A spellbound performance. Here’s a word Bruhat Soma should spell easily: C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N. The rising eighth grader from Tampa reeled off 29 words inside a Maryland auditorium Thursday night to win a tiebreaker and take this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee. Bruhat’s dizzying performance thrilled the crowd as he breezed from “brouette” (a small two-wheeled vehicle) to “abseil” (a British term for rappel), as months of preparation for a quickfire “spell-off” helped seal his victory. Bruhat is the second winner from the Tampa Bay area in two years; Dev Shah of Largo won the bee in 2023. Bruhat said it was “really cool” to continue the streak, but he’s looking forward to some downtime. He’s got interviews scheduled and a trip to the White House, but then it’s off to play basketball, and to enjoy the summer. He’s also looking forward to joining new clubs at Turner/Bartels K-8 School when classes resume in August. What an achievement for a young man who aspires to be a doctor and who appreciates the richness of having goals in life.

It’s fraud alright. Another boneheaded move has apparently backfired on Gov. Ron DeSantis. Last year, the Republican governor removed Florida from a multistate voter data-sharing agreement designed to detect illegal voting. Advocates and local elections officials feared the move, and their concerns appear to have borne out. New data shows that DeSantis’ voter fraud unit last year received 93% fewer referrals from other states about double-voters than it did the year before, an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald finds. The voter fraud unit received 72 tips from other states about people suspected of casting ballots in Florida and another state in the same election. That’s down from at least 986 tips in 2022. At the time, DeSantis’ secretary of state declared Florida was leaving in part because of the interstate program’s “partisan tendencies.” But the timing coincided with DeSantis’ ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination, where he fanned the flames over election fraud. Yet another example of collateral damage when politicking replaces governing.

More property insurers. Thousands of Florida homeowners are shopping for property insurance just as a predicted “above-normal” Atlantic hurricane season starts today. But there’s a gem of good news: Anyone newly dumped back onto the insurance market for whatever reason now has several new options, and 19 other companies are either freezing rates or lowering them slightly. That news, from the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation, doesn’t solve Florida’s property insurance crisis, which has had customers reeling from spiking rates and poor service. But new residential insurers are entering the market, a reversal from recent years. And they’re coming in fresh with a dose of new capital and without a backlog of costly claims. Several firms are spinoffs of existing Florida companies, while others are startups, the Orlando Sentinel reported this week. Though it remains to be seen what track record they amass, this at least is movement in a better direction, as the market expands and consumers enjoy the opportunity to access lower rates. Let’s hope it continues.