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Fact Check: Has Canadian Tourism To Florida Dropped By 80 Percent?

Congressman Jared Moskowitz claimed fewer Canadians are travelling amid Trump’s 51st state comments. But has tourism slumped by that much? Canadians have long spent wintertime in Florida, trading in frigid temperatures for the Sunshine State’s sunny beaches and spending money in restaurants and hotels that cater to Canadian tourists. But President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions targeting Canada have given some Canadians pause about spending money in the United States. Trump has repeatedly said Canada should become the 51st US state, called then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “governor” and enacted substantial tariffs. Canadians replied, “excusez-moi?” and, on April 28, elected Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party. And according to a Florida congressman, many Canadians also ditched their Florida travel plans. In a May 1 interview with Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said he had heard from friends in Boca Raton, Florida, that many Canadians are not travelling to the state because of Trump’s actions. Blitzer asked Moskowitz: “Have you noticed a drop in Canadian tourism to Florida?” Moskowitz said: “It’s 80 percent less is what we’re seeing in the travel data.” When we asked Moskowitz’s team for comment, his spokesperson Christopher Bowman said Moskowitz referred to an April 2 report by WPTV, the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach. The WPTV report said, “Airline reservations from Canada to Florida are down 76 percent this April compared to April 2024.” WPTV’s report cited OAG, an aviation firm. In a blog post, the firm said April bookings recorded in March for the entire US-Canada market were down 75.7 percent compared with March 2024. It did not report Florida-specific numbers. OAG said the nationwide drop “suggests that travellers are holding off on making reservations, likely due to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the broader trade dispute“. We found other sources of data pointing to a decline in Canadian visitors to Florida, but by much less than the 80 percent cited by Moskowitz. In 2024, more Canadians travelled to Florida by air (2.1 million) than by other means (1.1 million), such as road travel, according to Visit Florida, the state’s tourism arm. Statewide estimated visitor data for the first quarter of 2025 won’t be available until May 15, according to Visit Florida. In 2024, about 3.27 million Canadians visited Florida, representing about 2 percent of tourists to the state. Governor Ron DeSantis’s office said in April that in January and February, Florida saw a “0.5 percent increase in Canadian air visitation” compared with the same months in 2024. Aviation firms and airports have said they’ve seen decreases. OAG Chief Analyst John Grant told PolitiFact that in early March, there were 698,000 scheduled airline seats, or seats made available by airlines, between Canada and Florida from May to August. “That now stands at 628,000, so a reduction of 10 percent,” he said. He noted that his firm’s data includes anyone booked on a flight between Canada and the US, so a traveller could be a connecting passenger from China travelling via Vancouver to Denver, for instance. Courtney Miller, founder of aviation data firm Visual Approach Analytics, told PolitiFact that Canadian airline seats to Florida are down by 13 percent for May and 10 percent for June compared with the same periods in 2024. “I have not seen any data that suggest 80 percent,” Miller said. “We are seeing overall Canadian travel to the entire US down no more than 25 percent.” A Visual Approach Analytics analysis showed that from January to March 27, two Florida airports – Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Orlando International Airport – had the biggest decrease in monthly arrivals from Canadian airlines, at 20 percent and 12 percent, respectively. Other Florida areas are also experiencing declines in travel. “Fort Myers and Palm Beach are down 30 percent and 43 percent, respectively, compared to April schedules as they existed on January 1, 2025,” the analysis said. A Miami International Airport spokesperson told PolitiFact that from January 1 to April 23, the number of arriving passengers from Canada was down 5.9 percent. National data for Canada-US road travel also shows a drop. US Customs and Border Protection data shows about 4.1 million travellers arriving from the northern border in March 2025, compared with 4.9 million the same time last year – a 17.4 percent decrease. The data doesn’t specify whether the travellers entered the US as tourists. Richard Clavet, a longtime owner of Hollywood, Florida, motels and hotels, said his properties for years have attracted Canadians who gather at the pool or Friday night hot dog cookouts. Clavet told PolitiFact he saw a drop in Canadian visitors starting in February. “A lot of them were blaming it on the political situation,” said Clavet, who is originally from Quebec. “They were not happy with the way Trump was talking about their prime minister. They wanted to boycott the US and make a statement so a lot of them cancelled.” Clavet estimated that in recent months the number of Canadians staying in his properties was 50 percent less than last winter. Usually, Canadians rush to book for the following year, but that hasn’t happened this year, Clavet said. “They want a piece of the sun where it’s safe, the weather is great, that’s what I have been working on for so many years,” Clavet said. “I really enjoyed dealing with Canadians; hopefully they will come back.” Moskowitz said Canadian tourism to Florida has declined by 80 percent. His office pointed to information from a TV report, which cited information from aviation data firm OAG. The firm said April airline bookings recorded in March for the entire US-Canada market were down 75.7 percent compared with 2024. It did not report Florida-specific numbers. Other data sources confirm a drop in Canadian tourism to Florida, but by far less than the percentage cited by Moskowitz. For example, individual airports in Florida cited declines from 6 percent to 43 percent over a few months. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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LIVE: Manchester United Vs Athletic Club UEFA Europa League Semifinal

