Gov. Ron DeSantis’ top media adviser has a mantra that the governor won’t give an interview unless it’s recorded because she doesn’t want her boss’ words twisted out of context. But when the governor announced on Tuesday that he wants a grand jury to investigate what he suspects is misleading information from the pharmaceutical companies over the safety of the mRNA vaccines, particularly cardiac-related deaths tied to the vaccines in young men, a cascade of old recorded interviews started spilling out.

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.

Top aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis played key roles in planning and executing Florida’s controversial migrant flight program, according to public records released late Friday.

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.

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.

Florida Power & Light witnesses admitted to state regulators this week that its proposed $1.53 billion increase in rates over the next four years will cost residential customers disproportionately more than the rate increase imposed on the state’s largest commercial and industrial businesses.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new gaming compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida April 23 that guarantees $6 billion in 10 years. The Legislature will meet in a special session May 17 to consider its approval.

A bill moving quickly through the Florida Legislature could prevent people from suing the sugar industry when the black ash from sugarcane burning causes health problems.

Miami Beach real estate mogul Jeff Soffer used his superyacht, and his friendship with Tom Brady, to get renewed attention from Florida legislators to his long-sought bid for a Miami Beach casino.

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.

Located on the tallest hill in the highest part of the state, halfway between Pensacola and Jacksonville, Florida’s Capitol is hard to reach for most Floridians during the annual legislative session.But this year, as legislators opened their 60-day session Tuesday trying to navigate a global pandemic and stay healthy enough to avoid disrupting their activities, access to elected government is even more distant.

A year ago on March 1, 2020, Florida announced its first two cases of the novel coronavirus, and declared a public health emergency recognizing the emergence of the novel coronavirus. Only later did we learn that the spread of COVID-19 in Florida likely began in January, if not earlier, but as late as March 11, as the White House downplayed the virus, Gov. Ron DeSantis denied that community spread was taking place in Florida. Here is a summary of the state of transparency in Florida over the last year:

In the latest election cycle, dozens of Florida legislators raked in $6 million in special-interest campaign money and spent a good deal of it on themselves for meals, rental cars, plane trips and hotels. Some lawmakers are feeding at the trough of contributors, enjoying expensive dinners at upscale restaurants with donors’ money at a time when one in 10 Floridians are on food stamps. Others are churning cash from one political committee to another, sing it to finance direct contributions and attack ads for other candidates, thereby strengthening their own clout in a virtually untraceable shell game.

Whether Floridians know it or not, Gov. Ron DeSantis is pursuing a policy that will allow the virus to spread freely in the state until most of the population becomes infected — or is vaccinated vaccine — while attempting to protect those thought to be most vulnerable. Critics say it is an irresponsible herd immunity policy. Advocates call it "focused protection."

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.

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.

As Florida’s government built a plan to contain the effects of a global pandemic, it elevated one tool above all others: data. But unlike the way the state has handled other infectious diseases, the COVID-19 records have been incomplete, changed without explanation, dropped from the Department of Health website without warning, or don’t match the public narrative advanced by the governor. The Miami Herald investigated.