Most hate crime victims in the U.S. are Black, and that has been the case since the federal government began tracking such crimes decades ago. But national attention on the rate of Black victimization is heightened in the wake of mass casualty racist attacks, like those in recent years at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Now, as families in Jacksonville eulogize loved ones lost in a hail of bullets at a neighborhood discount store, activists across the nation are calling for better measures to counter the longstanding epidemic of hate violence against Black Americans.

“How many people have to die, before you get up, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, and say we got to stop this,” the Rev. Al Sharpton asked Friday as he eulogized Angela Carr, one of the victims of the gunman who shot down three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville on Aug. 26.

Funerals were held in Florida for two of the three victims on Friday, with the third planned for Saturday.

Sharpton pointed to reports of neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando, seen just days after the Jacksonville shooting, as evidence that a climate of hate has been fomented in Florida and across the U.S.

“Look at the data,” he said.

Anti-Black hate crimes peaked in 1996 at 42% of all hate crimes, then began a steady decline until 2020. June of that year was the worst month for anti-Black hate crimes since national record-keeping by the FBI began.

Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, cautions that there are gaps in the agency’s reports that can present a misleading picture of hate crimes in parts of the country. Florida, along with Virginia, Mississippi and Arkansas, had the lowest reporting rates of hate crimes to the FBI in 2021.

“We generally see increases in hate crimes in election years and around catalytic events,” said Levin. “We’re talking about almost 500 to 700 more hate crimes in an election year. Politics seems to be a catalyst.”

Levin said there is substantial underreporting. Even with the FBI’s revised reporting for 2021, the rate only captured 80% participation, he said.

“Imagine if we had even more,” he said.

In 1990, Congress passed legislation that required the Justice Department to collect data on crimes motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity. The FBI does the data collecting through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

But after years of collection, the problem of hate-motivated violence has increased over the last decade. The number of hate crimes in the U.S. jumped up in 2021 from an already alarming increase in the previous year, according to FBI data released in March.

Among the 2021 victims, 64.5% were targeted due to their race, ethnicity or ancestry. Another 16% were targeted over their sexual orientation, and 14% of cases involved religious bias.

On Friday, leaders from more than 30 national civil rights organizations sent a letter to the White House requesting a meeting with the Biden administration to address hate-motivated violence. If convened, it would be the first such gathering since a “United We Stand” summit with the president and administration officials in September 2022.

This time, the groups said they want to discuss steps that federal agencies other than the Justice Department could take to increase awareness of hate crimes and identify ways communities can respond to hate and violent white supremacy. They also requested a report detailing the administration’s progress since last year’s summit.

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of this summit, the latest mass hate crime — in which three Black people were murdered at a store in Jacksonville, Florida — serves as a stark reminder of the repeated devastation that hate has on communities across the country,” reads the letter signed by organizations such as The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. and the Anti-Defamation League.

“Our communities are facing an unprecedented threat from the hate-filled forces that seek to divide our nation,” the group wrote.

It was unclear Friday if the White House received or responded to the letter.

President Joe Biden spoke to reporters about the Jacksonville shooting last week, while he and first lady Jill Biden were in Florida surveying the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.

“We’re still reeling from the shooting rampage, a terrorist attack driven by racial hatred and animus,” Biden said. “Let me say this clearly: Hate will not prevail in America. Racism will not prevail in America. Domestic terrorism will not prevail in America.”

In 2021, Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act to address the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes seen at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Some advocates lament the lack of legislation specifically addressing the high rate of Black victimization, while others point to progress like the enactment of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act last year. The law makes lynching a federal hate crime.

While it is the deadly, high-profile hate crimes, like the shooting at the Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 people last year, that get a lot of attention, there are far more incidents that never make national news. Use of the N-word on some social media websites spiked in the summer of 2020, just as social justice protests took place around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said his organization examines the toll violent hate has on Black people and other communities of color. Shortly before the pandemic, it launched the James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate to support victims of hate incidents and destabilize white supremacist organizations and their infrastructures.

The center is named in recognition of Byrd, the Black man who was dragged to death by white supremacists 25 years ago in Jasper, Texas. Byrd’s death is viewed as one of the most gruesome hate crimes in U.S. history.

“We also want to discredit not only their tactics but also their ideology, which we think is very important, because silence is the cousin of complicity,” Hewitt said.

Many have noted how Black people seem to be encountering hate incidents while conducting everyday tasks such as jogging, grocery shopping or attending class on a college campus.

“We’re not safe anywhere,” Hewitt said. “So how can we have peace of mind? How can we pursue an American dream when America is always pursuing us?”

