monitor the hunt in real time. This deliberately obscures the possibility that some victims were lactating female bears — and for every dead mother, there was probably at least one cub in danger of dying from starvation.

2. Sketchy, old data. The last time the FWC officially counted bear noses was in 2015, when it came up with a population estimate of 4,000. This time, hunting advocates took to social media to claim that the number of bears was probably higher. But the FWC’s own scientists said a year ago that populations were still lower than needed to maintain genetic bear diversity in three of seven geographic “subpopulation” areas. The state-sanctioned curriculum on Florida’s black bear population says this: “Remind students that the two most significant human-caused factors affecting bear populations in Florida are loss of habitat due to development and road kills on highways that pass through areas of bear habitat.” Those threats remain. In fact, the state estimates that vehicles kill about 300 bears a year.

3. Withhold death details. As reported by the FWC, the number of bears killed this year was far less than anyone expected: 52, not the 172 originally suggested. But critical details are missing, such as how many males and females were killed, where they were taken, and whether any females appeared to be pregnant or nursing. An FWC spokesperson said a “full harvest report will be released in the coming months.” It might take some time to uncover the narrative behind the unexpectedly low number of bears killed, but the basic information should be made available sooner, for all sides to prepare for coming court challenges and the discussion of a 2026 hunt.

Bear Warriors United, an advocacy group in Central Florida, sued the state to stop this bear hunt based on the lack of adequate scientific evidence. A judge refused to stop it, but he didn’t reach a decision on the lawsuit’s underlying merits. That battle is yet to come.

Politics over science

The Human World for Animals (formerly Humane Society of the United States) filed a brief in opposition to the hunt, said attorney Clay Henderson, arguing the decision was swayed by politics at the expense of science.

That drew this response: “The Commission’s attorneys argued there was no requirement for them to follow science as they were fully empowered to manage wildlife as they see fit,” Henderson said. “Stay tuned. This battle isn’t over.”

If FWC officials really think they did the right thing and that this hunt was a success, there’s no reason to hide details of the hunt. The longer they stall, the more suspicions they raise.

Was there another slaughter of nursing mothers? Did some bears meet death due to particularly brutal methods?

No matter what happened, the FWC owes it to the public to disclose the basic data — and to reconsider plans for more hunts in coming years, knowing none of their dodge-and-cover tactics lessened the blunt expressions of public disgust from the majority of Floridians who weighed in on this smaller slaughter.

This editorial first appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. Contact us at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

But we’re talking about Broward County Public Schools, so it took a second one  — and a whopper at that — to force the inevitable departure of Wanda Paul as the district’s chief of operations.

In back-to-back bureaucratic failures, Paul’s operation mishandled an office building lease, then botched a bid procurement to select a vendor to manage a chronically delayed construction program.

But if you’re looking for Paul to accept responsibility for these failures, look elsewhere. She issued a two-sentence resignation letter Sunday, between Christmas and New Year’s, an annual holiday break when too few taxpayers were paying attention and schools were closed.

“Please accept this letter as my formal resignation as Chief of Operations, effective June 5,” Paul wrote. “My last day in the office will be April 3, 2026, to allow for an orderly transition and continuity of operations.”

That’s it. No apology, no mea culpa, no acknowledgement of what forced Paul out — that she helped create a crisis that will not soon fix itself.

A state of emergency

Superintendent Howard Hepburn declared an emergency in mid-December over the lapse in construction oversight and warned that a slowdown could lead to failures in school life-safety systems, “which creates a risk of injury or death.”

In the first case, the district somehow needed to spend $2.6 million to rent staff space, even as it  faces historic declines in student enrollment, with plans to close seven schools while offering its own headquarters for sale or lease, and with a budget shortfall approaching $100 million.

At a meeting on Nov. 4, board members learned that taxpayers were on the hook for $275,000 in rent even before any employees were working there.

Those optics were awful enough. But school board members broke the lease that was tilted in the landlord’s favor, again due to a lack of due diligence. The building’s owner is suing the district, in part for alleged damage to its reputation.

