Things are moving in Tallahassee again.

Lawmakers return Tuesday for a Special Session on congressional redistricting, artificial intelligence and “medical freedom,” even though the plan for the biggest item on the agenda still remains hazy.

As of Friday, Senate President Ben Albritton told Senators they were still “awaiting a communication from the Governor’s Office” on redistricting, with the Governor’s map expected to be filed later as SB 8D.

In other words, the Legislature is about to convene for a map-drawing Session before most lawmakers have even seen the map. That feels very modern-day Tallahassee.

The rest of the agenda is more fully formed, and also very DeSantis. The Senate on Friday filed SB 2D, the AI bill of rights, and SB 6D, the medical freedom bill, both essentially revivals of measures the Senate already passed during the Regular Session before they died in the House. So this week will also revive some of the Governor’s favorite side fights while the Capitol is already in town.

And because one unresolved Session apparently was not enough, legislative leaders also announced this week that a separate budget Special Session will run May 12-29 after the House and Senate finally reached agreement on joint allocations totaling about $51.98 billion in general revenue (more on that later).

So the Regular Session may be over, but there’s plenty of real work ahead.

Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.

Winners

Honorable mention: James Uthmeier. This is a brutal week for OpenAI and ChatGPT, no matter how the eventual legal fight turns out.

Florida has now escalated its probe into a criminal investigation tied to the 2025 Florida State University shooting, with Attorney General Uthmeier issuing subpoenas and publicly arguing that if a human had given the same kind of assistance allegedly found in the chat logs, prosecutors would be talking about murder charges.

Two people were killed and six others were wounded in the attack, and prosecutors say the suspect, Phoenix Ikner, used ChatGPT for guidance about guns, ammunition and where he might encounter the most potential victims.

Uthmeier acknowledged the case is “uncharted territory,” while OpenAI says ChatGPT only returned factual material already available on the open internet, without encouraging violence.

Fine. That may matter later in court. But Uthmeier is pushing forward to test the legal boundaries surrounding this new technology in a way to ensure every stone is turned to get justice for those victims.

Either way, it does not help much in the court of public opinion when the state is subpoenaing documents and connecting you to one of the most tragic events in the capital in recent years.

OpenAI’s published usage policies expressly say its services cannot be used for violence or to develop, procure or use weapons. Those rules exist because everybody understands the nightmare scenario: a model being used to make dangerous people more dangerous.

Uthmeier is pushing the courts to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Ben Albritton, Danny Perez, Ed Hooper, Lawrence McClure. Credit where it is due: the four Republicans most responsible for Florida’s budget deserve credit for moving past their differences and finally getting things in order.

After weeks of “not quite there” updates, Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Danny Perez announced that the chambers had reached agreement on top-line budget allocations, clearing the way for a budget Special Session scheduled for May 12-29.

The framework sets general revenue allocations at about $51.98 billion, and leaders say the final overall budget should come in smaller than the current year’s spending plan.

In other words, the Legislature is finally moving from public dysfunction to actual governing after the Regular Session ended March 13 without lawmakers passing the one bill they absolutely have to pass: the budget.

That’s the product of some bad blood after last year’s bruising interchamber fights never really healed. Perez and House budget chief Lawrence McClure clashed with Albritton and Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper, and the bitterness spilled right back into 2026. Even veteran lawmakers were openly describing the place as weighed down by old grudges and repeat conflicts.

But like all good leaders, they appear to have put their resentments to the side long enough to get the government running again, and now the runway is visible to get the final deal in order.

The biggest winner: Trulieve, other MMTCs. The federal government finally did something the cannabis industry has been begging for years: It stopped pretending state-licensed medical marijuana belongs in the same legal bucket as heroin and other hard drugs.

On Thursday, the Justice Department moved Food and Drug Administration-approved marijuana products and products containing marijuana subject to a qualifying state-issued medical license into Schedule III.

That does not legalize weed across the board, and it does not magically turn Florida into a recreational state.

But for Trulieve and the rest of Florida’s Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, it is a huge win. The move is expected to ease tax burdens, lower research barriers and make it easier for firms to secure funding.

