The “re-“ part of “re-established” suggests that this is a modification of an existing thing, no?

It sounds like it used to exist. No longer exists and is now coming back. If it was currently in existence it would say modified.

No, it means that the boards have their power stripped until their membership is replaced by the new, captive appointees that can be relied on to not be independent of the agency they are notionally overseeing, at which point their powers are restored.

That's what “required to be re-established” means.

Re-established in this case means, dissolve the existing boards and reconstitute them with the appointees. Review boards already exist in Florida.

No. My city has an independent citizen review board. This law means "yours will be dissolved and we will make anew one appointed by cops."

Well, regardless of what it sounds like, they do exist. The wannabe autocrat is weakening them.

Where does it say it is creating an entity that doesn't already exist?

The word reestablished means that it used to be established but is no longer established. It is now coming back.

Florida’s website is a bit confusing to navigate, but I think I found the actual text of the law.

https://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?B...

I think it is under bill text/enrolled.

I don’t find the word re-established in there. So, I think that’s just the wording that the newspaper picked. Regardless of any difference between establish or re-establish, it doesn’t really make sense to put too much weight on subtle implications of the newspaper’s wording.

Not completely. It also means to disband something that currently exists, then recreate it, effectively reestablishing the board. You are paying attention to only one possible reading, which is the one not consistent with the truth. Citizen review boards exist in Florida. These currently functioning boards will have their power stripped immediately and members will be replaced with captive appointees. This is not creating citizen review boards, this is destroying them

Using the word “reestablish” in that way would be the confusing and odd considering the multiple other word choices that would be far more precise.

Note that this is just a phrase that occurs in the news article, it doesn’t seem to be present in the actual law as far as I can tell.