The greater reputational damage here is to the school district, and to the school board, for what appears to everyone as self-inflicted wounds. It will be a long time before the nation’s sixth-largest school district will be able to ask voters for more money.

Still on the payroll

We had heard rumblings of Paul’s resignation for weeks, and Hepburn was well aware that she had lost the board’s confidence. In an editorial on Dec. 28, we noted that she was “vulnerable.”

Hours after the editorial appeared, the board’s newest member, Adam Cervera, demanded Paul resign.

“The scale, repetition and impact of these breakdowns leave no credible path forward under the current leadership structure,” Cervera said in a statement.

Paul will leave, eventually. She remains on the payroll for five months, including two months of accrued leave, at her yearly salary of $221,450. That will not restore public confidence in how Broward schools are managed.

After all that’s happened, it’s best that Paul not be part of any “orderly transition.”

This may be a pivotal moment for Hepburn. One more fiscal fiasco could be politically catastrophic.

Time for decisive action

After only a year-and-a-half as superintendent, and weeks after a glowing job review, Hepburn needs to take decisive action to restore trust with teachers, parents and board members. A single resignation isn’t enough.

Next Tuesday, Jan. 6, Hepburn is scheduled to present a plan of corrective action to his nine School Board bosses, five of whom are up for election in 2026 (if all five run).

The atmosphere is thick with suspicion, and that can make the campaign trail a very treacherous place for board members.

The size of the district and the frequency and magnitude of the challenges remain daunting. At the last board meeting Dec. 16, the agenda backup materials totaled 3,074 pages. Meetings run for seven, eight, nine hours. The work is vastly tougher when the staff and board don’t trust each other.

Blaming staff in this case appears justified. But it is not a solution. In the end, only the board members are accountable to voters.

In the uproar over the botched lease, board member Allen Zeman cautioned against finger-pointing and challenged his colleagues to keep asking questions.

“It’s our responsibility to review contracts. It’s our responsibility to ask questions, and it’s on the Broward County School Board for making this mistake,” Zeman said. “I don’t think that we can walk away from our own responsibility.”

And so, a new year begins for Broward County Public Schools.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

This was sacrilege on sacred ground, and so close to the site of the 2016 massacre that workers would have been able to read memorial signs posted on the nightclub property itself.

Why the sneak attack? Why wasn’t Orlando given a chance to appeal as Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other cities were? Why did FDOT destroy a crosswalk it installed a few months before, complete with rainbow colors, and boasted about in social media posts, before it deleted them?

Silence from the state

When the Orlando Sentinel and other news outlets sought public records that would answer those questions, the state’s response was silence — even as the DeSantis administration escalated its unprecedented attack on street art.

This authoritarian vandalism seemed to come out of the blue, but there were hints of trouble.

On July 1, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote to all 50 states, declaring decorative elements on roads to be dangerous and distracting. It’s a theory he apparently pulled from thin air, since research suggests that road art actually makes intersections safer due to better visibility. A vaguely worded state memo echoed Duffy’s view but contained no specific instructions.

On Aug. 20, after FDOT warned Delray Beach and Key West about their rainbow decorations, an Orlando commissioner, Patty Sheehan, expressed confidence that the Pulse crosswalk would be safe, since the state had installed it just weeks before.

Orlando worked closely with the state to make sure the crosswalk was installed correctly and met all regulations. The result was compliant and striking: A standard crosswalk of white bars, each space marked by a different color of the rainbow.

Later that day, Sheehan talked with Key West’s mayor about ways that city might make its rainbow pavement markings acceptable to the state as well.

A devastating blow

Early the next morning, the Pulse crosswalk’s brightly colored squares of paint had been covered with black. It was a devastating blow.

Sheehan, Orlando’s first openly gay commissioner, was in office in 2016 when the massacre took place.

Along with other city leaders, she arrived on the scene in the predawn hours of June 12, 2016, and spent most of that day comforting families and struggling to make sense of an attack that killed 49 people.

