The entertainment company quietly put a plan in motion that, for now, has muted the governor’s attempt to exert leverage over it. Days before Florida legislators voted to advance the governor’s proposal to take control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Disney-aligned board voted to undercut the authority of its successor. It also made sure the plan remains in effect until 21 years after the death of the last descendant of King Charles III - a very long time. Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article273766880.html

Most governors bristle at having to turn over internal musings, emails and transactions to the public, but Gov. Ron DeSantis, who came to office with an aggressive approach to exercising executive authority, has been more combative than most of his predecessors. Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article273295735.html#storylink=cpy

As protesters marched to the Florida Capitol on Wednesday for the second rally in three weeks to oppose what they say is Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “assault” on Black history, the state’s battle over the future of education started to take shape as a war over the future of civil rights in America.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis mounts a political attack on what he calls the “woke mob,” he claims that certain instruction of Black history is the equivalent of political indoctrination. And educators and advocates who pushed for the Black history standards say the governor’s policies are threatening to reverse the modest progress they have made.

Documents released by the aviation company that helped manage Florida’s $12 million migrant relocation program shed new light on behind-the-scenes dealings as the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, working with the politically connected vendor, wriggled around a requirement that Florida use the money to export Florida migrants — not those living in some other state.

Weeks before the state signed a contract with a Destin-based aviation company to ship migrants from San Antonio to Democratic-leaning states at Florida taxpayer expense, executives with the politically connected firm were already in Texas with Florida officials planning the secret mission, text messages released by the governor’s office late Monday show.

Top aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis played key roles in planning and executing Florida’s controversial migrant flight program, records obtained by the Miami Herald showed.

Documents obtained from the state agency charged with managing the controversial migrant relocation program explicitly say that its mission was “to relocate out of the State of Florida foreign nationals who are not lawfully present in the United States,’’ according to records obtained Friday by the Miami Herald.

Two weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s top election officials stood in a Broward County courtroom and announced the arrest of 20 people for voting illegally, the state’s case is starting to fall apart.

Florida Power & Light's political consultants secretly used the company's money to pay for a spoiler candidate's salary and rent as he challenged then-Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava. The scheme appears to have violated campaign finance law.

Florida Power & Light had a problem. A strong Democratic challenger was threatening to unseat a friendly Republican incumbent in a Gainesville-area state Senate race in 2018. FPL, one of the country’s largest utilities, needed to make sure the GOP held onto the seat. So FPL used a shadowy nonprofit group to secretly bankroll a spoiler candidate, a longtime Democrat named Charles Goston, according to new documents obtained by the Miami Herald. Running as a no-party candidate in the general election, Goston helped split the liberal vote, siphoning off enough votes from the Democratic challenger to swing the race to the GOP incumbent.

Gov. Ron DeSantis surprised many in Florida’s environmental community when he vetoed Florida Power & Light’s priority bill that was intended to reduce rooftop solar expansion in Florida. Solar advocates said it was a signal the governor had put “energy freedom ahead of monopoly utility profit margins.” But in conservative Northwest Florida, residents say they deserve some of the credit, as their outrage at FPL and it’s handling of winter price hikes became a catalyst in the bill’s demise.

Republican Senate President Wilton Simpson wants to be the next Florida agriculture commissioner, and he is using his power over the $105 billion state budget to give the agency a gift: $331 million in new spending. But it also comes with a catch: It can’t be spent until after the election. The money — $300 million for land acquisition, plus aerial drones, agriculture promotion and new jobs — must be held in reserve and not used by Nikki Fried, the current agriculture commissioner who is a Democratic candidate for governor.

Rooftop solar power generation in Florida is still a nascent industry, but Florida Power & Light, the nation’s largest power company, is pushing to hamstring it — by writing and delivering legislation the company asked state lawmakers to introduce, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight.

The collapse of the condo in Surfside exposed flaws in Florida's building inspection laws. Structural engineers and architects say the tragedy should serve as a catalyst to update them — especially in coastal communities where rising water tables pose increasing threats.

A month after an engineer’s report flagged “major structural damage” at Champlain Towers South, the chief building official for the town of Surfside told residents the condominium was “in very good shape,” according to minutes from a November 2018 board meeting obtained by the Miami Herald.

Organizers of the three-day vaccine distribution event last month in Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County were focused on more than shots, text messages between them and the governor’s office show. They were also keenly aware of the political optics of bringing Gov. Ron DeSantis into town to promote vaccines in their Republican-rich neighborhood. Rather than rely on a random selection of vaccine-eligible residents, the governor’s staff wanted them to create a list of who would get a vaccine.

Open government advocates say the state of Florida’s Sunshine laws is darker this year because of the governor’s selective release of information and his attempt at times to actively shield critical details about the depths of the crisis from becoming public.

As Florida’s eldest residents struggled to sign up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, nearly all those aged 65 years and older in a wealthy gated enclave in the Florida Keys had been vaccinated by mid-January, according to an emailed newsletter obtained by the Miami Herald.