More than 6,700 staff and residents at nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been infected with COVID-19 in the month of July, a 129% rise that regulators blame on vendors and staff who unwittingly bring in the virus. But the state also played a role.

Since the onset of COVID, even as infections and deaths have soared, Florida Gov. DeSantis has delivered a shifting narrative focused on defending his actions.

Is the Florida Legislature ceding its oversight of the growing budget deficit and public health crisis over the coronavirus to the governor? Democrats say it is but the leaders of Florida’s Republican-controlled state House and Senate disagree. Florida’s elected leaders say they have no plans to return to Tallahassee until after the election.

Gov. Ron DeSantis reversed course and ordered universal testing at nursing homes and assisted living facilities, revealing the devastation COVID-19 has wrought on facilities in Florida.

When Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that most of the state would reopen for business on May 4, he cited his administration’s “data-driven strategy” and success at achieving “critical benchmarks in flattening the curve” to contain COVID-19. But a review of the data the governor was using shows his public pronouncements were often in conflict with real-time facts. He either wasn’t aware the data showed that community spread, regional outbreaks and death tolls were worse than he was telling Floridians, or he selectively focused on outdated statistics to make his case.

A hefty offer, a special arrangement with a law firm, and a promise of 1 million N95 masks got Florida emergency management officials into a Shark Tank-style deal for the precious pieces of protective equipment.

Barred from visiting their relatives in the midst of a pandemic, people with relatives in nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the state say they are also being deprived of information that could reassure them that their loved ones are safe.

With its stockpile of protective masks low, Florida embarked on a buying frenzy three weeks into the state emergency. More than $600 million in deals have resulted in virtually no product.

There is no handbook for governing in the time of the coronavirus, but as the number of positive cases of COVID-19 has grown more than seven-fold in Florida in the last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis has proven to be more cautious than governors in similarly situated states, including some with even fewer fatalities.

Florida legislators learned Thursday the cost of their decision to direct millions of taxpayer dollars to a private domestic violence agency and ask few questions. After months of obfuscation, the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence revealed for the first time that for the last three years it compensated its chief executive officer more than $7.5 million from state and federal funds — including nearly $5 million in cash compensation for “paid time off.”

The view from Tiffany Carr’s home in the Blue Ridge Mountains on Sunday offered a crystal clear panorama of six mountaintops and rolling hillsides and, at 4,000 feet in elevation, seemed a world away from the Florida Capitol where she has been the focus of investigation and outrage.

Few government contractors could orchestrate getting the $7.5 million compensation package the head of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence managed to obtain for three years of work, but Tiffany Carr did it by leveraging connections.

The decline in local journalism is having an insidious impact on democracy: diminished government accountability, reduced access to accurate information, and a decline in public trust. In this Nieman Reports piece, I explain how I've watched it play out in Tallahassee -- and how it's not unique to Florida.

Florida's new secretary of the Department of Corrections has a sober warning: Florida prisons are on the brink of collapse. They cannot sustain the understaffed, inexperienced crew of corrections officers in command of a penal system stripped of educational programs and housed in crumbling facilities. As I explain, years of budget cuts and legislative indifference have led to this problem.

A secretive organization with the goal of thwarting amendments approved by voters after the 2020 election cycle has spent more than $800,000 on paid petition gatherers in the last four months, using funds from undisclosed sources and raising the specter of another high stakes fight over the future of energy regulation in Florida. The organization calls itself Keep Our Constitution Clean and says its purpose is to keep the state’s premier legal document uncluttered by special interest measures.

Two mass shootings that left 31 dead and renewed a national call for better attention to the warning signs of homegrown terrorism have revived the debate in Florida’s Capitol over how to curb gun violence. Stirring the debate is Senate President Bill Galvano, the Bradenton Republican who this week sent signals he is prepared to use political capital to pass gun legislation in an election year.

As a new law took effect July 7, declaring that petition signatures are invalid if they are not certified within 30 days, Citizen Voters unloaded hundreds of thousands of petitions to elections offices. They’re calling it the “big dump” — and some are asking if it was an intentional ploy to sabotage liberal-leaning amendments.

After quashing an Orlando-Tampa rail line 8 years ago, Gov. Rick Scott has steered tax money and favorable regulations to the privately run company that wants to replace it. He and his wife have investments in the lending division of All Aboard Florida’s parent company.

Gov. Rick Scott is a wealthy guy who shields his assets in a blind trust, but his net worth increased 55 percent in one year and we wanted to know why. The investigation was revealing.

I anchored a deep look into how sex has been used as a tool and a weapon for the politically powerful in Florida’s capital city.