By creeping into town surreptitiously in the dead of night to destroy the crosswalk, state leaders must have known they were reviving echoes of the original attack. Orlando’s wounds have not healed, though they have drawn many in the city closer together.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said the city has yet to receive an explanation, let alone an apology. That apology is long overdue, but we doubt Gov. Ron DeSantis can muster the grace to offer it.

The records are a different matter. By law, the public is entitled to them. But when the state stubbornly refuses to comply, the only recourse left is a lawsuit.

Four months and counting

The Orlando Sentinel is suing the state for records it requested four months ago.

It’s inconceivable that the state coordinated this horrific act without a single text, email, memo or legal opinion — especially since the desecration order apparently came from FDOT headquarters, not from the agency’s District 5 office in DeLand, where most state decisions are made affecting Orlando-area roads.

In our view, the plain language of Florida’s public records law gives the newspaper — and anyone else — the right to access these records. A judge in Orlando will decide. (The Sun Sentinel, like the Orlando Sentinel, is a Tribune Publishing newspaper, but is not a party to the lawsuit.)

The Florida news media works to hold accountable an administration that arrogantly treats public records as private and routinely ignores the public records law known as Chapter 119.

Most cities, counties, school districts and many other public entities routinely obey the law, but the state refuses.

After the Sentinel filed suit, the state grudgingly released several social media entries, including one dated July 8 that cited the crosswalk improvements and “decorative elements” at the Pulse site. How thoughtful.

The paper also requests internal memos, reports or other documents related to the decision to remove the crosswalk, and any work orders, cost estimates, bids and records of any meetings where the Pulse crosswalk was discussed. The state denies that any such records exist.

The Sentinel doesn’t believe that, and it’s ready once again to hold the state to account.

This editorial first appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. Contact us at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

In a revealing Vanity Fair article, President Trump’s chief of staff said he thinks “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing. Zero. Nothing.”

Trump confirmed it by having his handpicked board rename one of the nation’s most cherished memorials “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”

Notice who got top billing.

The massive new lettering was obviously in hand before the supposedly unanimous vote. An Ohio congresswoman who’s an ex officio member called in to the meeting only to have her microphone muted when she tried to object. Rep. Joyce Beatty is suing to restore the rightful name.

For the record. This was not unanimous. I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this  move. Also for the record, this was not on the agenda. This was not consensus. This is censorship. https://t.co/D1zGV7xiWV pic.twitter.com/npNvSIy6sV

— Rep. Joyce Beatty (@RepBeatty) December 18, 2025

Chaos, cancellations

Trump restocked the center board with allies such as Wiles and fellow Floridians Brian Ballard, an uber-lobbyist and major Trump fundraiser; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Emilia Fanjul, the wife of Palm Beach sugar baron “Pepe” Fanjul; John Falconetti, a publisher in Jacksonville; and Lynda Lomangino, whose husband, a prominent garbage hauler, is known as the “trash kingpin” of Florida.

In one of their first acts, they made Trump chairman of the center’s board.

Cancellations of performances like “Hamilton” followed. Ticket sales plummeted. A Christmas Eve show was suddenly cancelled when a performer refused to appear.

What decent artist would want to dignify Trump’s ego trip?

A violation of federal law

The next president can undo it all if a court or Congress doesn’t, but there’s a clear danger. A man who thinks there’s “nothing he can’t do” has the authority to start a nuclear war by himself.

The Kennedy Center seizure is only the latest act of personal arrogance by Trump but may be the one most indicative of his megalomaniacal mindset. Narcissism can be as debilitating and dangerous as the “alcoholic’s personality” type to which Wiles compared him in her Vanity Fair interview.

The renaming and signage flagrantly violate the legislation that designated the center as the only memorial in Washington to the slain president, who had raised money for it.

The law stipulates that “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas” of the Kennedy Center. The limited exceptions for major donors do not apply to Trump’s vainglorious violation.

JFK was many things the loutish Trump is not. As Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, posted on Facebook: “He brought the arts into the White House and he and my Aunt Jackie amplified the arts, celebrated the arts, stood up for the arts and artists.”

