Major League Soccer (MLS) will have some competition in the coming years, and it could impact the sports landscape in Florida.

The Tampa-based United Soccer League (USL) just announced plans to launch a first-division professional men’s soccer league.

Currently, MLS is the only first-division professional men’s soccer league in the United States. The USL operates the second-division USL Championship, which includes the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Miami FC, and third-division USL League 1.

With today’s announcement, the USL says it plans to launch a 12-14 team league in 2027-28 that will petition for first-division status from U.S. Soccer. It is unclear whether the league would begin playing in 2027 or the following year.

Currently, Inter Miami CF and Orlando City SC are Florida’s only professional men’s soccer teams in the first division. But if the USL gains first-division status, as many as three more Florida teams could play in the top tier. Sporting Club Jacksonville (Sporting JAX) has plans to launch a USL Championship team in the coming years. The club is kicking off with a women’s team in the first-division USL Super League in August.

“Today is a defining moment for the USL and the future of soccer in the United States,” said Alec Papadakis, CEO of the United Soccer League.

“Creating a Division One league is a bold step forward, expanding access to top-tier competition, deepening the connection between our communities and taking another step in aligning with the structure of the global game. By uniting people through soccer and bringing Division One to more cities, we’re not just growing the sport — we’re creating lasting opportunities while building a more sustainable and vibrant soccer ecosystem in the U.S.”

In order to obtain first-division status, the new USL league would have to have at least 12 teams and have teams in the Eastern, Central and Pacific time zones. At least 75% of the clubs would have to play in metropolitan areas with populations of over 1 million people. All teams must have stadiums with a capacity of at least 15,000, and ownership would have to meet certain financial requirements as well.

The USL Super League women’s league obtained first-division status before launching in 2024, joining the NWSL as the second professional women’s league at the top of the pyramid. That provided some precedent from U.S. Soccer.

The timing of the announcement by the USL is significant as well. Last week, the North American Soccer League lost an antitrust lawsuit against MLS and U.S. Soccer.

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The Senate on Thursday confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s Health Secretary, putting the prominent vaccine skeptic in control of $1.7 trillion in federal spending, vaccine recommendations and food safety as well as health insurance programs for roughly half the country.

Nearly all Republicans fell in line behind Trump despite hesitancy over Kennedy views on vaccines, voting 52-48 to elevate the scion of one of America’s most storied political — and Democratic — families to secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Democrats unanimously opposed Kennedy.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only “no” vote among Republicans, mirroring his stands against Trump’s picks for the Pentagon chief and Director of National Intelligence.

“I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” McConnell said in a statement afterwards. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”

The rest of the GOP, however, has embraced Kennedy’s vision with a directive for the public health agencies to focus on chronic diseases such as obesity.

“We’ve got to get into the business of making America healthy again,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, adding that Kennedy will bring a “fresh perspective” to the office.

Kennedy, 71, whose name and family tragedies have put him in the national spotlight since he was a child, has earned a formidable following with his populist and sometimes extreme views on food, chemicals and vaccines.

His audience only grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Kennedy devoted much of his time to a nonprofit that sued vaccine makers and harnessed social media campaigns to erode trust in vaccines as well as the government agencies that promote them.

With Trump’s backing, Kennedy insisted he was “uniquely positioned” to revive trust in those public health agencies, which include the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes for Health.

Last week, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he hoped Kennedy “goes wild” in reining in health care costs and improving Americans’ health. But before agreeing to support Kennedy, potential holdout Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who leads the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, required assurances that Kennedy would not make changes to existing vaccine recommendations.

During Senate hearings, Democrats tried to prod Kennedy to deny a long-discredited theory that vaccines cause autism. Some lawmakers also raised alarms about Kennedy financially benefiting from changing vaccine guidelines or weakening federal lawsuit protections against vaccine makers.

Kennedy made more than $850,000 last year from an arrangement referring clients to a law firm that has sued the makers of Gardasil, a human papillomavirus vaccine that protects against cervical cancer. If confirmed as health secretary, he promised to reroute fees collected from the arrangement to his son.

Kennedy will take over the agency in the midst of a massive federal government shakeup, led by billionaire Elon Musk, that has shut off — even if temporarily — billions of taxpayer dollars in public health funding and left thousands of federal workers unsure about their jobs.

On Friday, the NIH announced it would cap billions of dollars in medical research given to universities and cancer being used to develop treatments for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Kennedy, too, has called for a staffing overhaul at the NIH, FDA and CDC. Last year, he promised to fire 600 employees at the NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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A new measure would give family members of murder victims a second crack at finding a perpetrator in cold cases across the state.

Tamarac Democrat Sen. Rosalind Osgood filed legislation (SB 694) named “The Decker Act,” which would outline the procedures for reviewing and reinvestigating these cases.

A cold case is defined in the bill as a murder that has not had any perpetrators identified for at least five years after the murder was committed, with law enforcement investigations completed and all probative leads exhausted.

Law enforcement agencies would be required to review any cold case upon receiving a written application from a family member or legal representative. The review would need to determine if a full investigation would result in any new leads that could identify a likely suspect.

If the review of the cold case concludes that a reinvestigation could result in new leads and the identity of a perpetrator, a full investigation would need to be conducted, including the analysis of new evidence, interviewing witnesses and updating the case file.

The bill would require that law enforcement agencies develop written applications for review requests and adopt new procedures to ensure compliance, while providing training to appropriate employees.

Law enforcement agencies must further confirm they have received applications and report any data to the Global Forensic and Justice Center located at the Florida International University. The center would maintain a case tracking system and public website with information on cold case investigations.

This would include the number of written applications for cold case reviews filed with each law enforcement agency, the number of full reinvestigations initiated and closed, the total number of cases in which the time for review is extended, and statistical information on the number of cold cases, defendants, arrests, indictments and convictions.

If the cold case was initially investigated by multiple agencies, those agencies would be required to coordinate with each other to review the case files or launch a reinvestigation. These agencies would further be able to request investigative assistance from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Funding is subject to appropriations and would apply to cold cases that occurred on or after Jan. 1, 1970. If passed, the act would come into effect on July 1, 2026.

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