Hot and dry Monday afternoon before isolated storms pop up this eveningCaught on Camera: Firefighters respond to dumpster fire at FGCU
WINK NEWS Hot and dry Monday afternoon before isolated storms pop up this evening On monday morning, the weather is starting mild and humid with temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s.
FORT MYERS Caught on Camera: Firefighters respond to dumpster fire at FGCU San Carlos Park Fire District responded to a dumpster fire Sunday afternoon.
FORT MYERS FGCU students affected by Covid celebrate first commencement ceremony Graduation is a right of passage from school to the real world, but for these students, reality hit them in 2020.
PUNTA GORDA Motorcycle crash leaves 1 dead One person has died after a motorcycle crash in Charlotte County.
LEE COUNTY Lee Deputies work to track down transient sex offenders who fail to register WINK News Anchor Corey Lazar goes on patrol with Lee County Deputies in search of transient sex offenders who don’t register.
National Hurricane Preparedness Week: Know your risk Hurricane season starts on June 1st, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated the week of May 5 through May 11 as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. Each day, Meteorologist Lauren Kreidler will be highlighting ways to stay prepared ahead of this year’s hurricane season.
Southwest Florida The Weather Authority: Stay alert – chance of showers and storms on Sunday Hot, humid, and more rain for parts of Southwest Florida on Sunday.
CAPE CORAL What we learned about Cape Coral’s water crisis after a ride along On Friday, WINK News got to ride along to see just what people are doing that could be wasting water.
The Weather Authority: A wet Saturday evening as storms move through Southwest Florida A rainy Saturday evening across much of southwest Florida.
FORT MYERS Lee Health Touch-A-Truck event educates families on Trauma Awareness On Saturday morning, sirens were ringing to celebrate Lee Health Trauma Center’s 30 years of service and to provide the public with trauma education and prevention methods.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA (CBS) CDC says bird flu viruses “pose pandemic potential,” cites major knowledge gaps Bird flu continues to appear to pose a “low risk to the general public” for now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. But the agency’s scientists ran into roadblocks investigating a human case of this “pandemic potential” virus this year, they said in a new report.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Bay Street Yard set to open in late May A new place to hang out in Downtown Fort Myers is opening this spring.
Aetna agrees to settle lawsuit over fertility coverage for LGBTQ+ customers Aetna has agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the health insurer of discriminating against LGBTQ+ customers in need of fertility treatment.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WINK Neighborhood Watch: Robbery, Pawn Shops, and Child Porn This week’s segment of Wink Neighborhood Watch features an armed robber, fraud at a pawn shop, and possession of child pornography.
Southwest Florida The Weather Authority: Sun, clouds, humidity, rain – it’s all in your weekend forecast Saturday afternoon will be hot and humid, with a mix of sun and clouds.
WINK NEWS Hot and dry Monday afternoon before isolated storms pop up this evening On monday morning, the weather is starting mild and humid with temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s.
FORT MYERS Caught on Camera: Firefighters respond to dumpster fire at FGCU San Carlos Park Fire District responded to a dumpster fire Sunday afternoon.
FORT MYERS FGCU students affected by Covid celebrate first commencement ceremony Graduation is a right of passage from school to the real world, but for these students, reality hit them in 2020.
PUNTA GORDA Motorcycle crash leaves 1 dead One person has died after a motorcycle crash in Charlotte County.
LEE COUNTY Lee Deputies work to track down transient sex offenders who fail to register WINK News Anchor Corey Lazar goes on patrol with Lee County Deputies in search of transient sex offenders who don’t register.
National Hurricane Preparedness Week: Know your risk Hurricane season starts on June 1st, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated the week of May 5 through May 11 as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. Each day, Meteorologist Lauren Kreidler will be highlighting ways to stay prepared ahead of this year’s hurricane season.
Southwest Florida The Weather Authority: Stay alert – chance of showers and storms on Sunday Hot, humid, and more rain for parts of Southwest Florida on Sunday.
CAPE CORAL What we learned about Cape Coral’s water crisis after a ride along On Friday, WINK News got to ride along to see just what people are doing that could be wasting water.
The Weather Authority: A wet Saturday evening as storms move through Southwest Florida A rainy Saturday evening across much of southwest Florida.
FORT MYERS Lee Health Touch-A-Truck event educates families on Trauma Awareness On Saturday morning, sirens were ringing to celebrate Lee Health Trauma Center’s 30 years of service and to provide the public with trauma education and prevention methods.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA (CBS) CDC says bird flu viruses “pose pandemic potential,” cites major knowledge gaps Bird flu continues to appear to pose a “low risk to the general public” for now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. But the agency’s scientists ran into roadblocks investigating a human case of this “pandemic potential” virus this year, they said in a new report.
