Less than two years after he was named special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Miami field office, Jeffrey Veltri is out of a job.

He was among roughly a dozen top FBI officials who, as part of an effort by President Donald Trump to rid the government of unloyal actors, were told to either resign, retire or face termination.

Veltri chose to step down of his own accord, the Miami Herald reported, “citing sources familiar with his departure.”

Veltri, 50, lives in Parkland and is a registered member of the Independent Party, state records show. The 18-year veteran of the agency took over the FBI’s Miami office in March 2023, seven months after federal agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of improperly held classified documents.

The FBI has not explained the reasoning for Veltri’s ouster. Late last week, acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll said that acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense attorney, instructed him to remove eight senior executives within the agency and turn over the names of every FBI employee involved in the Jan. 6 riot investigation.

Trump pardoned nearly all of the 1,600 people charged in connection with the riot, including dozens with criminal records that included rape, child abuse and domestic violence, and people who attacked officers at the U.S. Capitol.

Bove’s order came by memo. It included four top FBI managers and two field chiefs, including Veltri and David Sundberg in Washington, D.C.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, told NBC News the firings are illegal.

“Career federal employees can be fired for conduct or performance issues, not because they failed to demonstrate political loyalty to the current incumbent of the White House,” she told the outlet. “Trump ignored controlling law and regulations to do this, and unless the Supreme Court changes their interpretation, any firing of permanent members of the civil service should not stand.”

Vance’s comments did not address what recourse federal employees who left voluntarily would have.

Veltri, who served as an Assistant Public Defender in Broward County before joining the FBI more than 20 years ago, oversaw a field office of more than 400 special agents. Recent cases the office led included Trump’s handling of classified documents, the attempted assassination of the President in September and a murder-for-hire plot by developer Sergio Pino.

Justin Fleck, who recently celebrated 18 months with the FBI, has taken over the Miami office as acting special agent in charge. He’s already updated his LinkedIn profile, which shows he worked for seven years as a deputy and detective at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office before joining the FBI in early 2007.

Fleck has spent the preponderance of his FBI career in South Florida, where he previously served as the Miami office’s deputy special agent in charge.

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Initial demand for Florida’s K-12 scholarships has set a new record.

Step Up For Students, the nonprofit organization that administers 98% of the state’s scholarships, opened applications for the 2025-26 school year at 9 a.m. Saturday.

By the end of the weekend, more than 120,000 students had applied.

That’s the most demand Florida’s scholarship programs have ever seen in their first two days after opening applications.

— Nearly 63,400 students (51,861 renewal and 11,533 new) applied for scholarships that help pay private school tuition. Families can use any leftover money for tutoring, curriculum, or other supplemental learning.

— Nearly 33,900 students (28,608 renewal and 5,270 new)  applied for Unique Abilities scholarships that allow students with special needs to customize their education.

— Nearly 25,700 students (20,572 renewal and 5,081 new) applied for Personalized Education Program scholarships, which help families direct the education of children who do not attend school full time.

Step Up For Students CEO Gretchen Schoenhaar said the organization’s team and systems were ready for the surge of interest. Step Up’s technology systems had zero downtime. Of the families who called for assistance, 84% reported being “very satisfied” with the support they received, and nine out of 10 said their inquiry was resolved on the first call.

“The unprecedented volume of applications on our opening weekend highlights the value Florida families place on the opportunity to choose the best possible education for their children,” Schoenhaar said. “Our teams are prepared to meet the growing demand for scholarships and support families every step of the way. Our seamless execution proves it is possible to expand education opportunities at scale.”

This year, more than 500,000 students use the state’s K-12 scholarship programs to access learning options of their choice. That makes Florida the national leader in education options. If these students were counted as a single school district, it would be the largest in the state and third largest in the country.

Step Up is focused on supporting that growth. So far this year, SUFS has paid nearly 2 million quarterly invoices to schools in 4.4 business days on average and more than 1 million reimbursements in 4.2 business days on average. By the end of the year, we expect to double the number of reimbursements and process a total of 2 million MyScholarShop e-commerce transactions.

Current scholarship families have until April 30 to renew their scholarships for the next school year. All families who want a PEP scholarship must also apply by April 30.

Private School and Unique Abilities Scholarship applications will be available through Nov. 15 for families who want a new scholarship or current students who do not renew their scholarship by April 30.

Applications and more details are available here.

We will update the numbers in this post each week on Monday until applications close.

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Travis Pillow is Step Up For Students’ senior director of thought leadership and growth. He lives in Sanford with his wife and two children. A former Tallahassee statehouse reporter, he most recently worked at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University, where he studied community-led learning innovation and school systems’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. He can be reached at [email protected].

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A Jacksonville police and fire pension plan closed to new entrants nearly a decade ago is still well under halfway funded, despite a good year of investment returns.

Deputy Director Steve Lundy told the City Council Finance Committee that the funding ratio of 44.1% at the end of 2024 is “slightly down” from the 44.7% mark a year before. The plan is expected to be fully funded by 2026, roughly four decades after it was closed to new entrants in 2017.

Nevertheless, Lundy said the funding policy is working “very effectively.”

“Our investment returns were outstanding at 20.4%, far outpacing our assumed rate of 6.5%, and our pension health remains stable, although the funded ratio did slightly decrease,” he told legislators.

A half-cent sales tax will start funding the pension liability in 2031, which is an extension of the current Better Jacksonville Plan tax.

The Lenny Curry administration sought to repurpose that surtax to the pension liability previously. But given the commitment to the Jaguars’ stadium renovations, current Mayor Donna Deegan and the City Council agreed to move the sales tax back to physical infrastructure to defray stadium build costs of $775 million.

Surtax proceeds are down year over year, to 2.4% from 9.3% the year before. But the overall number is smoothed to 6% to dampen volatility in the metric.

Investment returns make up for the surtax shortfall though, Lundy said.

“Over the last five years, our pension funds average rate of return was 8.7%, and the 10-year average return was 7.4%, which are both above the assumed rate of return of 6.5%, and this is very good news,” Lundy said.

The police and fire plan is one of three legacy pension funds in the city, along with the correctional officers’ pension plan and the general employees’ plan. All three were closed to new entrants as a consequence of pension reform approved by the Legislature last decade, which put employees on a defined contribution plan for a number of years. However, the Deegan administration and the Council approved the Florida Retirement System as an option for police and fire starting in 2026.

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