Utterly without taste

Trump, who never attended the Kennedy Center in his first term, has eviscerated the National Endowment for the Humanities, paved over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, and cheapened the Oval Office with tasteless gilt. He demolished the East Wing of the White House as if it belonged to him personally and not to all of us.

Is the Lincoln Memorial next?

After all, renaming the Kennedy Center in his honor is hardly the president’s first act of preposterous vanity. He also calls a new pharmaceutical plan “Trump Rx,” has declared his birthday a free admission day in national parks, ordered up a commemorative coin with his mug on it, and renamed the Institute of Peace for himself.

His latest mind-boggling and budget-busting scheme is a new “Trump class” of battleships that he will help design.

He has taken on the power to deploy the military against U.S. civilians, commit homicide on the oceans and prepare for a war against Venezuela. He has undermined our alliances, jolted world economies with tariffs imposed on his whim, extorted payments from major universities and law firms, bleached racism out of the history displayed at national parks and museums, intimidated critics with baseless lawsuits and threats of regulatory retaliation, and corrupted the Justice Department as an instrument of retribution against political enemies.

There are also several ways, from crypto to AI to Middle Eastern investments, by which his family is profiteering off the nation’s highest office. Under Trump, the presidency is a racket, not a public trust.

He has promised American military personnel bonuses of $1,776 that he has not asked Congress to approve. He reportedly intends to plunder money from military housing appropriations. That the troops might deserve it is beside the point; it’s illegal.

He’s plainly trying to buy their loyalty at the expense of the Constitution.

Trump’s ego is malignant. He’s a throwback not to George III, but to more ancient rulers who put their names and likenesses on everything and were worshipped as gods by people who cried “Hail Caesar!”

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

“‘Total mistake’: $2.6 million Broward schools office rental raises questions”

“‘We blew this’: Broward school board terminates $2.6 million office rental lease”

“Broward schools bungle effort to find company to oversee construction”

“‘A five-alarm fire’: Broward schools to take emergency action on construction”

It all adds up to another deeply disturbing picture of systemic failures in the management of the Broward County school district, the nation’s sixth-largest.

A public inquisition

A series of staff-level screw-ups has created a climate of suspicion among board members toward staff members that is impossible to ignore. A board that doubts its own staff can no longer function effectively. An eight-hour-plus meeting on Dec. 16 was more like an inquisition — and rightly so.

Strong, decisive action is needed from Superintendent Howard Hepburn in early 2026, lest Hepburn find himself in political trouble at the start of a year when five of nine board seats will go before voters.

“I would just say that changes clearly need to be made,” School Board member Maura McCarthy Bulman told the Editorial Board.

That suggests personnel changes, and the most vulnerable staff member is the school district’s chief operations officer, Wanda Paul, who’s at the center of two recent controversies.

It appears inevitable that Hepburn must fire Paul or demote her as a way of acknowledging that the board is in charge, not the staff.

To summarize, the district staff botched a $2.6 million lease of a Wilton Manors office building, which forced the board to break a landlord-friendly lease. The landlord, HANDY (an acronym for Helping Advance and Nurture Development of Youth), is now suing the district.

An infuriated board

Then, a flawed procurement to extend oversight of the district’s $125 million school construction program — its costliest and its most controversial area  — was not presented to the School Board for approval. That infuriated members who last April had warned of problems with the contract.

An audit report found that district staff selected vendors without ensuring they were qualified and engaged in a rushed process that led to missteps, the Sun Sentinel’s Scott Travis reported.

As a result, the board was asked to throw out all three bids and negotiate an emergency contract to extend the contract with the current vendor, AECOM, which expires on Jan. 17, 2026.

“We deserve better,” School Board member Dr. Jeff Holness said.

Holness described a “de facto mini-School Board among staff” and publicly chided assistant general counsel Tom Cooney for keeping the board in the dark.

“With all due respect, sir, you don’t work for the COO (Wanda Paul), you work for the School Board,” Holness told the lawyer.