During a Thursday virtual press conference that referenced the Jacksonville shootings, the Rev. William Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach, warned against hateful political rhetoric that he said fostered an environment for such an attack. He called out public officials “who are using the words of culture wars to attack Black history, to attack Black people,” specifically naming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has overseen several laws and policies that restrict the teaching of race in schools.

Barber said there was a “through line in history” of divisive rhetoric and hate, connecting policies and laws targeting Black people in the U.S. to incidents of violence in the last century.

“The power of life and death is in the tongue,” he said.

DeSantis, a Republican candidate for president, has rejected suggestions that he did not condemn the Jacksonville shooting in the strongest terms and that he has more broadly ignored the concerns of Florida’s Black community.

Sharpton said he attended Friday’s funeral to be there for the victims’ families and to not allow the media to so quickly move on from the tragedy.

“There’s something that bothers me, that for two days maybe, the national media talked about Angela (Carr) and talked about the other two, and then went on to something else like their lives meant nothing,” Sharpton said.

“I don’t want you to feel this is a two-day story,” he said. “This is a 400-year story.”

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WHERE AND WHEN DID THE SHOOTING TAKE PLACE?
The shooting happened Saturday afternoon at a Dollar General store in New Town, a predominantly Black neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. The store is near Edward Waters University, a historically Black school with about 1,000 students. The school said the man was spotted on campus by a security guard shortly before the shooting and asked to leave when he refused to identify himself. He was seen putting on his bullet-resistant vest and mask before he drove away. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said Sunday that it does not appear that he intended to attack the school.

WHO WAS THE SHOOTER?
Ryan Palmeter, 21, who lived in neighboring Clay County with his parents. Sheriff Waters said Palmeter had been involved in a 2016 domestic violence incident that did not lead to an arrest and was involuntarily committed for a 72-hour mental health examination the following year. Palmeter used two guns — a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Waters said they were purchased legally earlier this year.

WHO ARE THE VICTIMS?
Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car outside; store employee A.J. Laguerre, 19, who was shot as he tried to flee; and customer Jerrald Gallion, 29, who was shot as he entered the store. No one else was injured.

WHAT MOTIVATED THE ATTACK?
Racism. During the attack, Palmeter texted his father and told him to break into his room and check his computer. There, the father found a suicide note, a will and racist writings from his son. The family notified authorities, but by then the shooting had already begun, the sheriff said. Officials say there were writings to his family, federal law enforcement and at least one media outlet. At least one of the guns had swastikas painted on it. Sheriff Waters said that the shooter made clear in his writings that he hated Black people.

HOW WAS EDWARD WATERS UNIVERSITY AFFECTED?
After the shooting, the school was put on lockdown for several hours and the students were kept in their dorm rooms for their safety. The school says no students or staff were involved in the shooting.

WHAT MOTIVATED THE ATTACK?
Racism. During the attack, Palmeter texted his father and told him to break into his room and check his computer. There, the father found a suicide note, a will and racist writings from his son. The family notified authorities, but by then the shooting had already begun, the sheriff said. Officials say there were writings to his family, federal law enforcement and at least one media outlet. At least one of the guns had swastikas painted on it. Sheriff Waters said that the shooter made clear in his writings that he hated Black people.

HOW WAS EDWARD WATERS UNIVERSITY AFFECTED?
After the shooting, the school was put on lockdown for several hours and the students were kept in their dorm rooms for their safety. The school says no students or staff were involved in the shooting.

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A day after appearing in Iowa, DeSantis was back in the state capital of Tallahassee on Sunday for a news conference on Tropical Storm Idalia. He urged Floridians to heed the advice of emergency managers. He also offered condolences and condemned the killing of three Black people by a white man who authorities say left behind a suicide note, a will, and writings with racist material.

Later Sunday, DeSantis appeared at a vigil outside the Jacksonville store where the shootings occurred. The Republican governor, who was met with boos when he briefly addressed the crowd, called the gunman a “scumbag” and said there was no tolerance for racist violence in Florida.

DeSantis’ campaign schedule had called for him to be in South Carolina Monday for a morning town hall in Kershaw and a barbecue with Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in Anderson. But Sunday night, his campaign spokesman Bryan Griffin announced the governor was canceling his South Carolina travel. His wife, Casey DeSantis, is still expected to appear at the barbecue but the town hall in Kershaw was canceled.

“In light of the approaching hurricane, the Governor will be staying in Florida on Monday to assist with preparations,” Griffin said.

Asked at his Sunday news conference whether he would be in Florida this week, Ron DeSantis responded, “I’m here. I’m here.”

“We’re locked in on this; we’re going to get the job done. This is important. So people can rest assured,” the governor said, adding that the state is staging personnel and equipment to prepare for the storm.

Duncan said in a statement that he was excited to have the first lady of Florida speak on behalf of DeSantis at the event expected to draw more than 2,000 people.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Florida and Ron as they prepare for this storm,” Duncan said.

