>>This week on NewsNight the impending discussion in the Florida legislatur over vaccine mandates.

How might the issu play out in the 2026 session?

The recovery continue after flooding rains in Lake and Brevard countie caused widespread damage.

And a look back at the life of academi and journalist Jim Clark.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top storie and issues in Central Florida and how they shap our community.

First tonight, we told you last week about one of the issues likely to be at the forefront of the upcoming legislative session, and that was property taxes.

Tonight, we're going to talk about another: vaccines and the debate in Florida over childhood immunizations.

The DeSantis administratio is urging lawmakers to eliminate vaccine mandates statewide, following an announcement by the state surgeon general in September.

>>Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and and slavery.

Okay, who am I?

As a government or anyone else?

Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body.

>>Surgeon General Ladapo.

Well, last week several doctors made their feelings known at the Hillsborough Count legislative delegation meeting.

>>An they're here to testify to you today, no because they're on the payroll of any pharmaceutical compan or, here for their own profit.

They're here for one sacred reason which is to protect our babies.

And that's why we urge you today to reject any attempt to repeal vaccine requirements in our state.

>>I talked about the next steps in the legislature when it comes to vaccines wit Kimberly Leonard from Politico.

>>The state surgeon general and the governor want to do awa with all vaccine mandates.

And there are, severa right now.

There are some that they can d unilaterally just through rulemaking with the health department.

But the others, especially involving, you know, hey you have to get these vaccines befor you're allowed to go to school.

Those are all would have to go through the legislature.

And I've talked to a lot of them.

And some members say that they're totally behind the governor.

They think it should b an individual family decision.

You know, that people ca get vaccinated if they want to.

Others are more hesitant or they say, you know, I really have to hear from, you know, my constituents and see if this is something they want.

And then still more just kind of think, oh, no I don't want to have this fight.

I don't want to do it.

They're hearing a lot.

They're getting a lot of emails, a lot of backlash.

You know, people are afraid of sending their kids to school with kids who might not be vaccinated.

You know, maybe they live in a multigenerational home, too.

And so if you then bring that back, you know, to an older adults at home, that becomes even scarier.

And so what I can tell you is that when I talk to House or Senate Republicans, they basically said they haven't gotten any marching orders on it.

They don't hear anything from leadership.

I've talked to leadership about it.

They're just telling me, stay tuned.

I don' know what they're going to do.

I don't think they know what they're going to do yet.

They might still be working on that.

But the hear something big, some some kind of big piece of thi is that medical groups are very, very against us and medical groups are very influential.

They write big checks for campaigns.

They also, you know, are a huge business in our state and they're worried about, you know, more hospitalization because people are unvaccinated and so they're pushing very hard against, the idea of no longer doing vaccine mandates.

So this is going to be another huge flashpoint, I think, heading into the next session.

>>Kimberly Leonard there from Politico.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Ryan Gillespie, who writes about all kinds o things for the Orlando Sentinel.

Good to see you, Ryan, as ever.

Thanks for coming in.

Peter King from CBS News Radio.

Good to see you back on th panel, Peter.

>>Good to be back.

>>Good to see you.

And Geovany Dias from WFTV, Channel 9.

Good to see you Geo.

>>Thanks for having me.

>>Thanks for coming in, guys.

Peter, let me start with you on this one.

What are the next legislative steps.

do we think, that that governor DeSantis and the Surgeon General might take here?

>>Well, nobody's saying anything about this.

None of the lawmakers are sayin anything about this.

And as Kimberly said a moment ago there are a lot of lawmakers who have no ide what legislatively might happen.

Somebody is probably going to file a bill.

And, it may or may not go some place.

The interesting thing is that this is something that DeSantis has been pushing for, but there's also been a lot of pushback against his agenda in the last couple of years.

So we might see that and we might see nothing.

>>Yeah, I mean, the governor's been talking about vaccines, hasn't he since since the Covid pandemic.

And, you know, his policies have drawn a lot of attention there.

I mean, Gio, remind us which of the vaccines the state is ending administratively.

I think it's allowed to do some, on its own.

But then the legislatur needs to agree on other things.

>>Correct.

So effectivel what happens is, the state the Department of Healt can, on its own, just a ban certain requirement that some of those vaccines are included are chicken pox, hepatitis B, and two other vaccines that are related to bacterial infections.

Now, when it comes to the state legislature, they have to kind of vote and approve on several other vaccines.

And those are polio, measles, tetanus, rubella and a few others.

