That lobbyist is Mike Beltran — a Harvard-trained attorney, a former Republican member of the Florida House, and, as of last month, a candidate for Congress.

Here’s how the pieces fit together.

The robber.

Back in 2010, Turkish national Yener Vahit Belli earned the nickname “Hoodie Bandit” from Tampa Bay reporters and police. He wore hooded sweatshirts and sunglasses while he held up numerous convenience stores and gas stations around Hillsborough County, waving a TEC-9 and ordering clerks and customers to the floor. He got away with cash, cigarettes, and lottery tickets.

Police arrested him in October 2010 after spotting him on surveillance footage. In 2013 he pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to 32 years. An alleged getaway driver got 10 years.

The reason the sentence ran so long: at the time, federal law stacked harsh, mandatory penalties on top of each other for using a gun during a robbery. Those rules have since been softened — and that’s the opening Belli’s team is now trying to use.

The lobbyist.

Your typical lobbyist is essentially someone paid to argue a client’s case to people in government. Usually you hear about them pushing bills or chasing contracts. This is something newer: lobbyists hired to win presidential pardons.

Federal records show Belli’s family signed a contract with Beltran on Nov. 24, 2025. Beltran’s law firm is listed as the official registrant, Belli as the client, and the job as — in plain terms — lobbying for a pardon. The filing reports he was paid $15,000 in the final months of 2025.

Beltran has since written to the Trump Justice Department arguing that Belli’s sentence is based on an old, now-rejected reading of the law and is far longer than Congress would consider fair today. He sent the pardon office a six-page letter with more than 80 pages of attachments asking that the sentence be cut to time already served.

“This is a case about proportion and sentencing,” Beltran told the news outlet NOTUS, which first reported the arrangement. He says his client has turned his life around — earned an MBA behind bars, lined up a job and a place to live, and is ready to stay out of trouble.

Belli, in his own petition, says he’s not the troubled 26-year-old he was when he committed the crimes. “I know I can never undo what I did,” he wrote.

Belli isn’t alone. Since Trump returned to office, he’s granted pardons or clemency to more than 1,800 people — far more than in his entire first term. That flood has created a small industry of lobbyists charging big fees to get inmates’ names in front of the White House.

The administration waves it off. A White House official told NOTUS that the president decides pardons himself and that anyone paying a lobbyist for one is wasting their money. Watchdogs see it differently, warning that money and connections are starting to matter as much as the facts of a case. Defenders point out that hiring an advocate is perfectly legal, and that Trump has backed criminal-justice reform before.

The twist.

Here’s the part worth watching. Beltran left the Florida House in 2024, saying at the time it was for family and professional reasons. Then in May 2026 — after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new map that turned a Democratic-leaning Tampa-area seat into a strong Republican one — Beltran seized the opportunity and jumped into the congressional race for it.

So the same attorney lobbying Trump’s administration for a convicted robber’s freedom is also asking voters to send him to Washington as a Trump ally.

His opponents have started asking the obvious questions: Why leave Tallahassee and then run for Congress? What changed? Was the friendlier new map the reason? The public timeline is clear — he stepped down, the map changed, he got in the race. What it all means is for voters to decide.

Bottom line.

The facts on paper aren’t in dispute. A man is serving 32 years for armed robbery. His family paid Beltran $15,000 to lobby for a pardon. Beltran has formally made the ask. And Beltran is running for Congress while he does it.

Whether Trump grants the pardon is anyone’s guess — the White House says it doesn’t discuss requests that may or may not exist.

Reporting drawn from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Tampa Bay Times, federal lobbying and clemency filings as reported by NOTUS, Florida Phoenix, and Ballotpedia. Current as of June 2026
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The exchange unfolded at the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre after the band played “Soul Singing,” when its crow mascot — an intentionally subversive image of the bird dressed as Uncle Sam — appeared on the venue’s screens. Part of the crowd took it as a cue and broke into chants of “U-S-A.” Robinson responded with a dismissive “Thanks for the geography lesson,” then, as the chanting continued, told the audience he didn’t see what they had to be proud of at the moment.