Follow our live build-up, with full team news and analysis, ahead of our comprehensive text and photo commentary stream. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Meet The Jewish Students Speaking To US Lawmakers About Columbias Protests

Jewish students who support Palestinian rights tell Al Jazeera that accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised. Washington, DC – Jewish students involved in protests at Columbia University say their pro-Palestinian activism is driven by their faith – not in spite of it. On Tuesday, a group of Jewish student activists met with members of the United States Congress in Washington, DC, to tell their stories, which they say have been left out of mainstream narratives about anti-Semitism on college campuses. As student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza swept the country last year, Columbia University in New York became a flashpoint. The university saw one of the first student encampments in the country, erected to demand an end to investments in companies complicit in human rights abuses. Shortly after the tents started popping up, the campus also witnessed some of the first mass arrests of student protesters in the Palestinian solidarity movement. That visibility has made Columbia a focal point for President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on what he called “illegal protests” and campus anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil became the first student activist to be detained by the Trump administration and targeted for deportation. Tuesday’s delegation of Jewish students came to Congress to push the case that Khalil and others like him should never have been detained in their name. They met with at least 17 Democratic legislators from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Al Jazeera spoke to several students who participated in the lobbying day, which was organised by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, an advocacy organisation. Here are some of their stories: Raised in upstate New York, history major Tali Beckwith-Cohen said she grew up in a community where Zionism was the norm. She remembers being told “myths” about Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”: a slogan used to justify the establishment of Israel. But as she began to learn Palestinian history and meet Palestinians, Beckwith-Cohen said her beliefs were challenged. Eventually, after the war in Gaza began in October 2023, she became involved in Palestinian rights activism. Human rights groups and United Nations experts have found evidence that Israel’s tactics in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”. More than 52,615 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far. “For a long time, I had this kind of feeling of discomfort, this feeling of wrestling, this feeling of maybe cognitive dissonance, and how can I reckon these values I hold dear with Zionism?” Beckwith-Cohen told Al Jazeera. “We are seeing the bombing, the disregard for human life, for children, for hospitals, for schools. It forced me to make a choice.” She stressed that the protests were spaces of solidarity, where students of all backgrounds were committed to the idea that their safety is intertwined. “There’s so much in the media narrative about what’s happening on Columbia campus that is just disingenuous and just so untrue to what we’ve experienced,”  Beckwith-Cohen said. “So we’re here today to tell our Congress people that what we’re seeing on campus is clearly an authoritarian, fascist crackdown on all dissent, not only students peacefully advocating for an end to genocide.” When Carly Shaffer voiced concern about the Israeli escalation in Gaza on a university WhatsApp chat, some of her fellow students questioned her Judaism. Out of the hundreds of people on the chat, she remembers that Khalil – the activist arrested for deportation – was the only person who contacted her directly to reject the comments she was subjected to. As she got to know Khalil, she came to view him as the “embodiment” of someone who cared about the safety of all students on campus. Shaffer told Al Jazeera that she felt “sick” and “horrified” when Khalil was arrested. Her discomfort was then compounded when she saw that the Trump White House celebrated his detention on social media with the phrase “Shalom, Mahmoud” – a Jewish greeting repurposed as a taunt. Shaffer, who is pursuing a master’s degree in human rights and social policy, grew up in California and was raised by a single mother in a low-income household. She said speaking out against injustice – including in Palestine – is a practice rooted in her Jewish faith. “The Columbia protest movement, it’s a movement of love. It’s a movement of solidarity,” Shaffer said. “And Jewish students are also integral and crucial to this movement.” She said that, when Jewish student protesters held religious events on campus, their peers from the encampment joined them and inquired about their traditions. “These are the same students who are being portrayed as anti-Semites, who are going out of their way to go and learn about Passover and celebrate a Jewish holiday with their Jewish friends,” Shaffer told Al Jazeera. She decried the “weaponisation of anti-Semitism”, saying that the issue is being used to shut down conversations about Israeli atrocities in Gaza. “Jewish students are being used as pawns in Trump’s political agenda,” she said. “And the weaponisation of anti-Semitism to dismantle this movement is not just a threat to Jewish students; it’s a threat to all of us. That’s why it is so important for us