DeSantis has stumbled on the national stage since beginning his presidential campaign earlier this year and has at times struggled to connect with voters. He returned to Florida from Iowa, where he is campaigning extensively and hoping for a strong showing in the state’s leadoff caucuses. He remains in a distant second place behind former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.

The storm is pointed toward Florida as the nation tries to make sense of another mass shooting Saturday, this time at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, where a 21-year-old white man fatally shot three Black people. Federal authorities are investigating the attack as a hate crime.

“Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable, and targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis’ policies around race and race-related teaching have been a flashpoint in his time as governor.

In July, DeSantis faced criticism for his defense of new public school curriculum on Black history in Florida, which specified that teachers were required to instruct middle-school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

DeSantis said his critics intentionally misrepresented one line of the sweeping curriculum, but it and his defense drew blowback from Florida teachers, civil rights leaders, the Biden White House and some Black Republicans, including Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is running against DeSantis for the GOP nomination.

As governor, DeSantis has also banned critical race theory, a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism, from Florida classrooms and worked to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools.

At the vigil in Jacksonville on Sunday, Democratic City Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman, who represents the neighborhood where the shooting happened, addressed DeSantis personally during her remarks.

“Governor, I know you’re here,” Pittman said. “And you know what? I’m glad you’re here, because you can see the people and the impact it’s had on the community.”

A man somewhere in the crowd shouted: “He don’t care!”

As DeSantis got up to speak, he was met with boos from the crowd of about 200 people.

Pittman took the microphone and asked people to listen to him, saying, “It ain’t about parties today. A bullet don’t know a party.”

DeSantis, in his brief remarks, called the gunman a “major league scumbag.”

“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”

Later at the vigil, the Rev. Jeffrey Rumlin, pastor of The Dayspring Church in Jacksonville, addressed DeSantis’ remarks.

“Respectfully, governor, he was not a scumbag,” Rumlin said of the gunman. “He was a racist.”

His remark got a loud cheer from the crowd.

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Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told a news conference that the attack that left two men and one woman dead was definitely “racially motivated.”

“He hated Black people,” Waters said after reviewing the man’s writings, which were sent to federal law enforcement officials and at least one media outlet shortly before the attack. He added that the gunman acted alone and “there is absolutely no evidence the shooter is part of any larger group.”

Waters said the shooter, who was in his 20s, used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle with at least one of them painted with a swastika. He was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. He said the shooter had once been involved in a 2016 domestic violence incident and was once involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for examination. He did not provide further details on those incidents.

Officials didn’t immediately release the names of the victims or the shooter.

The sheriff said the gunman had left behind in his writings evidence that leads investigators to believe that he committed the shooting because it was the fifth anniversary of when another gunman opened fire during a video game tournament in Jacksonville, killing two people before fatally shooting himself.

The shooting happened just before 2 p.m. at a Dollar General about three-quarters of a mile from Edward Waters University, a small historically Black university.

In a statement, the university said that shortly before the shooting, one of its security officers saw the man near the school’s library and asked him to identify himself. When he refused, he was asked to leave. The man returned to his car.

Sheriff Waters said the man was spotting putting on his vest and mask before leaving. He said it is unknown if he had originally planned to attack the school.

“I can’t tell you what his mindset was while he was there, but he did go there,” the sheriff said.

Edward Waters students were locked down in their dorms for several hours after the shooting. No students or faculty are believed involved, the school said.

The shooter had driven to Jacksonville from neighboring Clay County, where he lived with his parents, the sheriff said. That house was being searched late Saturday.

Shortly before the attack, the shooter sent his father a text message telling him to check his computer. The father found the writings and the family notified 911, but the shooting had already begun, Sheriff Waters said.

“This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history. There is no place for hate in this community,” the sheriff said. “I am sickened by this cowardly shooter’s personal ideology.” He said the investigation will continue. The FBI was helping the sheriff’s office and said it had opened a hate crime investigation.

Mayor Donna Deegan said she is “heartbroken.”

“This is a community that has suffered again and again. So many times this is where we end up,” Deegan said. “This is something that should not and must not continue to happen in our community.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, after speaking by phone with the sheriff, called the shooter a “scumbag” and denounced his racist motivation.

“This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions. He took the coward’s way out,” said DeSantis, who was in Iowa campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.

Both President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were briefed on the shooting, officials said.

Dollar General’s corporate office said in a statement, “We are heartbroken by the senseless act of violence that occurred at our Kings Road store in Jacksonville, Florida today. At this time, supporting our Jacksonville employees and the DG family impacted by this tragedy is a top priority as we work closely with law enforcement.”