And we'll have to wait until they get to that point, if at all.

>>A lot of those vaccines tha school children get-- >>Correct.

>>Been mandatory for them to.

Up until this point, I mean, what kind of challenges do we think that this proposal on vaccines might, might face in the legislature?

I mean, Kimberly Leonard there seems to think that lawmakers are pretty divided on this issue.

>>Right.

And so for one like you mentioned in the piece, you know, Democrat are going to oppose this, right?

>>Yeah.

>>I don't know how muc that actually matters in this.

In a state where Republicans have a supermajorit in the House, in the Senate.

So theoretically a united Republican Party can do whatever they want.

But the relationship between Governor Ron DeSantis and the House speaker, Danny Perez, is at best strained.

So how much support wil the House give to this proposal for a policy that's not popular?

Polling this week from University of North Florida shows two thirds of Florida voters oppose this.

Almost 50% of them strongly opposing it.

So even if they get somebody to file a bill, these lawmakers, they have to go home at the end of a session, right.

So they're going to face these voters.

They're these voters are their neighbors.

They're going to be at town halls, they're donors.

So I think that's probably going to become a challenge.

And then the other thing, too, is you've got to get the support of of the people in Tallahassee, the actual party itself, which on a lot of these issues, they haven't been able to in recent memory.

>>Yeah.

Well let's hear from another doctor a moment, we recently talked about this issue of vaccine mandates with Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious diseas expert at Stanford University.

Take a listen.

>>It's a devastating, situation in my view.

I know for a fac that, vaccines have prevented tens, if not hundreds of millions of hospitalizations in the United States in the last 50 years.

It's been very well documented and, more importantly, has prevented millions of childhood deaths, not only in the U.S.

but around the world.

And for us to really prevent families from being safe and their children safe at schools is really, concerning to me in this era when we have done so well in keeping our children safe and healthy, and wh we would want to take that away from our children is really, unknown to me.

>>Yvonne Maldonado from Stanford.

>>Of course important to mention that the the governor here and his surgeon general believes this is a matter of personal freedom.

Parents and educators, of course, also have strong views on vaccine mandates, and WFTV has been looking at that.

>>Yeah, I've I've spoke with several parents out there while we are covering this story, and it's interesting to mention that Doctor Ladapo did say during his press conference when he first announced the requirements were-- >>Back in September.

>>Yes, he said, who am I to make a decisio about about your personal choice of your children?

And he said he said that during his press conference.

And what I heard from parents while we were covering that story was, well, you're the expert.

So I want you to tell me what my children should or should not get.

So-- >>People seeking that guidance.

>>Yeah, they're expecting tha guidance to come from the state.

So that wa one of the first things that I when I realized when I was coverin this is it's parents are split.

We have we have a group of parents who believe that it's it's a matter of choice and that they should be abl to voice their concern and say, maybe I don't want my child to get this or that vaccine.

But there are other several, several parents who fear for the safety, which is something that, Doctor Maldonado just mentioned.

It's like this could be a problem for the entire community, depending on how devastating those diseases could be.

Right.

And at the same time educators are extremely opposed to suspending those requirements because of the safety concern that could bring.

>>Well, a reminder.

You can find much more NewsNight content on our website including all the past episodes, full length interviews, and extra discussion with our panelists.

It's all on our website, wucf.org/newsnight.

Okay, parts of Lake and Brevard counties could be in for a long recovery after relentless rain left sections of roads washed away and neighborhoods cut off.

Local officials are urgin caution while engineers continue to assess the damage following storms over the weekend that dropped more than a foot of rain in some places.

Officials say repairs in Lake County, including in Mount Dora, could take weeks.

Some stretches of road pavement were torn away by torrents of water.

Crews are using heavy machinery to shore up damaged areas to prevent further collapse.

Following last Sunday's storm, officials in Lake County and in Titusville declared a state of emergency with at least a dozen roads across Lake County closed, cutting off some rural communities.

In some places, it was reporte saturated soil triggered small landslides, raising concern about home foundations.

Amazin images out of Lake County there.

Ryan you've been covering this story this week as as if your Sentinel colleagues.

What are you guys hearing from residents and local officials about sort of the most urgent challenges that face those communities right now?

We know that sort of road closures, property damage and so on.

>>Yeah, it's all of the above.

Some people, some people's homes were were damaged or in some cases, they've been basically forced to leave their homes and are holed up in a hotel.

As the waters recede and, you know, local officials have to make sure that, you know, the power systems are saf and that foundations are safe.