Board member Allen Zeman, who described the staff’s work as a “five-alarm fire,” said it’s urgent to clarify that the general counsel works for the School Board, not its staff. That’s another sign of the lack of trust.

If it sounds familiar …

The latest controversy was serious enough. What makes it worse is that something similar has  happened before.

In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended four School Board members in a power grab he said was justified by a critical grand jury report that found that the board mismanaged an expensive voter-approved bond program to pay for school renovations and safety upgrades.

Does Hepburn fully grasp the degree of seriousness here?

We’ll know when he presents a plan of action in the new year.

On Local 10’s This Week in South Florida on Dec. 21, Hepburn said he’s still reviewing a staff audit and other details to determine if “there’s any intentional or purposeful things that were not done, or simply a level of ignorance.”

(A new general counsel, hired from Fort Myers, will soon inherit this morass, and district auditor Dave Rhodes has announced that he will retire March 2 — creating more instability.)

“We have to get this right,” Hepburn told WPLG reporter Glenna Milberg.

He is right about that, and he does not have much time. This School Board is completely out of patience — and hopefully the taxpayers of Broward County are not far behind.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

The Trump administration has embraced Russia, dumped allies and undercut Ukraine. It’s played judge, jury and executioner by bombing boats at sea. It has pirated oil tankers off Venezuela and flooded city streets with armed masked immigration agents.

The Epstein files should be just one of many outrages Democrats and Republicans could unite to condemn. But it isn’t.

This topic continues to occupy center stage, even though sexual misconduct allegations have long been levied against President Trump. That includes accusations by multiple women, a jury verdict that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll, and Trump’s own words: The infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he extolled an assault strategy and his admission that he would walk into women’s dressing rooms in beauty contests.

Unlike years of allegations and admissions, however, the Epstein scandal persists. That’s partly because it plays into conspiracy culture and partly because as a candidate, Trump pledged to uncover any Epstein conspiracy.

Such a weak White House

But it’s also because every time the Trump administration dodges and weaves to keep the Epstein files under wraps, it amplifies what’s weak and wrong in this White House.

Just 11 months into his term, Trump is an astonishingly incompetent and increasingly unpopular president. Even the power that comes with the Oval Office can’t hide the self-inflicted political wounds tied to the Epstein scandal, and with them the confirmation that Trump is not the transparent leader that millions of Americans hoped he would be.

A different administration would have set a records release date months before Congress forced the president’s hand with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

A diligent Department of Justice would have built trust by working with victims’ lawyers on redactions. A skillful White House would have devised a plan to weather embarrassing revelations.

But Trump will not do that, for the same reason he will not revisit destructive tariffs or back away from extrajudicial killings off the coast of Venezuela — though it might boost his poll numbers. Sycophancy and short-sighted incompetence are baked into how Trump governs, and nothing brings those weaknesses into sharper focus than the Epstein files.

Bondi’s blunders

Under the Transparency Act, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice faced a Dec. 19 deadline to release all — not some — investigative materials tied to Epstein.

Instead, it’s estimated only 10% of the files were made public. Grand jury minutes were blacked out but names of victims were revealed. Former President Bill Clinton was repeatedly in pictures, including one with Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and an unidentified child whose face was redacted.

It seemed ominous, but the child was Jackson’s son. The picture was already public.

Trump was rarely seen in the initial documents, despite a lengthy and close relationship with Epstein detailed by the New York Times. One photo depicted a collection of photographs in a desk drawer in Epstein’s home, with a photo of Trump visible in the open drawer. The image was abruptly removed, then restored.

Sixteen files disappeared from the DOJ website. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the files had nothing to do with Trump, and that 200 DOJ lawyers were working on the files’ release. Yet in March, Bondi reportedly assigned 1,000 agents to pore over the same documents and determine which might be released.

Following widespread blowback, more documents are being made public. But ineptitude has taken its toll.

There’s fear among Republicans that voters will punish them in the 2026 midterms for the botched release. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie are weighing contempt charges against Bondi. And after months of blunders, the White House should expect suspicion that the complete files will never made public.