The remarks drew a mix of boos and cheers. According to JamBase’s account of the on-stage sequence, Robinson went on to tell the crowd that some of them had real faith, then directed a profanity-laced line at the hecklers — saying that some of them were not afraid and were not ignorant — before the band moved into its 1991 hit “She Talks to Angels.” A video from TMZ shows some concertgoers getting up and walking out during the back-and-forth.

The reaction stood in contrast to other stops on the tour. At a Fort Lauderdale show, the same material reportedly drew a warmer response. Representatives for the Black Crowes did not immediately respond to requests for comment from multiple outlets.
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The spending plan (HB 5001E) covers the fiscal year beginning July 1 and comes in below the current year’s budget — marking the second year in a row the state has pulled back. The figure landed below what the Senate had sought but above the House’s regular-session position, reflecting a tense negotiation between the chambers’ leaders. House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, had pushed to cut the more than $115 billion current budget, while Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, favored keeping funding roughly level.

The final votes were lopsided even if the path was not: the Senate approved the plan unanimously and the House passed it 99-6. Perez said Floridians expect their government to spend responsibly and focus on the issues that matter most to families.

The budget keeps about $14 billion in reserves — roughly $8.6 billion in unallocated general revenue and $5.7 billion in the Budget Stabilization Fund. It also includes pay raises debated for more than a year: a 4% bump for state law enforcement officers, firefighters and park rangers, plus an increase for corrections officers, whose hourly pay could rise from $22 to $24.

Education spending was a sticking point. The Senate had tried during the regular session to overhaul the state’s school-voucher program after an audit flagged problems accounting for millions of dollars, but the House declined to go along. In the end, both chambers agreed to maintain $4.5 billion for homeschool and private-school scholarships.

The budget now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who warned this week that he is likely to trim the plan further. His largest single cut came in 2022, when he vetoed more than $3 billion from the Legislature’s budget.
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The forecast. Researchers at Colorado State University are calling for a “somewhat below-normal” season of roughly 13 named storms and six hurricanes. NOAA is similarly projecting a below-normal year, with 8 to 14 named storms, three to six hurricanes and one to three major hurricanes. For comparison, a typical season produces about 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

Why quieter. The main driver is a developing El Niño, which is expected to strengthen through the summer and fall. El Niño tends to boost wind shear across the Atlantic — high-altitude winds that can tear apart storms before they organize. The counterweight is that parts of the Atlantic and Gulf remain warmer than normal, which favors development; forecasters simply expect the El Niño effect to win out. CSU pegs the chance of a hurricane making landfall along the Gulf Coast, from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville, at about 20% — below the long-term average of 27%.

Why it still matters. The 2025 season is the cautionary tale: it generated 13 named storms, five hurricanes and four major hurricanes — three of them reaching Category 5 — yet the U.S. avoided a direct landfall. A slow season can still produce a single devastating storm, which is why officials say preparation shouldn’t wait.

How to get ready:

• Build a kit now. Assemble at least a three-day supply of food and water per person, plus medications and supplies, before any storm is on the map.

• Fortify the home. Keep drains and gutters clear, consider check valves in your plumbing to prevent backups, and look into hurricane shutters if you don’t have them.

• Pack a go-bag for the car. If you may need to evacuate, keep important documents and essentials staged separately so leaving is fast.

• Heed evacuation orders. If your zone is told to leave, leave — and note that you often don’t have to drive far to reach safety.

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The tower, at 2309 N. Rome Ave., is the first phase of the broader Rome Yards redevelopment, which is converting an 18-acre former municipal maintenance yard between Rome Avenue and the Hillsborough River into a mixed-income neighborhood. This phase will deliver 234 apartments — 60 one-bedroom, 152 two-bedroom and 22 three-bedroom units — with the large majority set aside for affordable and workforce housing.