And so homes aren't going to fall on people.

So that's an ongoing process.

And then these road washouts that were maybe some of the most dramatic images.

Those repairs are going to take some time.

Donnelly Street, which if you've ever been to Mount Dora-- >>Right through the middle of Mount Dora, right?

>>It's one of the main drags in from US-441 into downtown Mount Dora, right there on the lakefront.

The actual downtown area is fine.

But that's a main road tha a lot of people used to get in.

So there are the city of Mount Dora has, released maps of alternative routes into the downtown.

A lot of the businesses are open.

They're hoping to get some customers.

As of last night, at least, there was still a precautionary, boil water order in place.

So maybe by the time this is airing, maybe that won't be the case.

But regardless, they say these businesses are operating safely.

And Wolf Branch Road wa another road that washed away, which was maybe the most dramatic of the images that we looked at.

That roa might take some time to repair.

It's not the first time in the last 18 months or so that that road has washed out.

So, so there might be some long term studying needs to be done there of, of what is causing this to happen and how to prevent this from being kind of an ongoing thing.

>>Yeah.

And we record the show on Thursday morning.

So of cours things can change by air time.

And you mentioned the what th the the idea of saturated soil.

I mean, people might wonder what that house looks okay or that street looks okay but that's why engineers need to to keep investigating, to se what is in jeopardy of sort of structural failure, that kind of thing.

>>That's correct.

And so the structure of that structural failure.

And then the other thing that's an issue with a lot of these, our power systems, you know, there maybe in this case there isn't a lot of downed power lines.

But when electrical systems get saturated, i can it can shock homes as well.

>>WFTV of course, has bee covering this and particularly the unusual nature o these rains we saw last Sunday.

I mean, we're not unfamiliar right, with with heavy rainfall over a prolonged period of time in Central Florida, but this was pretty much unprecedented.

>>Yeah, the whole thing about this storm is the amount of rain that came down in such a short amount of-- >>Hurricane amount.

>>Yeah, exactly.

Which is astounding because we had we have been having such a good hurricane season right, in Florida this year.

But we are talking about 15 t 16in of rain in about six hours.

So when you put-- >>Which is a short period of time.

>>When you think about that math, you think about the amount of water that homes needed, like took in.

>>Yeah.

>>Because it just flooded so fast.

And as, Ryan was mentioning, th the ground was very saturated.

I was covering, Titusville.

I was in Brevard County for, for the coverage, and we were talking about six hours of rain on Sunday.

Come Monday afternoon, 5:00 started to rain again.

So those folks were still dealing with the aftermath of thunderstorms.

And then no they're dealing with that again.

We reported and this is very interesting.

This was, a 1 in 1000 year flooding event that we experienced just this last weekend.

And we are not talking about hurricane here.

We are talking about rain.

>>Incredible.

And as we talked about after Hurricane Ian, those inland areas, it's not just coastal areas that are vulnerable to flood threats in Florida.

And this is going to take a while.

>>Well, there's a reason why they called Lake County Lake County.

You have a lot of lakes there a lot of lakes that overflowed.

And the number I saw was somewhere in the neighborhoo of 30 million gallons of water.

>>Yeah.

>>On top of what's already there and in areas that are, prone to flooding anyway when it rains heavily.

The state has sen in, water pumps to try and pump some of that water out of there.

And, and, it's, it's there are a lot of places that are lakes that should not be lakes.

>>Yeah.

Well, one of the places was Lake County.

The other place that that saw a lot of rain, was Brevard.

I think that Titusville declared a state of emergency.

Right.

What's the situation on the Space Coast?

>>Yeah.

So I was sent there just a few hours after, you know the bulk of the rain on Sunday.

And they got there and I saw people just kayaking their way out of their home because they clearly could not walk.

It's not safe.

Even people walk.

The ones were able to walk out of their homes.

They were like with water b their knees, trying to get out cars that were stuck.

Part of US-1 North Titusville also collapsed because it was a washout, just like Ryan was mentionin that happened in Lake County.

So those were the things that they were still dealin with right now, because it's going to take quit some time to, you know, to get it back under control.

This is the Space Coast, after all, because the Kennedy Space Center is there.

That area received a historic amount of rain as well.

I wonder how NASA goes about sor of protecting its infrastructure in what is a kind of an ecologically fragile area, also vulnerable to hurricanes, too.

>>Let's start with the launch pads, which are right on the water.