Virginia Bradford lives in the neighborhood of modest brick and cinder block houses near the store. She frequently shops at the Dollar General, and said she meant to go there Saturday for detergent and bleach, but got sidetracked by other plans.

“That’s my store,” Bradford told reporters, looking past patrol cars with flashing lights blocking the street to the store a block away. “I know everyone in the store. It’s sad.”

Unsettled by the racist killings, Bradford, who is Black, said she doubts she’ll ever go back.

“I won’t even send my kids up there anymore,” she said. “My nerves are bad.”

Penny Jones told The Associated Press in a phone interview that she worked at the store, located a few blocks away from her home, until a few months ago.

“I’m just waiting to hear about my co-workers that I used to work with,” Jones said. “I don’t know if it’s safe to move about the neighborhood.”

Jones added that she was “feeling awkward, scared.”

“I don’t want to leave my house. I’m thinking, do I want to go back to the store? Is this going to start happening more frequently? I don’t know what the cause of it is. I’m confused. It’s a lot of different feelings going on right now,” she said.

The deadly shooting took place within hours of the conclusion of a commemorative March on Washington in the nation’s capital, where organizers drew attention to the growing threat of hate-motivated violence against people of color.

The attack on a shopping center in a predominately Black neighborhood will undoubtedly evoke fears of past shootings targeting Black Americans, like the one at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022, and one at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

The Buffalo supermarket shooting, in particular, stands apart as one of the deadliest targeted attacks on Black people by a white lone gunman in U.S. history. Ten people were killed by the gunman, who has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The shooting happened one day before the 63rd anniversary of one of Jacksonville’s most notorious racist incidents, “Ax Handle Saturday.” A group of Black protesters were conducting a peaceful sit-in at a city park to protest the Jim Crow laws that kept them out of white-owned stores and restaurants. That’s when they were attacked by 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan, who hit them with bats and ax handles as police stood by.

Only when members of a Black street gang arrived to fight the Klansmen did the police intercede. Only Black people were arrested.

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Instead, African American leaders decry what they call a pattern of “policy violence” against people of color imposed by the DeSantis administration that reached a low point after the recent release of an “anti-woke” public school curriculum on Black history. Specifically, Florida’s teachers are now required to instruct middle-school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

DeSantis has repeatedly defended the new language while insisting that his critics, who include Vice President Kamala Harris and two leading Black Republicans in Congress, are intentionally misinterpreting one line of the sweeping curriculum. Civil rights leaders who have watched DeSantis closely dismiss such explanations.

“DeSantis has perfected the art of using policy violence that we must stop,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. His organization issued a travel advisory for Florida in May warning African Americans against DeSantis’ “aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”

The divisive debate highlights the political and practical risks of DeSantis’ approach to racial issues as he seeks to reset his struggling campaign and the Republican Party works to strengthen its dismal standing with voters of color.

Ambitious Republican leaders have long seized on white grievance to animate the party’s most passionate voters, who are almost exclusively white. But DeSantis, a combative conservative who leads one of the nation’s largest states, has embraced far-right positions on race perhaps more aggressively than anyone in the 2024 presidential contest as he tries to position himself to the right of Trump.

The 44-year-old governor was as defiant as ever on Thursday when asked about the critics within his own party who echoed the Democratic vice president’s concerns.

“At the end of the day, you got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?” DeSantis told reporters as he campaigned in Iowa. “I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards. It wasn’t anything that was politically motivated.”

DeSantis is now facing criticism from Florida teachers, civil rights leaders and the Biden White House. Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, traveled to Florida last week to condemn the curriculum. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is the chamber’s sole Black Republican and is also seeking the White House, issued a direct rebuke of DeSantis on Thursday while campaigning in Iowa.

“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” he told reporters. “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that. People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

Most of DeSantis’ other GOP presidential opponents have stayed silent. But other Black conservatives have begun to speak out. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., one of the most powerful Black Republicans in the state, said he has a problem with the part of the curriculum that suggests enslaved people derived any benefit from their situation.

“To me, yes, that section needs some adjustments,” he told southwest Florida’s WINK News this week.

“The talking point narrative around it, yeah, it sounds awful,” said Donalds, who, like almost every Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation, has endorsed Trump over DeSantis in the primary. “Nobody should be accepting of that. But when you read through the standards, they actually did a very good job in covering all aspects of Black history in the United States.”

Donalds said he planned to work with the State Board of Education to “bring refinement” to that topic.

The DeSantis administration later went on the attack against Donalds, a popular conservative seen as a rising star in the GOP.

The state’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., vowed on social media Wednesday not to change the teaching standards “at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.” DeSantis’ spokesperson, Jeremy Redfern, piled on, posting that “supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the @WhiteHouse.”