“As Tampa continues to grow, we are focused on creating neighborhoods where residents of all income levels can thrive,” Mayor Jane Castor said, describing the project as inclusive development that expands housing options while reconnecting the historic waterfront community to the rest of the city.

Beyond apartments, the phase includes five live/work units aimed at small-business owners and a 3,800-square-foot workforce training center offering job-readiness help and résumé assistance. The center will be run by the West Tampa Community Development Corporation in partnership with the developer.

When the full master plan is built out, Rome Yards is slated to hold roughly 954 residential units along with townhomes, retail and commercial space, and new public amenities — part of the city’s wider push to add affordable housing in a corridor where rising values have squeezed many longtime, working-class residents.
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Deputies say the man was last seen around 9:05 a.m. Saturday in the 5400 block of State Road 54. Preliminary information indicates he walked into a business and demanded money from the register, then left the scene before law enforcement arrived. No one was injured, and investigators believe the episode was isolated.

The sheriff’s office has not said which business was involved. It described the suspect as a Black man, roughly 6 feet 2 inches tall and about 130 pounds, last seen in a black hoodie and black pants and heading away from the area on foot.

Anyone with information about the case or the man’s identity is asked to contact the sheriff’s tip line at 1-800-706-2488 or submit a tip online.

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Elsa R. Flores has stepped down as division chief and associate center director of basic science, according to an email sent to senior Moffitt staff. The note characterized the move as a personal decision and said she will stay on as a senior member of the Department of Molecular Oncology, where she will concentrate on running her own lab.

Until the change, Flores had sat near the top of Moffitt’s research hierarchy. Her institutional profile describes her as overseeing five academic departments in the Division of Basic Science and lists a long run of honors, including an NCI Outstanding Investigator award and an endowed chair. She is internationally known for her work on the p53 family of tumor-suppressor genes.

The resignation followed a retrospective review by her previous employer, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where Flores spent years as a professor before moving to Tampa. That review examined a number of papers she worked on while in Houston — papers that critics had already been picking apart in online forums, arguing that some of the images used to support the findings appeared to have been altered.

Those concerns have left a visible trail in the scientific literature. In 2024, Nature attached an editorial expression of concern to a influential 2002 paper Flores co-authored on how p63 and p73 contribute to programmed cell death, warning readers that questions had been raised about the integrity of some of the data. Separately, PLOS Genetics retracted a 2009 study on DNA-repair genes after editors found problems across multiple figure panels; the retraction notice indicates Flores did not agree with the decision. A 2019 paper in PLOS ONE drew its own expression of concern over reused western-blot images.

Moffitt declined to address specific questions about Flores, the Times reported, but said in a statement that the center holds its research to the highest integrity standards and relies on established oversight and compliance systems.

The case was reported by Christopher O’Donnell, an investigative reporter at the Tampa Bay Times.
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Investigators said a 21-year-old Tampa man was driving a Chevrolet Silverado the wrong direction on the northbound lanes near Busch Boulevard around 9:15 p.m. when he struck a Toyota Corolla almost head-on. The Corolla’s driver, a 24-year-old Tampa man, was killed at the scene.

The impact flipped the Silverado several times before it caught fire, according to troopers. The Corolla also rolled and was pushed into a third vehicle, a Toyota Camry driven by a 26-year-old Wesley Chapel man. That car then hit a fourth vehicle, a second Toyota Camry driven by a 38-year-old Tampa man.

The FHP said the drivers of the third and fourth vehicles were not hurt. The wrong-way driver, whose name has not been released, was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.

Troopers said the Silverado driver had been involved in two separate hit-and-run crashes shortly before the I-275 wreck — one on Fowler Avenue and another just south of it. Authorities have not detailed those incidents or said whether anyone was injured in them.

Criminal charges against the driver are pending, the FHP said.

Reporting based on the Florida Highway Patrol via WFLA.

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