The big prize is Section 280E of the tax code, the punitive rule that has treated state-legal cannabis operators like drug traffickers and blocked them from taking ordinary business deductions. Trulieve praised the rescheduling for removing that burden for qualifying medical operators.

And MMTCs are prevalent in Florida. Trulieve alone has 168 dispensing locations, with MÜV at 85, Curaleaf Florida at 71, Ayr at 65 and Surterra at 45, along with dozens of other locations for other companies across the state.

So when Washington hands state-licensed medical operators a better tax and regulatory lane, Florida’s biggest players are standing right at the front of the line.

Losers

Dishonorable mention: Teresa Heitmann. It would be bad enough that the Naples Mayor was arrested this week, but it’s even worse given that she was already on probation from a drunk-driving case.

Collier County deputies took Heitmann into custody on April 20 on a warrant alleging she violated probation after a March 26 test came back positive for cannabinoids. This came just weeks after she had pleaded no contest in her DUI case and agreed to probation terms tied to that arrest.

Her August 2024 DUI arrest was embarrassing on its own merits. She pleaded no contest in February 2026 to DUI with a blood-alcohol content of 0.15 or higher and was sentenced to one year of probation, which included conditions barring alcohol use and subjecting her to screenings.

Heitmann later in the week issued a statement responding to the news, saying she disputed the drug screening result, did not resist, did not hide, and voluntarily turned herself in.

But voters are less likely to be forgiving for a local official who had already been given a second chance and still wound up back in handcuffs.

She can, of course, still argue her case in court. But she needs to stop landing in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress this week, just before a House Ethics Committee hearing that could have moved her one step closer to expulsion.

The bipartisan Committee had already found she committed 25 violations involving House rules, campaign finance and federal law, while a separate federal criminal case accuses her of stealing more than $5 million in disaster-relief money and routing it into luxury spending and her campaign. She has pleaded not guilty.

Expulsion from the House is extraordinarily rare, requiring a two-thirds vote, and only a handful of members in history have been tossed out. Cherfilus-McCormick was on track to become one of them. Instead, she chose resignation, which let her avoid the formal humiliation of being expelled but did nothing to erase the underlying disgrace.

The ethics findings were already public. The indictment was already public. Members of her own party were already saying she should step down rather than force the House into an expulsion vote.

And politically, the damage goes beyond her. Democrats lost a member of Congress in a closely divided body where every vote counts. Florida’s 20th Congressional District is now vacant, and DeSantis is likely in no rush to call a Special Election.

Cherfilus-McCormick is facing more serious consequences down the line in a trial expected to start next year, but the political consequences are already plenty.

And now she apparently wants to run for re-election right after resigning? Good luck with that.

The biggest loser: Tampa Bay baseball fans. Tampa Bay baseball fans are once again getting the full Rays experience: hope being dangled just in front of their faces with potentially unmet deadlines threatening to pull the rug out from everyone.

The latest punch came from Hillsborough County, which told the Rays it is unlikely to meet the team’s June 1 deadline to finalize a new stadium funding deal. County officials say a more realistic timeline is 60 to 90 days, which would push completion somewhere between June 23 and July 23.

That might not sound catastrophic in a vacuum, but the Rays have said missing June 1 could jeopardize the timeline for opening the proposed ballpark by 2029. And if that deadline isn’t met, the team has threatened to look elsewhere for a new home.

What makes this so exhausting for fans is that they have already lived through one stadium collapse. The $1.3 billion St. Petersburg/Gas Plant project fell through after hurricane damage, delays and cost issues blew it up, leaving the franchise back in limbo and Tropicana Field still the short-term answer through 2028 once repairs are complete.

Tampa was supposed to be the cleaner second act — a new site for a new ownership team. But as we cautioned in late February, while the signs were looking good, we still hadn’t hit “sure thing” territory. And now, it’s starting to look like another episode of the same old soap opera.

Will the Rays end up in Orlando, Nashville or somewhere else after all? That’s the question Rays fans are facing as once again the biggest stakes for the team are off the diamond.