At 8:24 ET Tuesday, CNN called the GOP Senate primary race in favor of Sen. Marco Rubio. The first-term senator, who offered Donald Trump only a tepid embrace, faced off against wealthy tea-party businessman Carlos Beruff. Beruff has been a devoted supporter of Trump from the beginning.

Gov. Rick Scott announced in a written statement Thursday he will be in Washington D.C. Sept. 6 to meet with members of Congress on the immediate need for funding to combat the Zika virus.
 
Scott said, “Since Congress decided to go on a seven-week vacation, the state of Florida has been hard at work combatting the Zika virus." 

One of the best-kept news secrets: In 2015, the U.S. State Department gave several ferry companies permission to begin sailing between South Florida and Cuba, pending approval from Cuban authorities.

In town for an editorial board interview, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio stopped by the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort Orlando Friday to check in at the James Madison Institute Policy Summit.

Florida set a record in tourism after the second quarter,  welcoming 57.4 million visitors, the highest number of any six months in the state’s history.  

According to a Governor's Office press release issued Friday, in the second quarter of 2016, 27.3 million visitors came to the state, an increase of 3.1 percent.  The average number of direct travel-related jobs in quarter two of 2016 was also a record high, with 1,255,200 Floridians employed in the tourism industry -- up 4.3 percent over the year.

Florida is three days away from the 2016 Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday, Aug. 5-7.

The Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) is among state agencies reminding parents, guardians and community members to make sure that Florida’s students start the year off right by taking advantage of the tax holiday.

DJJ points out that research shows children and teens who stay in school are less likely to make contact with the juvenile justice system. In fact, having problems at school is considered a major risk factor for criminal offending, the department claims.

Hillary Clinton’s post-convention lead over Donald Trump has continued to grow as more polls have come in, according to FiveThirtyEight Newsletter.

Initial polls conducted after the Democratic National Convention suggest Clinton received a convention bounce in the high single digits. That exceeds Donald Trump, who came out of the Republican National Convention with a 3-4 percentage point bounce. A bounce is the net gain in a candidate's standing in the polls.

According to FiveThirtyEight, here's a roundup of post-convention polls seen so far:

The Washington Post gave Hillary Clinton one of its dreaded "four-Pinocchio" ratings -- the worst score possible for truthfulness -- after Clinton told Fox News Sunday that the FBI defended her honesty in the classified email scandal that has plagued her presidential campaign for more than 16 months.

FBI director James Comey testified in a July 7 congressional hearing that multiple statements the Democratic presidential nominee made to the public were untrue.

Hill+Knowlton Strategies (H+K) has named Ron Bartlett general manager of Florida, overseeing the firm’s offices in Tampa and Tallahassee.
 

Outgoing DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz may not be feeling much love from Democrats at the Democratic National Convention, but the folks at American Crossroads, a conservative non-profit 527 political organizaton, feel tremendous gratitude for Wasserman Schultz’s record at the helm of the Democratic Party.