As the dynamic unfolds under the bright spotlight of presidential politics, DeSantis’ approach risks alienating would-be conservative supporters while undermining his core message to Republican voters, which relies on the notion that he is more electable than Trump against President Joe Biden in the general election.

Republican strategists acknowledge that the curriculum fight could undermine the party’s modest gains with some voters of color in recent elections. African Americans and Latinos, particularly young men, have shifted slightly toward the GOP, although both groups still overwhelmingly backed Democrats.

“There are much more valuable issues that DeSantis should focus on,” said Republican strategist Alice Stewart, who added that the current debate could “absolutely” alienate voters of color and suburban whites alike.

Still, she suggested DeSantis was being unfairly criticized.

“It’s important as always to make sure that you read everything before you take one part and blow it up,” Stewart said. “This is one part of a larger curriculum. And this was written and approved and signed off by an African American scholar.”

The group that revised the Black history curriculum included William B. Allen, a Black professor emeritus at Michigan State University who has defended the wording about slavery.

Former Republican strategist Tara Setmayer, now an adviser with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said the debate reflects an unfortunate political reality in today’s GOP: Far-right positions on race have become incredibly popular since Trump’s rise. She argued there is virtually no short-term downside to emphasizing the issue for candidates running in Republican primaries, which are dominated by the party’s white base.

“I was a Republican for 27 years, and at no time did the Republican Party try to whitewash American history,” she said. “Now, that’s a mainstream Republican talking point.”

DeSantis is far from alone in pushing the limits of the GOP’s rightward shift on race.

Trump dined last fall with noted white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. spoke at a gathering of white supremacists in Florida earlier in the year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has repeatedly refused to denounce white nationalists serving in the U.S. military in recent weeks. Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz. referred to Black people as “colored people” on the House floor this month.

In the GOP’s presidential primary, all the candidates have come out against critical race theory, the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions, which function to maintain the dominance of white people in society. They regularly insist that America is not a racist nation, accusing Democrats of perpetuating that notion to score political points.

In many cases, however, DeSantis has gone further than his 2024 rivals in using the levers of government to enshrine the conservative position — much of it coming after his presidential ambitions came into view.

Even before he was sworn in, DeSantis faced allegations of racism for saying Florida voters would not “monkey” up the election by voting for his Black Democratic opponent in 2018. But DeSantis then drew praise for opening his governorship by pardoning the Groveland Four, a group of four Black men convicted of a 1949 rape they did not commit.

The praise didn’t last.

In 2020, DeSantis pushed the Florida Legislature to approve the so-called anti-riot act, which was designed to crack down on violence associated with African American demonstrations against police violence. That’s even as he’s downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

More recently, DeSantis pushed through the Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, a law that limits discussions on race in schools and by corporations. The law was intended, at least in part, to prevent white people from feeling guilty or uncomfortable about racial injustices committed by other white people.

DeSantis has also banned state universities from using state or federal money for diversity programs.

In a move that has not gained as much attention, he has declined to select individuals for the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in four years, despite a state law that requires nominees to be submitted to him annually. He has continued to name people to the Florida Artists Hall of Fame and the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame.

DeSantis also demanded that former Democratic Rep. Al Lawson’s congressional district be redrawn to dilute the influence of Black voters in north Florida. As a result, Florida no longer has Black representation in Washington for an area stretching about 360 miles (580 kilometers) from the Alabama line to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Georgia line south to Orlando.

Still, Black Republican activist Quisha King of Jacksonville says she’s been thrilled by DeSantis’ leadership, especially on education.

King said it’s “ignorant” and “simple-minded” to condemn the provision of Florida’s new education curriculum related to slavery.

“My great, great, grandfather was born a slave. He bought his freedom. How do they think he was able to buy his freedom?” she asked. “They used the skills that they had to make some money and save it up and buy their freedom.”

The Department of Education said Wednesday that it released a statement on the new Black history curriculum last week and would not comment further.

Meanwhile, state Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is Black, said that painting a rosier picture of atrocities does not benefit anyone.

“Their idea is to teach history in a way to make white people not be looked at in a bad light,” Jones said. “There’s no silver bow that you can tie around the history of Black people. You can’t make lynching look good, you can’t make the raping of women look good.”

“There’s no benefit to that,” he added. “There was nothing right about that. There was nothing just about that. It was torture.”

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The agency said the man fell from the Carnival Magic about 185 miles (300 kilometers) east of Jacksonville early Monday.

The man’s companion reported him missing, and the ship’s crew notified the Coast Guard. Security footage on the ship shows that the man “leaned over the railing of his stateroom balcony and dropped into the water” around 4 a.m., a statement said.

The Coast Guard searched for 60 hours, covering some 5,171 square miles (13,392 square kilometers) through Wednesday evening. The search included air crews and the Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba, along with U.S. Navy ships and aircraft in the area.

