FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA TournamentSummer Safety: Swim safety tips to know before the summer
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
Summer Safety: Swim safety tips to know before the summer The pool is warming up to be the hot spot for kids and families this summer. It’s now also the number one leading cause of drowning deaths for children ages 1-4 in the state.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over four and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
CAPE CORAL Family submits civil complaint against Cape Coral Police Department The family of a 13-year-old boy who was struck and killed while riding his scooter has officially filed a civil complaint.
FORT MYERS Community reacts to ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan Leaders with the NAACP are saying there is a divide between the black community and Fort Myers police.
NAPLES Inside look at $21 million Naples Players Theater, set to open at the end of May On Friday, as the theater’s 70th season approached, leaders and organizers invited WINK News for a ‘hard-hat-tour’ to showcase the new additions and construction updates.
FORT MYERS Detective who fired fatal shot at Christopher Jordan returns to work Monday Fort Myers police have confirmed to WINK News the detective who shot and killed a man inside his home will return to work Monday morning.
FORT MYERS Bishop Verot onto first state semifinals in nearly a decade A trip to the FHSAA State Semifinals has been a long time coming for the Bishop Verot Vikings who have not been since 2016.
Paul Fleming expanding Lake Park Diner, PJK restaurant concepts Lake Park Diner co-owners Smith Organics and Paul Fleming Restaurant Group anticipate 50 locations of what will be a Naples-based chain.
New construction, business growth continues near Punta Gorda Airport Development surrounding the Punta Gorda Airport continues to grow with 2.5 million square feet already developed and 1.5 million square feet planned, according to Charlotte County Economic Development Director Dave Gammon.
GAINESVILLE FGCU softball falls to No. 4 Florida in NCAA Tournament The FGCU softball team couldn’t keep up with the No. 4 Florida Gators as the Eagles drop their first Regional game 6-0 to the Gators.
Summer Safety: Swim safety tips to know before the summer The pool is warming up to be the hot spot for kids and families this summer. It’s now also the number one leading cause of drowning deaths for children ages 1-4 in the state.
FORT MYERS BEACH ‘The Whale’ restaurant to break ground on new building The Whale is a place that has shown great strength and determination.
COLLIER COUNTY Endangered Florida panther deaths surpass 2023 total in 5 months It’s taken wildlife officials just over four and a half months to report finding more dead endangered Florida panthers than in all of 2023.
FORT MYERS FMPD honors 7 officers and 2 K-9s who died in the line of duty dating back to 1930 Nine lives were given, and all nine will remain remembered. A lifetime of gratitude for the fallen officers.
Firefighter recovering from heat exhaustion after battling flames in Collier County It happened at Progress Rail, a transit corporation on Mercantile Avenue just before 5am on Friday.
FORT MYERS How do SWFL graduation rates compare to the state average? How do graduation rates for Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties stack up against the state? WINK News crunched the numbers.
FORT MYERS Community divisive over ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan A detective who killed an unarmed black man in a controversial shooting will be back at work on Monday.
CAPE CORAL Family submits civil complaint against Cape Coral Police Department The family of a 13-year-old boy who was struck and killed while riding his scooter has officially filed a civil complaint.
FORT MYERS Community reacts to ‘justified’ officer-involved shooting of Christopher Jordan Leaders with the NAACP are saying there is a divide between the black community and Fort Myers police.
NAPLES Inside look at $21 million Naples Players Theater, set to open at the end of May On Friday, as the theater’s 70th season approached, leaders and organizers invited WINK News for a ‘hard-hat-tour’ to showcase the new additions and construction updates.
FORT MYERS Detective who fired fatal shot at Christopher Jordan returns to work Monday Fort Myers police have confirmed to WINK News the detective who shot and killed a man inside his home will return to work Monday morning.
FORT MYERS Bishop Verot onto first state semifinals in nearly a decade A trip to the FHSAA State Semifinals has been a long time coming for the Bishop Verot Vikings who have not been since 2016.
Paul Fleming expanding Lake Park Diner, PJK restaurant concepts Lake Park Diner co-owners Smith Organics and Paul Fleming Restaurant Group anticipate 50 locations of what will be a Naples-based chain.