as Jewish students to directly correct this false narrative.” Barnard College student Sarah Borus, who was arrested during the crackdown on the Columbia encampment, said she grew up in an anti-Zionist family in a “very Zionist community”. She felt it was important for Jewish students like herself to convey their experiences directly to the people in power in Washington, DC. “We’re talking to members of Congress to tell them our stories that are left out of mainstream news,” Borus told Al Jazeera. “Trump’s mission is not about protecting Jewish students. It is about using fears of anti-Semitism – because of the way that the Gaza solidarity encampment was portrayed last year – in order to target non-citizen student activists, in order to target academic freedom, free speech, and really put many, many people in danger.” When asked how she feels about the potential backlash to her activism, Borus acknowledged that the current political climate left her fearful. “I’m scared, but in the grand scheme of things, I’m proud of the choices I have made,” she said. “I would not make any different ones, and I am willing to take on the risks, if that’s what must be done.” Shay Orentlicher has no regrets about participating in Columbia University’s encampments, despite the administrative and political crackdowns. Orentlicher said Christian nationalists are trying to erase the perspective of pro-Palestine Jewish students and define Judaism in a way that fits their political purposes. But protesting against the killing of Palestinians, Orentlicher said, is an expression of both Jewish and humanist values. And Orentlicher believes that Columbia’s demonstrations have helped raise awareness nationwide. “Despite the oppression we have faced, despite the suffering, and despite the despair of worrying that we have not done enough to stop the genocide, to stand up for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, I think we have shifted the public discourse in a really important way,” Orentlicher said. “And we also have built a really beautiful community. And I don’t regret what I did at all. I wouldn’t change anything.” Raphie, who chose to identify by his first name only, said he grew up “very Zionist”. But as he learned more about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, he felt he had been deceived. “The Jewish elementary school I went to, for instance, had a map of Israel, and it was like a diamond – no West Bank or Gaza on it,” he said. “When I saw the actual map with the occupied territories, I was like, ‘Wait, I was lied to.’ And that kind of made me go on this whole journey of exploring what Zionism is, what occupation is, what settler colonialism is.” Raphie, who is studying maths, said the war on Gaza, the campus protests and the backlash the student protesters faced all made him feel a “personal responsibility to fight for what is right”. In his experience, the demonstrations were welcoming, not anti-Semitic. What was anti-Semitic, he said, was the fact that the university targeted Jewish student protesters for their political views. Several students, including Raphie, said Columbia refused to grant students associated with Jewish Voice for Peace the permission necessary to hold religious celebrations in public spaces. They described that rejection as a form of discrimination. The university did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication. Raphie also drew a distinction between feeling uncomfortable about ideas that challenge one’s worldview and actually being unsafe. “It’s normal in college to encounter new viewpoints, new perspectives. That’s how I became more pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist,” he said. “I initially felt uncomfortable when I encountered anti-Zionist views, but then I grew to understand them. That’s normal.” Raphie stressed that the real suffering is happening in Gaza. “The students who are not safe right now, of course, are the students in Gaza. Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. They haven’t had food for 60 days.” Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Between Borders And Bombs, I Lost My Mum: A Daughters Tribute From Gaza

As Israel continues to bomb Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Maram Humaid writes about never getting the chance to say goodbye to her mother. My beloved mother, I began writing this piece in the first month after your passing. I gathered my words and my pain to pour into this text, but my tears would choke me, and I’d close the file. I came back to it two months later, then six, then again at the end of the year, but I still couldn’t finish it. Each time I returned to it, I carried new burdens, new grief, and new tears as the war wove itself into our lives, adding sorrows. One time, I opened the file crying, between joy and heartbreak, with news you had waited so long to hear: A ceasefire had been announced. But you were no longer there, and I closed the file that day, too. Now, I gather my strength to write this on the first anniversary of your death. Eulogising our loved ones is not a choice, it’s a form of preservation. Can you imagine, Mama – the war stopped, only to return with even more force? Today marks 570 days of it. The killing, bombing, and displacement weren’t enough for them. Now, people are dying from hunger. How can I explain that, as much as I miss you, I’m relieved you don’t have to see these unimaginable days? In our family home in the north, there’s only half a bag of flour left. They guard it fearfully and try to make it last. The canned food is running out, and the struggle to find food is daily. I can imagine your agony if you were calling us now, worrying that we are starving. Many have starved to death, and thousands are lining up at charity kitchens and communal food stations. The crossings have been closed for over two months, with food, medicine, aid – all banned by Israel. Mama, my tears defeat me often, my fear that this war will go on even longer without your prayers, your constant prayers