Carnival said the ship returned to port in Norfolk, Virginia. The ship can hold nearly 4,000 guests and is about 1,000 feet (300 meters) long.

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The Jacksonville, Florida, resident didn’t want to start insulin. All the medicines she tried made her sick.

But Florida Blue care manager Miriam Bercier chipped away with phone check-ins. The nurse fed Akinniyi information about her condition and talked about potential problems she could run into like vision loss.

“She cared, and I felt that,” Akinniyi said. “That made me start caring more.”

Insurers and employers are taking a renewed interest in programs like these that help people deal with chronic — and potentially expensive — health problems.

They are identifying patients with diabetes or high blood pressure and connecting them with care managers who can answer questions about medicine or help them change their diets.

Some plans also are waiving or reducing fees for doctor visits, eye and foot exams and supplies like insulin pumps. They aim to encourage people to get regular care so they don’t need an expensive hospital stay when their untreated condition grows worse.

“Everybody wins if the patient is healthier,” said Dr. Sameer Amin, chief medical officer for the health insurer Oscar, which is selling a new plan specifically for people with diabetes in individual insurance markets this year.

Programs that attempt to help people with chronic health problems can vary widely and have been around for years. They’re gaining traction again in individual and employer-sponsored coverage as bill-payers focus more on helping patients get regular care instead of hiking costs like deductibles, which can keep people out of the health care system entirely.

Experts say these programs can cut health care costs and keep patients happy. But they require frequent education. And some think doctor’s offices — not insurers — should be running them.

“It’s about relationships. … People don’t trust health plans or particularly want a call from their insurer,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, CEO of the Purchaser Business Group on Health, a non-profit coalition that works with large employers.

Akinniyi had no problems trusting Florida Blue. The 61-year-old started talking to Bercier about a year ago, after Akinniyi’s diagnosis prompted the insurer’s care management team to reach out.

The care manager helped her figure out how to exercise more, track what she eats and change her diet to cut sugars and starches. Akinniyi also started taking medication regularly.

“I just feel different now,” she said. “I have energy. I look at myself differently because I came out of those dark days of denial about diabetes.”

Florida Blue started its diabetes program in 2014 and offers it to customers enrolled in individual insurance coverage.

Oscar began selling its diabetes-specific plan on individual markets in several states for 2022 and may consider adding plans for other chronic health problems.

In its diabetes coverage, Oscar assigns care managers to help patients navigate the health care system. It also waives patient out-of-pocket costs for eye and foot exams and for primary care doctor visits and caps insulin costs at $100 a month.

Amin said they think this approach can improve health even in advanced cases just by making regular care easier to get.

“Even if somebody has had an amputation or they’ve had a heart attack or a stroke … you get them on the right set of medications, you get them engaged with their primary care doctor, you can actually turn it around,” he said.

Another insurer, Cigna, is offering an individual insurance plan geared specifically for diabetics for 2022. It also is debuting a plan aimed at customers with certain breathing disorders, waiving patient deductibles on supplies like oxygen tanks.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t manage their conditions and a lot of times it comes down to affordability,” said Cigna executive Lisa Lough. “If you can’t afford your prescription, maybe you’re not motivated to go in and see your doctor.”

The annual enrollment window in which people can buy coverage for 2022 ends Saturday in most states.

Outside the individual insurance market, more insurers have started offering care management help for people with coverage through an employer. Humana, for instance, is working with Virta Health to offer a program that uses nutritional therapy and remote medical care to try to reverse Type 2 diabetes.

Benefits experts expect these programs to become more common and grow more comprehensive by addressing other conditions. People often have more than one chronic condition and need help dealing with anxiety or depression too, noted Steven Noeldner, an executive with the benefits consultant Mercer.

Employers aren’t interested solely to cut costs. The programs can help attract and keep workers, Noeldner noted.

They also put employers at ease, said Paul Fronstin, an economist with the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

“The fear is that your diabetics don’t take insulin, they have a complication and wind up in the emergency room,” Fronstin said. “Not only are your costs higher, but your employees are also out of work.”

The city of Asheville, North Carolina, was at the forefront of this push more than 20 years ago when it started a diabetes care management program. It put specially trained pharmacists in charge of helping city employees.

They met with their patients once a month to go over medications, monitor blood pressure and answer questions, said Barry Bunting, a pharmacist who directed the project for several years.

The city also reduced some expenses to make it easier for employees to get care. The “low tech, high touch” approach worked, Bunting said. Research into the program found that for every dollar Asheville spent, the city got $4 back from lower health care costs.

The program has since been replicated in other cities. A big reason it succeeded, Bunting said, was the regular connection between the patient and pharmacist.

“Accountability is really the key,” he said, “knowing that somebody is going to be asking you, ‘How are you doing?’”

