Governor Ron DeSantis wants the world to know that he’s a tough guy. He may wear white boots in heavy rain, but he is very, very tough. To demonstrate how tough he is, he’s made a very big deal out of cracking down on street art. It may be pretty, but it WON’T be tolerated!
So, he had the Florida State Department of Transportation paint over the rainbow-colored stripes on the crosswalks in front of the Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were massacred in 2016. The Pulse is a gay nightclub, and the stripes were intended as a memorial to those who died.
Nine years later, DeSantis had the memorial painted over and restored the original black and white stripes. To prove that he wasn’t picking on gays, he had the Department paint over other street art.
Some admirers of the Pulse memorial were nonetheless outraged, and a few of them restored the rainbow colors with chalk. They were arrested for criminal activity. Their lawyer said the charges were extreme because the rain washed the chalk away. No evidence, no crime. The state wants the makefactors to pay $1562 for the “damage” they inflicted on the street.
If you live in Florida, don’t let your children use chalk to create hopscotch games. It’s dangerous to them, to your pocketbook and to DeSantis’ peace of mind.
Gov. Ron DeSantis defended Tuesday the arrest of protesters accused of using chalk to color a crosswalk near the Pulse memorial in defiance of the state’s crackdown on street art.
“You don’t have a First Amendment right to commandeer someone else’s property,” DeSantis said at an Orlando event. “You have a First Amendment right to paint your own property. Knock yourself out if that’s what you want to do. But when you have a state crosswalk or a state road, the law in the state of Florida is now that there’s not markings.”
Tensions have reached a boiling point over the state’s decision to remove a pro-LGBTQ rainbow crosswalk near the former gay nightclub where 49 people were shot and killed in 2016. Four people were arrested over the Labor Day weekend and accused of interfering with a traffic control device.
The Florida Highway Patrol has been stationed near the crosswalk for days. Troopers were sent there after protesters used colored chalk to return the crosswalk back to its rainbow pattern. A back-and-forth battle emerged with protesters coloring the crosswalk and then state crews restoring it to its standard black-and-white pattern.
Late last week, the state put signs at the intersection instructing visitors that defacing the roadway or sidewalk was prohibited State Attorney Monique Worrell’s office did not immediately comment Tuesday on whether she will prosecute the cases against those arrested over the weekend.
Asked about the arrests, DeSantis said state transportation officials have a duty to ensure the “roads remain clean.”
“Hang up a flag,” he said. “Do what you want on your building, your house, however you want to do it. We’re not going to be doing that on our state roadways.”
Blake Simons, an attorney representing the protesters, said the markings didn’t damage the crosswalks. He argues chalk drawings on a crosswalk are protected by the First Amendment. “The chalk washes away,” he said. “It is not graffiti.”
Maryjane East, 25, Donavon Short, 26, and Zane Aparicio, 39, were arrested and booked by Florida Highway Patrol on Sunday night outside the Pulse memorial. The trio is accused of applying “unauthorized chalk markings to the crosswalk,” according to arrest affidavits.
The Florida Department of Transportation estimated it cost $1,562 to return the crosswalk to its “original state,” according to police records.
Simons called the state’s cost estimate to wash away water-soluble chalk an exaggeration. Those arrests came after Orestes Sebastian Suarez was arrested Friday night by FHP on the same charge. Suarez was also released shortly after he was booked after the judge found no probable cause that he committed a crime. He was accused of putting chalk on his shoes to make markings on the crosswalk.
The Florida Department of Transportation approved the Pulse crosswalk in 2017. But earlier this summer, it launched a crackdown on street art, painting over the Pulse crosswalk late Aug. 20.
Since then, the state has removed everything from checkered-flag crosswalks near the Daytona International Speedway to swan-patterned crossings near Lake Eola Park in Orlando. It also has ordered other cities, including Delray Beach and Fort Lauderdale, to remove rainbow street art and said colorful bike lanes designed by school children as part of state-sponsored contests need to go too.
The removals came in the wake of a July 1 directive from Sean Duffy, President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, introducing a “safety initiative” seeking consistent markings on roads.
Opponents of colorful crosswalks argue they could pose a safety hazard. But an Orlando Sentinel analysis of city traffic data shows the opposite. City data shows that decorative crosswalks and murals, such as the one near Pulse, helped reduce crashes with pedestrians despite increased foot traffic.
Simons said he views the removal of the Pulse crosswalk an attack on the LGBTQ community, and he is representing the protesters at no charge.
“I am not going to stand for our civil rights to be trampled upon,” he said.
Trump, Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have had a good time opening up and celebrating an immigrant detention facility that they call “Alligator Alcatraz.” They boast that immigrants who try to escape will be killed by alligators or snakes in the Everglades.