New construction, business growth continues near Punta Gorda Airport Development surrounding the Punta Gorda Airport continues to grow with 2.5 million square feet already developed and 1.5 million square feet planned, according to Charlotte County Economic Development Director Dave Gammon.
FILE – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media in the Florida Cabinet following his State of the State address during a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla. Advocates for open government are ringing alarms about plans by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration that could make it harder to learn what public officials are doing and to speak out against them. (AP Photo/Phil Sears, File) Armed with a new U.S. Supreme Court opinion, the Biden administration this week argued that an appeals court should reject a Florida legal challenge to federal immigration policies. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys Wednesday filed a 41-page brief that focused, in part, on a June 23 Supreme Court decision that tossed out a challenge by Texas and Louisiana to immigration policies. The Supreme Court said Texas and Louisiana did not have legal standing — a key initial test that must be met in lawsuits. Wednesday’s brief said the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should similarly find that Florida does not have standing to challenge policies that Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Attorney General Ashley Moody contend have led to migrants improperly being released from detention. “In United States v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that two states lacked standing to challenge DHS’s (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s) immigration enforcement policies because they lacked ‘a legally and judicially cognizable’ injury where their alleged injury were costs associated with having more noncitizens in their states. Florida similarly fails to satisfy the ‘bedrock constitutional requirement’ of standing,” the brief said. But in a June 26 brief, lawyers in Moody’s office tried to draw distinctions with the Texas and Louisiana case. As an example, they said the Texas and Louisiana case involved policies related to arresting and starting removal proceedings against migrants who crossed the U.S. border, while the Florida case involves “parole” policies that involve releasing people. “Because the parole policies are not enforcement policies — because they both concern only detention and grant affirmative legal benefits — Florida has a judicially cognizable interest in remedying the sovereign and financial injuries they cause,” the state’s lawyers wrote. The Biden administration went to the Atlanta-based appeals court in May to fight two rulings by Pensacola-based U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell. The rulings, issued in March and May, said immigration policies known as “Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention” and “Parole with Conditions” violated federal law. Wetherell, a former state appellate judge appointed to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, vacated the Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention policy, also known as “Parole+ATD,” and issued a preliminary injunction against the Parole with Conditions policy. Moody and DeSantis have long criticized federal immigration policies, with the state filing a lawsuit in September 2021 alleging that the Biden administration violated laws through “catch-and-release” policies that led to people being released from detention after crossing the border. The state has contended that undocumented immigrants move to Florida and create costs for such things as the education, health care and prison systems. The 2021 lawsuit ultimately led to Wetherell’s rulings. But the Biden administration has disputed allegations about violating federal laws and said the policies were needed to address issues such as overcrowding in detention facilities. “The district court’s orders are overbroad, coercively interfere with DHS’s discretion to manage the border and far exceed the scope of Florida’s alleged injury,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in Wednesday’s brief. While the two sides are battling about such issues at the appeals court, the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision in the Texas and Louisiana case added another element to the immigration case. In the Supreme Court’s main opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the court’s “precedents and longstanding historical practice establish that the states’ suit here is not the kind redressable by a federal court.” “The states’ novel standing argument, if accepted, would entail expansive judicial direction of the department’s arrest policies,” Kavanaugh wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “If the (Supreme) Court green-lighted this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged executive branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws — whether they be drug laws, gun laws, obstruction of justice laws, or the like. We decline to start the federal judiciary down that uncharted path.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, took a different tack, writing that Texas and Louisiana didn’t have standing because of a lack of redressability. “The (immigration enforcement) guidelines merely advise federal officials about how to exercise their prosecutorial discretion when it comes to deciding which aliens to prioritize for arrest and removal,” Gorsuch wrote. “A judicial decree rendering the guidelines a nullity does nothing to change the fact that federal officials possess the same underlying prosecutorial discretion. Nor does such a decree require federal officials to change how they exercise that discretion in the guidelines’ absence.” Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying the states had met legal tests for standing.