DOWNTOWN FORT MYERS Bay Street Yard set to open in late May A new place to hang out in Downtown Fort Myers is opening this spring.
Aetna agrees to settle lawsuit over fertility coverage for LGBTQ+ customers Aetna has agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the health insurer of discriminating against LGBTQ+ customers in need of fertility treatment.
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA WINK Neighborhood Watch: Robbery, Pawn Shops, and Child Porn This week’s segment of Wink Neighborhood Watch features an armed robber, fraud at a pawn shop, and possession of child pornography.
Southwest Florida The Weather Authority: Sun, clouds, humidity, rain – it’s all in your weekend forecast Saturday afternoon will be hot and humid, with a mix of sun and clouds.
President Donald Trump speaks at the Department of Energy in Washington. Photo via the Associated Press. WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump barged into Senate Republicans’ delicate health care negotiations Friday, declaring that if lawmakers can’t reach a deal they should simply repeal “Obamacare” right away and then replace it later on. Trump’s tweet revives an approach that GOP leaders and the president himself considered but dismissed months ago as impractical and politically unwise. And it’s likely to further complicate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s task as he struggles to bridge the divide between GOP moderates and conservatives as senators leave Washington for the Fourth of July break without having voted on a health care bill as planned. “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” Trump wrote. The president sent his early-morning tweet shortly after Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” to talk about a letter he had sent to Trump making that exact suggestion: a vote on repealing former President Barack Obama’s health law followed by a new effort at a working out a replacement. Trump is a known “Fox & Friends” viewer, but Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky also claimed credit for recommending the tactic to the president in a conversation earlier in the week. “Senator Rand Paul suggested this very idea to the president,” said Paul spokesman Sergio Gor. “The senator fully agrees that we must immediately repeal Obamacare and then work on replacing it right away.” Either way, Trump’s suggestion has the potential to harden divisions within the GOP as conservatives like Paul and Sasse complain that McConnell’s bill does not go far enough in repealing Obama’s health care law while moderates criticize it as overly harsh in kicking people off insurance roles, shrinking the Medicaid safety net and increasing premiums for older Americans. McConnell, R-Ky., has been trying to strike deals with members of both factions in order to finalize a rewritten bill lawmakers can vote on when they return to the Capitol the second week of July. Even before Trump weighed in, though, it wasn’t clear how far he was getting, and Trump’s tweet did not appear to suggest a lot of White House confidence in the outcome. “McConnell’s trying to achieve a 50-vote Venn diagram between some very competing factions,” said Rodney Whitlock, a veteran health policy expert who worked as a Senate GOP aide during passage of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act. “So what the president tweeted takes one side of that Venn diagram and pushes it further away, and actually puts on the table an option that will probably drive that group away from seeking compromise with the other side of the Venn diagram.” A McConnell spokesman declined to comment on Trump’s tweet. Even before Trump was inaugurated in January, Republicans had debated and ultimately discarded the idea of repealing Obamacare before replacing it, concluding that both must happen simultaneously. Doing otherwise would invite accusations that Republicans were simply tossing people off coverage and would roil insurance markets by raising the question of whether, when and how Congress might replace Obama’s law once it was gone. The idea also would leave unresolved the quandary lawmakers are struggling with now, about how to replace Obama’s system of online insurance markets, tax subsidies and an expanded Medicaid with something that could get enough Republican votes to pass Congress. House Republicans barely passed their version of an Obamacare replacement bill in May, and the task is proving even tougher in the Senate, where McConnell has almost no margin for error. Moderates were spooked as the week began with a Congressional Budget Office finding that McConnell’s draft bill would result in 22 million people losing insurance over the next decade, only 1 million fewer than under the House-passed legislation which Trump privately told senators was “mean.” But conservatives continue to insist that the bill must go further than just repealing some of the mandates and taxes in Obama’s law. “It’s distressing to see so many Republicans who’ve lied about their commitment to repeal,” Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said in a conference call on Friday. Underscoring the fissures within the GOP, conservative group leaders on the conference call welcomed Trump’s suggestion but said it didn’t go far enough because it could open the door to a subsequent bipartisan compromise to replace Obama’s law. At the same time, a key House Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, rejected Trump’s suggestion, contending that it “doesn’t achieve what President Trump set out to do.” “I really think the Senate’s approach — certainly in the House — of not simply repealing but to start to put into place the elements that can make health care affordable, that’s what the president set out to do,” Brady said in an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program.