Grocery prices could drop. The Ukraine war could end. Trump might be able to claim credit for both, or more.

But the Epstein scandal isn’t going away. An incompetent administration has made sure of that.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? — Virginia O’Hanlon, 115 W. 95th St.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehended by their little minds.

All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Virginias. There would be no childish faith then, or poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, not even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! He lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Martin Dyckman and Pat Beall and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

Soon there will be a sixth. No other governor has ever appointed more than four or had so ruinous an impact on the state’s jurisprudence.

When DeSantis arrived in 2019, the court had long since lived down its corrupt and racist history. It had become a credit to Florida for its integrity and its generally progressive decisions.

After DeSantis came in, three liberal justices faced mandatory retirement; their replacements would be rigid right-wingers. He counted on that from the members he and his predecessor, Rick Scott, had carefully appointed to the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, which vets the applicants and selects finalists.

If history repeats, the next nominees — usually three — will all belong to the Federalist Society, as does DeSantis. Nine of the 10 applicants are members. They share his enthusiasm for the death penalty, his opposition to abortion, and his zeal to grow government and corporate power at the public’s expense.

No respect for settled law

The court’s two long-serving conservatives, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston, promptly enlisted the newcomers in repealing long-settled precedents they had opposed. Respect for settled law, a fundamental conservative principle, vanished.

Here are four of the new majority’s most drastic flip-flops:

— Repeal of a unanimous 1989 holding that Florida’s constitutional right of privacy protected the right to abortion. The new court upheld a near-total abortion ban that Canady’s wife, Jennifer, a state legislator, had co-sponsored (he did not recuse himself).

— Renouncing the court’s self-imposed duty to evaluate every death sentence for proportionality, the legal basis upon which it had upheld Florida’s 1973 death penalty law. The court no longer cares whether one perpetrator is sentenced to die while his co-defendants are spared.

— Overturning its own 2017 requirement of unanimous juries in death sentences, which led to the nation’s harshest death penalty regime. As few as eight of 12 jury votes for execution now suffice. In dissent, Justice Jorge Labarga objected that Florida was rejecting decency itself.

— Ignoring the voter-approved “Fair Districts” amendments to uphold a DeSantis gerrymander that got rid of the only Democratic congressman in north Florida, Al Lawson, who is Black.

A parade of horribles

In a cascade of decisions, the DeSantis court forbade the Florida Bar to promote diversity and fairness in the judiciary; protected the tobacco industry from lawsuits by requiring proof that a victim relied on tobacco advertising; and changed civil procedure rules to benefit corporate defendants.

The court upheld DeSantis’ unjustified suspension of Orlando-area state attorney Monique Worrell (later re-elected); said judges may impose harsher sentences on defendants who insist on their right to trial; blocked a citizens’ initiative to ban assault weapons from the 2022 ballot; and ordered the Florida Bar, an agency of the court, to elect no more delegates to the American Bar Association, which seems to be on the Republican Party’s political hit list.

The court also intends to stop the ABA from accrediting Florida law schools. The court could abolish the Florida Bar itself, if it objects too much.

The court’s three most recent death penalty decisions exemplify its lust for executions.

Frank Walls, a multiple murderer who died a week before Christmas, had at one point benefitted from the old court’s more liberal policy on proving intellectual disability. This court retracted it.

In two other appeals last week, the court upheld the new law allowing as few as eight jurors to support a death sentence and it applied the law retroactively to death row inmates who should have been tried under the standard unanimity.

These decisions drew more agonized remarks from Labarga, whose nemesis, Canady, is the departing justice.

A great reform, undone

All of this underscores a basic truth that a governor’s most enduring legacy can be seen in his judicial appointments.

The DeSantis revolution has betrayed one of Florida’s greatest reforms, which was meant to ensure the courts’ political independence.

When then-Gov. Reubin Askew created a merit selection system in 1972, he provided that he and his successors would appoint only three of nine members of each nominating commission. The Florida Bar would name three more, and those six would then appoint three non-lawyer public members. The goal was that no one could control them.

