Florida will get $8.4 billion of a $26 billion nationwide foreclosure settlement reached following what U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called “disturbing practices” at the country’s biggest banks.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a top negotiator for the states involved in the lawsuit, said prosecutors and banks had reached a deal that “provides Floridians with much-needed relief and reforms the mortgage-servicing industry.”

Under the agreement:
* Florida borrowers will receive an estimated $7.6 billion in benefits from loan modifications, including principal reduction and other debt relief.

* About $170 million will be available for cash payments to Florida borrowers who lost their home to foreclosure from Jan. 1, 2008 through Dec. 31, 2011 and suffered servicing abuse.

* The value of refinanced loans to Florida’s underwater borrowers would be an estimated $309 million.

* The state will receive a direct payment of $350 million.

“This settlement will provide substantial relief to struggling Florida homeowners, and ensures that our state gets its fair share of the relief being provided nationally,” Bondi said in a statement this morning. “This agreement holds banks accountable and puts in place new protections for
homeowners in the form of strict mortgage servicing standards.”

Read more from The Palm Beach Post‘s Kimberly Miller here.

A coalition of groups – including the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote and the ACLU - filed a federal lawsuit today against the state over an election law overhaul now being reviewed by a separate federal court in Washington.

The groups are challenging the provision in the law that they say makes it more difficult for groups to conduct voter registration drives.

The lawsuit argues that the new law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott this spring, is an unconstitutional restriction on the rights of speech and association, is confusing and violates the National Voter Registration Act.

After more than 70 years helping to register voters in the state, the League of Women Voters of Florida quit its voter registration efforts after the law went into effect in May. The lawsuit argues that the league dropped its efforts out of “fear they will be unable to comply with the laws myriad requirements and cannot afford to risk incurring large fines or enduring the reputational harms that would result from even an innocent violation.”

The Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, also part of the lawsuit, argues that the new law will make it more expensive for them to register college students to vote. Rock The Vote, a national group that targets voters between the ages of 18 and 29, said it has called off registration drives in Florida because it lacks the resources the new law requires.

The lawsuit also argues that the new law disproportionately affects low-income and minority voters, who tend to sign up to vote through registration drives more than other groups. Critics of the law, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, say Florida’s law, one of 14 across the nation passed by GOP-dominated legislatures and governors this year, is designed to make it harder for low-income, minority and college student voters to register and cast their ballots.

A federal judge in Miami threw out a separate challenge on the law in October, saying it was too early to see whether the new law would be harmful. The ACLU was trying in that case to keep the law from going into effect statewide until it received federal approval for five counties requiring “preclearance” under the Voting Rights Act.

Mary Susan Pine, who regularly protests outside a West Palm Beach clinic where abortions are performed, is the target of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit that seeks to bar her from any driveway leading to the clinic and could result in a $10,000 fine.

Pine, 58, is the first Florida person targeted under the 16-year-old federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

A National Abortion Federation lawyer applauds the suit as part of the crackdown Attorney General Eric Holder promised after the 2009 slaying of a Kansas abortion practitioner.

Read about it here.

U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder is speaking now to a Forum Club of the Palm Beaches lunch crowd of more than 700.

He’s detaling an Obama administration initiative against financial fraud.

Read his prepared remarks after the jump…. (more…)

After two weeks of bad publicity over its handling of a Nigerian jihadist’s attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day, the Obama administration will try to shift the focus to the economy today, Politico’s Mike Allen reports.

Toward that end, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s lunchtime speech today to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches is expected to lay out an administration initiative to “prevent, prosecute, and punish financial fraud.”

After the massive Ponzi schemes of South Floridians Bernie Madoff and Scott Rothstein, West Palm Beach is a natural backdrop for Holder’s announcement.

(more…)

CNN senior politcal analyst Bill Schneider will be the headliner Friday when the venerable Forum Club of the Palm Beaches kicks off its latest powerlunch season.

The event will be at the Cohen Pavilion at the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Public tickets are $55 and may be purchased at the event. The buffet begins at 11:30 a.m.

Other Forum Club speakers confirmed so far: Ted Kennedy biographer Peter S. Canellos on Oct. 23, National Urban League CEO Mark Morial on Dec. 15, U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder on Jan. 8 and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson on Jan. 28.