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Insurers, employers start helping more with chronic disease

The post Insurers, employers start helping more with chronic disease appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

The Associated Press contacted most of the state’s 20 largest districts Monday and many said they have not been able to fully fill their openings, forcing some drivers to handle extra routes. Other districts are asking parents to drive their children to and from school when possible to reduce the numbers requiring busing or putting transportation department managers back behind the wheel.

Florida has been hard hit by the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic, and that has likely scared off candidates for a job that can be stressful under normal circumstances. Many districts are not requiring masks on buses, but even districts that do are short drivers.

“Recruiting and retaining bus drivers was a struggle pre-pandemic, but the labor shortage, in general, has exacerbated the issue not only for us but for districts everywhere,” said Erin Maloney, a spokesperson for Hillsborough County Public Schools in the Tampa Bay area. The district requires students to wear masks unless their parents opt them out, but it still needs to add 100 drivers to the 750 now working.

“Our bus drivers are running double loads in some areas to make sure kids get to school,” Maloney said. “We also have anyone with a license who is able to drive working in our transportation building out on the roads instead. It is all hands on deck.”

The state education department had no immediate comment Monday on the driver shortage. The delta variant of the virus has swept through Florida over the last two months: About 15,600 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, nearly eight times more than in June, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Not all districts are struggling. A few districts like Pinellas, Seminole, and Brevard counties say that despite the pandemic, they have enough drivers. But others say they are juggling to cover all their routes.

Palm Beach County schools asked parents to drive their children if possible. Polk County normally has 510 drivers, but only has 430 working. Collier County is using staff and former substitute drivers to fully cover its routes. Lake County has 26 open positions out of 237. Lee County, which needs to add 100 drivers, made its drivers full-time employees so they are eligible for health insurance and other benefits sooner, giving an incentive to new hires.

Neither Miami-Dade nor Broward schools, the state’s two largest districts, replied to emails and calls Monday. But Broward, which had two teachers and an assistant die last week from COVID, recently said it was short 150 drivers. Miami-Dade also recently said it is short drivers.

The shortage is especially acute in Pasco County, where they are short 78 regular drivers and 33 relief drivers. On Monday, the district shifted all its earliest bus stops up 10 minutes to allow drivers to finish sooner and get to their second routes.

“This year marks our all-time high in bus drivers shortages,” district spokesperson Stephen Hegarty said. He said the shortage has a domino effect on some students’ days, with some arriving at school and getting home late.

In Marion County, staffing shortages are fairly routine in central Florida county which is larger geographically than Rhode Island. But COVID has exacerbated the shortage and the district needs about two dozen drivers.

“What’s hitting us most now is providing substitute drivers for those being quarantined” because they tested positive for COVID or came in direct contact with someone who has it, district spokesman Kevin Christian said. “When you have a shortage compounded by quarantined drivers, that’s extra challenging.”

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Struggle to find bus drivers in many of Florida’s largest school districts

The post Struggle to find bus drivers in many of Florida’s largest school districts appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

Another Florida woman had just given birth to her first child but was only able to hold the newborn girl for a few moments before dying.

A California man died a few weeks shy of his 53rd birthday while his wife was on a ventilator at the same hospital in Oakland, unaware of his passing on Aug. 4.

The COVID-19 death toll has started soaring again as the delta variant tears through the nation’s unvaccinated population and fills up hospitals with patients, many of whom are younger than during earlier phases of the pandemic.

The U.S. is now averaging about 650 deaths a day, increasing more than 80 percent from two weeks ago and going past the 600 mark on Saturday for the first time in three months.

Data on the age and demographics of victims during the delta surge is still limited, but hospitals in virus hotspots say they are clearly seeing more admissions and deaths among people under the age of 65.

Florida hospital officials are seeing an influx of young, healthy adults filling their wards across the state, many requiring oxygen. In the past week in Florida, 36% of the deaths occurred in the under-65 population, compared with 17% in the same week last year when the state was experiencing a similar COVID surge. Florida is the national leader in coronavirus deaths, averaging more than 150 a day in the past week.

The younger patients mark a shift from the elderly and frail, many living in nursing homes, who succumbed to the virus a year ago before states made seniors a priority to get inoculated first. More than 90 percent of seniors have had at least one shot, compared to about 70 percent for Americans under 65.

At a predominantly Black church in Jacksonville with a hipster vibe, contemporary music, and a strong social media presence reflective of its young, energetic congregation, six members died over 10 days starting in late July. All were under the age of 35.

They were “all healthy, all unvaccinated,” laments Pastor George Davis of Impact Church, who knew each one personally and has struggled with his own grief at the funerals. He’s held two vaccination events for his congregation of about 6,000 where over 1,000 received shots.