But in 2001, with Republicans in control, a new law enabled Gov. Jeb Bush and his successors to appoint all nine members of each commission — a dreadful retreat from reform.

As Rick Scott did before him, DeSantis used that power to stack the Supreme Court nominating commission with ideological soulmates. Three members are registered lobbyists. Two members practice before the court, including recently appointed Jason Gonzalez, an influential DeSantis ally, one of whose law partners is seeking Canady’s seat.

“I am certain that the current structure of the Judicial Nominating Commissions is not what Governor Reubin Askew ever envisioned,” observes retired Justice Barbara Pariente.

It would be futile to expect this Legislature to restore Askew’s system. To require Senate confirmation of appointed justices would probably be aimless, although it’s worth a try.

The most politically feasible solution is to elect Florida governors who treasure judicial independence as much as Askew did.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

A Senate committee already passed it on a party-line 5 to 2 vote.

Democrats Tina Polsky of Boca Raton and LaVon Bracy Davis of Orlando voted no.

They meant no offense — nor do we — to the humanity of Kirk, who was assassinated during a speech to university students in Utah three months ago. The problem with the bill is that it is highly offensive to others, whether its supporters intend that or not.

It’s another example of warped political values in Florida, where the only other person so honored in Florida law is President Ronald Reagan.

Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, inspired many people with his conservative activism, but he alienated many others with his pointed attacks.

He denounced the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful,” “not a good person.” He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.” He said the pop star Taylor Swift should change her name if she marries her fiancé Travis Kelce, as a sign of submission to him. He said gun murders were an acceptable price to pay for the right to own them. And on and on.

Whatever his views, Kirk had every right to express them to anyone willing to listen. That’s the American way. But the Legislature should be mindful of how hurtful some of his views were.

It goes without saying that his murder was a crime to be deplored by everyone, not just his conservative admirers.

“It’s beyond belief what happened to him,” said one prominent liberal. “That should never happen to anybody. I don’t care what your political beliefs are. That’s not acceptable. That’s not a solution to solving problems.”

That person was Rob Reiner — himself a murder victim.

Every murder is a crime against society, but when victims are silenced for their opinions, as it appears Kirk was, it’s a double strike against the public welfare. His case, though, is one such example among many.

If he’s to be commemorated, so should others. Some names come readily to mind.

Harry T. Moore, a Florida civil rights pioneer, was murdered when a Ku Klux Klan bomb planted under his bedroom blew up his home in Mims on Christmas night 1951. His wife, Harriette, died of her injuries a few days later. As an NAACP field secretary, Moore campaigned successfully for Black teachers to be paid the same as whites and to register more Black voters in Florida than any other Southern state.

He initiated the long and ultimately successful movement to vindicate four Black men unjustly accused in the infamous 1949 Groveland rape case.

No one was ever convicted of the bombing, although a KKK member committed suicide after being questioned by the FBI. A federal indictment against others was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The Moores are unmentioned at the civil rights martyrs memorial in Montgomery, Ala., because of an arbitrary definition of the Civil Rights Era as having begun with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But they died for the cause just as certainly as anyone else did.

Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner were the young civil rights volunteers kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964 for trying to register Black voters. Eight men eventually got relatively light federal sentences for the killings. Forty-one years later, Mississippi convicted a chief perpetrator. He died in prison.

Medgar Evers was the Mississippi civil rights activist shot to death outside his home in 1963. It took until 1994 to convict his killer, who died in prison.

Those are only a few of many private citizens who paid with their lives for speaking out for what they believed.

Others include the abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy and Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who died at the hands of mobs in Illinois a century ago.

To commemorate only one such victim, as Senate Bill 194 and HB 125 do, is not appropriate. But at least it’s less inappropriate than legislation that aims to rename streets for Kirk at every Florida state college and university.

A Day of Remembrance should honor not one martyr, but many, and right-wing political views should not be a prerequisite.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.