ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
FILE – In this Nov. 2, 2020, file photo an American flag waves in front of the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) President Donald Trump’s attempt to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count used to divvy up congressional seats is headed for a post-Thanksgiving Supreme Court showdown. The administration’s top lawyers are hoping the justices on a court that includes three Trump appointees will embrace the idea, rejected repeatedly by lower courts. It’s the latest, and likely the last, Trump administration hard-line approach to immigration issues to reach the high court. Arguments will take place on Monday by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic. Even as the justices weigh a bid to remove, for the first time, millions of noncitizens from the population count that determines how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives as well as the allocation of some federal funding, experts say other issues loom large for the 2020 census as it heads into unchartered territory over deadlines, data quality and politics. A host of novel questions outside of the court’s eventual decision could determine the final product of the nation’s once-a-decade head count, including whether the incoming Biden administration would do anything to try to reverse decisions made under Trump. Among other questions: Will the Census Bureau be able to meet a year-end deadline for turning in the numbers used for apportionment, the process of dividing up congressional seats among the states? Will the quality of the census data be hurt by a shortened schedule, a pandemic and natural disasters? Could a Democratic-controlled House reject the numbers from the Republican administration if House leaders believe they are flawed? Will a lame-duck Senate pass legislation that could extend deadlines for turning in census numbers? “There are so many moving parts, it makes your head spin,” said Margo Anderson, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. How the Supreme Court will rule is the first unknown. Federal courts in California, Maryland and New York have ruled that Trump’s plan violates federal law or the Constitution, which provides that “representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State.” A fourth court, in Washington, D.C., held this past week that a similar challenge to the administration plan was premature, an argument that also has been made to the high court. “What Trump wants to do would be a radical break from that. The losers wouldn’t be individual people. It would be entire states and communities that would lose representation when undocumented members of those communities get cut out of the count used to apportion the House,” said Dale Ho, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who will argue on behalf of immigration advocates and civil rights groups in the Supreme Court case. The administration argues that both the Constitution and federal law allow the president to exclude “illegal aliens” from the apportionment count. “As history, precedent, and structure indicate, the President need not treat all illegal aliens as ‘inhabitants’ of the States and thereby allow their defiance of federal law to distort the allocation of the people’s Representatives,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote. By the administration’s estimate, California could lose two to three House seats if people living in the country illegally were excluded based on what the administration said are more than 2 million such California residents. But Ho noted that a change in the divvying up of House seats can turn on much smaller numbers. The Democratic-controlled House has weighed in to argue that Trump’s plan would result in an unfair distribution of seats for partisan political goals, the latest attempt “to manipulate the census in novel and troubling ways.” The House cast the president’s plan as part of a larger effort that included an attempt blocked by the Supreme Court to add a citizenship question to the census for the first time in 70 years. For the order to be carried out, the data processing of the apportionment numbers will have to take place while Trump is still in office, but an announcement this month that anomalies have been found in the data jeopardizes the Census Bureau’s ability to hand in the numbers to the president by a Dec. 31 deadline. Trump, in turn, is supposed to transmit the numbers to Congress by Jan. 10. But if problems with the data force a delay of even three weeks, the Census Bureau would be turning in the numbers to a new president. President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20. “The Biden administration will have to see what kind of damage the Trump administration left reapportionment and determine whether an accurate head count, including all persons regardless of citizenship, can be used,” said Jeffrey Wice, an adjunct professor at New York Law School who is an expert in census law and redistricting. A spokesman for the Biden campaign didn’t respond to an email inquiry. Even if everything is done on time, the House, which will remain under Democratic control next year, might reject the apportionment numbers on the grounds that they aren’t what Congress asked the Republican administration to provide, said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “If the president turns over something that isn’t plausibly what they asked for, they don’t have to accept it and they don’t have to transmit to the states,” Levitt said. The Census Bureau’s announcement about anomalies also underscores pandemic-related worries about the quality of the data. The time allotted for correcting errors and filling in gaps in data collection was cut in half by the administration’s decision to stick to the year-end deadline and accommodate Trump’s apportionment order. The Census Bureau also faced difficulties stemming from wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. There’s still a chance the Senate could quell some concerns by agreeing with the House on an extension for turning over the population numbers. As the coronavirus was spreading in the spring, the Census Bureau asked Congress for an extension until the end of April 2021. The House complied, but the legislation went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate after Trump issued his apportionment order in July. It’s not out of the question that the Senate still could pass an extension, if either the Supreme Court rejects Trump’s plan or Democrats take control of the Senate after two runoff elections in Georgia in January. One thing seems likely: The current court case won’t be the last legal fight over the 2020 census. Final apportionment numbers have been litigated frequently in past decades. “What would a census be without a lot of litigation?” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional aide who specializes in census issues. ___ Schneider reported from Orlando, Florida.