Among the church members who died was a 24-year-old man Davis watched grow up since he was a toddler and a woman from his worship team who celebrated her first wedding anniversary only weeks before she died. Her husband recovered.

Davis said the young woman was “just the picture of health, vibrant.”

“There is a sense among younger people that they are somehow invincible,” said Dr. Lena Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore Health Commissioner. “Unfortunately, though, some people who are hospitalized are going to die and that’s going to mean some people who are younger; and as you’ve seen these are people in some cases who are leaving behind young children.”

Among those parents are Kristen McMullen, who had decorated her baby’s room with rainbows and suns, fully embracing her favorite season, summer — after which she would name her first child.

The 30-year-old woman fell ill three weeks before her due date and was admitted to a hospital in West Melbourne, Fla., with COVID-19.

After an emergency cesarean section, McMullen was able to hold her baby girl for a few moments before being rushed off to an intensive care unit, where she later died.

“She would say that she was scared and that she didn’t want to die,” her aunt Melissa Syverson said, struggling to talk in between sobs. “She was fighting to get back to the baby.”

McMullen’s aunt said her family did not want to disclose whether McMullen was vaccinated.

Carlos Reyes was skeptical of the vaccine and so was his wife, Maria — until they and their two teenage children had to be rushed to the hospital in Oakland.

Their 14-year-old son, Sergio, did not need to stay after getting oxygen while 19-year-old Emma joined her parents in the intensive care unit. She was released after a few days, and the parents were put on ventilators.

Their 32-year-old daughter who has an auto-immune disease was the only one vaccinated when they fell ill.

“We were all just a little hesitant at the beginning,” said the couple’s oldest daughter, Jasmine Rivas Fierro, 34.

Their four children didn’t want to break their mother’s heart by telling her while she was still in intensive care that Carlos had died a day after their 22nd anniversary.

“She loved him so much,” Rivas Fierro said of her mother, who is still in the hospital.

The family is telling people that they must be fully vaccinated to attend Carlos’ funeral next week.

Cindy Dawkins also left behind four children, ranging in age from 12 to 24. She died Aug. 7, less than a week after she celebrated her 50th birthday with her family at Universal Studios in Orlando. She had a cough and seemed tired that day before her condition quickly deteriorated and she had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.

Her family believes she contracted the virus at her waitressing job at a bistro in their hometown of Boynton Beach, Fla., where her coworkers have also tested positive. She was healthy and had been getting tested regularly but was still mulling over getting the vaccine.

“Maybe the vaccine would have helped fight it, but I don’t know if it would have completely stopped it,” her 20-year-old son, Tre Burrows, said.

As the family wrestles with grief and sorts out guardianship of Dawkins’ youngest children, they are also saddened by what could have been. Dawkins came to the U.S. from the Bahamas when she was in high school and her children say she was close to becoming an American citizen, an event the family planned to celebrate with a trip over Thanksgiving.

“Everything was finally going right,” her daughter Jenny Burrows said. “And then this happened.”

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COVID-19 claims more young victims as deaths climb yet again

The post COVID-19 claims more young victims as deaths climb yet again appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

She had served just over two years of a five-year sentence for fraud and other crimes related to a purported charity for poor students that prosecutors said she had used as a personal slush fund.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the judge in Brown’s case violated her Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury verdict. The panel voted 7-4 to vacate Brown’s 2017 convictions and sentence.

The appeals court decided that the judge in Brown’s case abused his discretion by removing a juror who expressed, after deliberations had begun, that the Holy Spirit told him that Brown was not guilty on all charges. The juror repeatedly assured the judge that he was following the jury instructions and basing his decision on the evidence, but the judge concluded that the juror’s statements about receiving divine guidance were categorically disqualifying, court records said.

Brown, who in 1992 became one of the first three African Americans elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction, was convicted by a federal jury in May 2017 on 18 of the 22 charges against her. The charges included fraud and lying on her tax returns and congressional financial disclosures.

Brown reported to prison in January 2018 and was released in April 2020 after serving just two years of the five-year sentence. Her attorney had argued that she needed to be released to protect her from the coronavirus pandemic then spreading through the prison system.

Brown represented a Florida district that included Jacksonville during her nearly 25-year career.

Prosecutors said she siphoned money from the One Door for Education Foundation for personal use. They said the pattern of fraud by Brown and her top aide included using hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation for lavish parties, trips and shopping excursions.

Federal prosecutors said Brown, her chief of staff and One Door’s executive director used the charity to bring in more than $800,000 between 2012 and 2016, through donations and events including a high-profile golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass. The Virginia-based One Door gave out only one scholarship, for $1,200, to an unidentified person in Florida, according to court documents.

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Appeals court: Ex-US Rep Brown should get new trial

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