for our safety and protection, which I say every day now. Life is hard, and while some things can be endured, war without a mother’s prayers seems especially unbearable. Mama, I went to our family home in the north. The whole house was burned, shattered – except your room, your clothes, your things. We gathered them and keep them like treasures that still carry your scent. We prioritise them in case, God forbid, we have to flee again. Recently, I’ve been thinking about your last days in the ICU, how I struggled to stay on my feet, distracting myself with work. But that was a false escape. This is the conclusion of a year of grief. My mother passed away on May 7, 2024. That morning, we woke up to images of tanks storming the Rafah border crossing as the Israeli assault on Rafah started. The one way out of Gaza was blocked; we were trapped. Then, like a thunderbolt amid the darkness of that day, came the news of my mother’s death in Egypt, five months after her medical evacuation there. We wept, for her and because we, like thousands of others, were paying the price for simply existing in this besieged land. We were denied a final farewell to the one we loved. Denied a funeral, denied burial, denied condolences. All we could do was weep and pray. My mother suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a severe respiratory illness. She needed an oxygen pump, an electric one, which meant any power outage was life-threatening. Since October 7, it felt like we were living through multiple wars. Electricity was cut off at the start of the war, generators gradually stopped working, and the healthcare system was collapsing. We moved her around in Gaza City, from our family home to my brother’s house, then to my aunt’s. Regardless of relentless Israeli strikes, she needed the same thing: a place on the ground floor and a reliable power source, like solar panels. But just as she settled, Israeli orders would come, expelling people to the south. So we went to my grandfather’s house in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza. We teased my father that he had made a “strategic” decision marrying someone from the south – otherwise, our displacement would’ve been even harder. But the bombs followed us. An expulsion order was issued for a house next to my uncle’s and we ran, carrying the oxygen tank and propping my mother up. The crises came one after another: contaminated water that hurt her kidneys, a shortage of gas to cook for her, medicines running out, then we ran out of electricity for her oxygen pump. She would struggle through nights when the electricity was out, trying to breathe until the sun rose and the solar panels could work. The oxygen tank became my brother’s and my daily companion – we took it to Al-Aqsa Hospital to refill until the hospital announced it had no fuel and could no longer operate its oxygen stations. The only solution was for Mama to leave Gaza through the patient travel lists – any way possible. We did everything to get her name on the list, with my sister Mayar as her companion, and miraculously, it worked and she left on December 6, 2023 – in an ambulance with a permit to cross the border. I said goodbye to my mother, and that was the last time I saw her. I cried that day, as the ambulance drove away, worrying it might be the last time. We didn’t realise that illness wasn’t her greatest enemy – it was the fear and psychological torment caused by the war. In every call after she reached Egypt, her face and voice were pale and shaky, the result of countless failed attempts to reach us due to network outages that lasted days. We tried to tell her not to worry, that we were alive. But asking a mother to ignore her overwhelming fear for her children and grandchildren living through genocide is impossible. She spent her days glued to the news, grilling my sister for news, especially about Deir el-Balah. For her, I would sneak up to the hospital’s roof to get some network on my eSIM, hide behind water barrels near the dangerous eastern border, and message my sister: “We’re OK. Tell Mama we’re OK.” And her voice would come back like a lifeline to a drowning soul, thanking God and begging us to be careful. She would tell me not to go to the hospital, not to put myself in danger. We walked long distances to connect to the internet near a hill by the sea, moving left and right to catch a signal just to send the same message: “We’re OK, Mama. Don’t worry.” We’d send her pictures, and when the signal was strong enough, we did voice calls. But the world around my mother in Egypt moved in one direction, while she moved in another – her heart, mind, and soul still here with us. It wasn’t the illness that killed my mother, it was heartbreak, distance, and worry that exhausted her and stole her will to live. My mother died with only one wish in her heart: That the war would end, and she would see us again, alive and safe. But death was nearer than that impossible wish. Mama, in a few months, the war will enter its second year, and it only grows more brutal. The days have become heavier in your absence. Every day I stood before the bodies of victims at the hospital, watching people break down at the news of their loved ones’ deaths. I watched their tears, their screams, their final goodbyes. Sometimes, I envied them, they at least got to say goodbye, as my heart wept for them and with them. Mama, we, the tormented in this land, are in a free-for-all festival of death. Yesterday, Mama, they bombed a school full of displaced people. In a moment, they killed more than 30 people. The world has grown used to our mass deaths on live broadcast. But who said we’ve gotten used to it? Mama, there is no rest, not these days, and not in those to come. How can we continue living when we are dying slowly? The only thing that comforts us is that those who have gone are finally at peace. That death, as cruel as it is, is more merciful. Mercy to your soul. And patience to our hearts. Sleep in peace, in comfort and safety. Follow Al Jazeera English:...