>>Yeah.

>>They're put out right on the water because if something happens, if there's a mishap, they want it to happen over water and not over land.

>>Sure.

>>They have built up sand dunes over the year to try and protect them better and those launch pads of withstood hurricanes for upwards of 60 years.

So that's not really a problem.

They have to shore up the dunes from time to time.

A lot of the infrastructure a little bit further inland.

And you're familiar with th press site and it's near the VAB the Assembly building and the launch control center.

A lot of those buildings have been hardened and in terms of protection and that all started really back after we had four hurricanes in six weeks back in 2004.

And there was pretty heavy damage to the VAB.

And a lot of, a lot of stuff, a lot of panels ripped off on the outside and damage on the inside as well.

So they've been working on doing that.

And one of the things that they did was get rid o some of the flimsier structures that were a lot of media outlets for example, that had trailers out there as, as their workspace.

And Roy Bridges, who was the center director at the time, said, we got to get rid of those.

So, you know, those those are long gone.

>>Well, when I started covering, the space program wasn't until 2005 with Return to Flight for the shuttle, and there were a lot of those temporary building that you're talking about there on the coast.

Ryan, much of this, flooding can be attributed right to to aging stormwater infrastructure.

You and I have talked about this vis-a-vis, Orlando an other parts of Central Florida.

Is this why local government are investing so much, or trying at least to invest so muc in these kinds of improvements?

>>Yeah.

And, you know, if you just think about some of the numbers that that Peter and Geovany said, yeah, the absurdity of 16 or 18 inches in six hours and 30 million, there' not a stormwater system on Earth that's built to withstand that.

You really can't.

The industr standard, the City of Orlando's public works director told me once, is to to handle 0.85 inches in one hour.

[LAUGHING] >>That's not even close.

>>Yeah, right.

So so the answer to your question is yes, but like with Hurricane Ian, with with this storm the other day even with the storm, I guess it was last September that we had floodin in Wadeview Park and maybe there wa some construction issues that contributed to that.

We're seeing more and more of this, that's happening.

And that is certainly a priority for cities and counties.

It's incredibly expensive to deal with.

And it takes a long time.

Central Florida's population boom was 80 or 100 years ago.

So a lot of these pipes underground are 80 and 100 years old.

And and so 1940s and 1930s and 1920s.

I don't think we could fathom 16in of rain.

>>And there's a lot more people moving here.

And we're paving over a lot more areas, right?

Areas that would naturally flood.

And this is a, I guess, an issue that's vexing communities and not just here, bu other parts of the state, too.

>>Yeah, 100%.

And I think if we take a step back to last year's local elections here in Orange County, we saw kind of a bucking of development by by voters wanting to put a rural boundary in and wanting to, limit annexation and all kinds of stuff like that to, to kind of slow down the sprawling in a lot of the argumen then was we need something to do with all of the stormwater.

It's got to go somewhere.

>>Certainly seems to b some pushback from the public.

Meanwhile, be sure to find us o social media, we're at WUCF TV on Facebook and Instagram.

Okay, finally, a respected voic in Florida's academic and journalistic circle has died.

Jim Clark, a senior lecture at UCF and former deputy managing editor at the Orlando Sentinel, died of a heart attack at his Orlando home.

He was 78.

He later led Orlando Magazine and became a fixture in Florida' historical community, authoring several books that explored the state's rich past.

Clark recently joined WUCF's Florida Road Trip program to discuss the history of the founding of th University of Central Florida.

>>We started out without any money.

Literally.

The state created the university but gave it no money.

And in fact, some citizens stepped forward and put up the money out of their own pockets to buy this campus.

The state eventually reimbursed them.

But think about, kind of trusting the state to pay you back.

>>Jim Clark there, speaking to Florida Road Trip.

Peter tell us about how you know Jim and your memories of him.

You were his friend.

>>Well, my first encounter with Jim was, right after the Columbia shuttle accident in 2003.

And he called me a couple day later and said, and I was already a subscribe to Orlando Magazine, where he was publisher at the time.

He said we'd like to do an article about you.

You're the only network on air news correspondent who lives in Orlando.

And I heard you all da doing, shuttle coverage on CBS.

And so he interviewed me and time for Show and Tell.

This was the issue.

Arnold Palmer was on the cover, so, you know, so sold probably many more magazines-- >>You kept the issue.

>>I kept the issue.

Of course, it was my, my claim to fame for a while.

So we we became friends after that.

We'd have lunch from time to time, and we worked o a couple of projects together.

One of my favorite things that we did together was, right here on WUCF TV.

Was a program based on this book, President's in Florida back in 2019.

>>Yep.

>>Just, before the 2020 election cycle.

But when Donald Trump was running and, you know he wrote, eloquently about all all the presidents who did have a Florida connection one way shape or form.

We always kept in touch.

We had lunch from time to time.

We were always in touch on Facebook, and he would send me notes all the tim when his son Kevin was on ESPN.

Here's when to watch for him.

He was very proud of that.

>>You know, what would you say about his his commitment to journalism?

We talk about that a lot here on this program.

You know, he seemed to be somebody that was really dedicated.

>>Well, he absolutely was.

And the thing about him not just being dedicated to journalism and getting it right, but he had the history and the context and the knowledge to really, really make, make it count.

Whether he was at the Sentinel, he was at the Associated Press before that in Washington.

So he had kind of a world view as well as the local view when he came here, Orlando Magazine, that kind of thing.

He knew all the issues.

He knew what mattered.

He knew people.

And and the thing I loved about him was that he was really big on friendships and relationships and and connections and, and if you want to ask for words that would describe him, warm, gregarious, funny, generous, interested, smart, but didn't have to be the smart guy in the room the smartest person in the room.

And the thing I loved about hi was that he always acknowledged milestones, whether it be weddings, jobs, births, birthdays, even deaths.

He was one of the first people to contact me after my wife, Lisa died several years ago.

He was also one of the first to contact me when I got remarried.

>>Yeah.

And he's also been here at UCF.

>>Yes.

>>For a long time.

>>Oh, yeah.

And, and ther there were numerous quotes from UCF people about how beloved he was here as a professor.

And I think any time you can fill the classroom at 9 a.m., one of them said for a class, that says a lot about the professor.

He was always interesting.

He was always entertaining, but he wasn't a showman.

He just knew how to connect when he spoke.

>>You know, it would be fair to say that, you know, his political commentary was was praised, right, as being sort of fact based and balanced.

And that really kind of stands out in this day and age.

It's a rare commodity.

>>Well, I watched him on channel six doing his political commentary for, for years.

And the thing that always struck me was that he never seemed to have an agenda.

His agenda was, okay, here are the facts.

Here's what you need to know.

Here's what it means.

And he always made it, you know, relatable in a way that the viewer who mayb wasn't paying a lot of attention to the the minutia, if you will, you know, would get the point, get what it was all about.

And that's what he cared about He was a terrific communicator.

>>He spent a long time at the Sentinel.

It must be difficult for the Orlando Sentinel, I wonder how he's, you know how he's remembered there.

>>Yeah.

No, he's he's one of the legends of the business, right?

When when he was at the paper, it was, it was a huge.

It was a huge paper.

We had, offices all over the state.

All over the country.

Not so much of that anymore.

But, you know, there's there's some of my colleagues who remember him fondly we have an obituar on the website by Duane Bevel, who's been at the paper forever and did a wonderful job.

I encourage anybody to to take a look at it.

And, you'll learn even more and you even see some quotes from, from Peter.

>>Well certainly a big, loss for, a Central Florida community as a whole.

But that is all the time we have, I'm afraid.

My thanks to Ryan Gillespie from the Orlando Sentinel, Peter King from CBS New Radio, Geovany Dias from WFTV, Channel 9.

Thank you so much for comin in, guys.

Really appreciate it.

Meanwhile, a reminder that if you have missed an episode of NewsNight or you'd like to watch our discussions again, head on over to our website wucf.org/newsnight.

A word before we go.

At WUCF, our mission is clear: We change lives.

Right now.

We find ourselves at a crossroads.

WUCF's recent loss of state and federal funding has forced us to make difficult decisions about how best to move forward with that mission.

For that reason, this will b the final edition of NewsNight as we discontinue production of the program.

This gives WUCF the opportunity to refocus staff efforts to create educational content and provide resources that support lifelong learning in Central Florida.

I would like to extend my professional and personal gratitude to the many journalist and experts who have joined us these last six years, as we've dug deep into the issues impacting our community, highlighting the vital work of reporters and keeping our region in Central Florida informed.

So on behalf of all of u here at News Night, we want to thank you for tuning in and supporting our efforts.

Every day, WUCF continues to work to educate, inform and connect our community through trusted programing and meaningful engagement.

If ever there's been a time to stand with WUCF, it's now.

Thank you again and good night.