A federal judge in Miami gave the state of Florida 60 days to clear out the immigrant detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz, handing environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians a win after they clashed with Gov. Ron DeSantis over the environmental impacts the makeshift site was having in the federally protected Everglades.
The ruling late Thursday from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, which forbids state officials from moving any other migrants there, deals a blow to what had become a marquee symbol of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. The environmentalists who sued called it “a huge relief for millions of people who love the Everglades.”
“This brutal detention center was burning a hole in the fabric of life that supports our most iconic wetland and a whole host of endangered species, from majestic Florida panthers to wizened wood storks,” attorney Elise Bennett of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. “The judge’s order came just in time to stop it all from unraveling.”
The state filed a notice of appeal with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals less than an hour after the judge issued her order. DeSantis did not immediately comment.
Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami found that the state and federal governments had violated a federal law that requires an environmental review before any major federal construction project. Judge Williams partly granted a preliminary injunction sought by environmentalists and the Miccosukee Tribe, whose members live in the area. The detention center is surrounded by protected lands that form part of the sensitive Everglades ecological system.
The detention center presents risks to wetlands and to communities that depend on the Everglades for their water supply, including the Miccosukee, Judge Williams found.
“The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” she wrote.
Her ruling is preliminary, as the case will continue to be litigated. The state is expected to ask that the ruling be stayed, or kept from taking effect, as it pursues its appeal.
The Trump administration had argued that a review under the National Environmental Policy Act did not apply because while the center houses federal immigration detainees, it is run by the state. At the same time, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that its authority to operate the detention center came from an agreement with the federal government delegating some immigration enforcement powers to Florida.
In her ruling, Judge Williams said federal immigration enforcement is the “key driver” of the detention center’s construction. Because it is subject to federal funding, standards and direction, it is also subject to federal environmental laws, she concluded.
In making that determination, the judge wrote, the court will “‘adhere to the time-tested adage: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s a duck.’”
Polk County Public Schools expressed relief July 25 after learning that the Trump Administration would release about $20 million in funding that it had withheld for weeks.
The district issued a news release, noting that the previously frozen grants in four categories directly fund staff positions and services supporting migrant students, English-language learners, teacher recruitment and professional development, academic enrichment programs and adult education.
The relief, though, was only partial. When the district eight days earlier took the unusual action of issuing a public statement warning of “significant financial shortfalls,” it cited not only the suspended federal grants but also state policies.
Legislative allocations for vouchers — scholarships to attend private schools or support home schooling — combined with increased funding for charter schools “are diverting another $45.7 million away from Polk County’s traditional public schools,” the district’s news release said.
The statement reflected warnings made for years by advocates for public education that vouchers are eroding the financial stability of school districts.
“The state seemingly underestimated the fiscal impact that vouchers would have,” Polk County Schools Superintendent Fred Heid said in the July 17 news release. “As a result, the budget shortfall has now been passed on to school districts resulting in a loss of $2.5 million for Polk County alone. We now face having to subsidize state priorities using local resources.”
Florida began offering vouchers in the 1990s, initially limiting them to students with disabilities and those in schools deemed as failing. Under former Gov. Jeb Bush, the state expanded the program in 2001 to include students from low-income families.
The number of students receiving vouchers rose as state leaders adjusted the eligibility formula. In 2023, the Legislature adopted a measure introducing universal vouchers, available to students regardless of their financial status.
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All of Polk County’s legislators voted for the measure: Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula; Sen. Colleen Burton, R-Lakeland; Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade; Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Lakeland; Rep. Sam Killebrew, R-Winter Haven; and Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City.
Allotment for vouchers swells
The vouchers to attend private schools are known as Florida Empowerment Scholarships. The state also provides money to families through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Personalized Education Program, which financially supports home-schooled students.
The money for vouchers comes directly from Florida’s public school funding formula, the Florida Education Finance Program.
Families of students receiving such scholarships have reportedly used the money to purchase large-screen TVs and tickets to theme parks, spending allowed by Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers most scholarships.
The state allotment for vouchers has swelled from $1.6 billion in the 2021-2022 school year to about $4 billion in fiscal year 2024-2025, according to an analysis from the Florida Policy Institute, a nonprofit with a progressive bent.
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In Polk County, 5,023 students claimed vouchers in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the FPI report. Those scholarships amounted to just over $41 million.
The figures rose in 2022-2023 to 6,124 students and nearly $58 million. The following year, the total was 7,854 students and nearly $72 million.
In the 2024-2025 school year, 11,297 students in Polk County received vouchers totaling more than $97 million, FPI reported.
A calculation from the Florida Education Finance Program projects that nearly $143 million of Polk County’s state allotment for education will go to Family Empowerment Scholarships in the 2025-2026 school year, a potential increase of about 47%. The total reflects 16.3% of Polk County’s state funding.
Statewide, the cost of vouchers has risen steadily and is projected to reach nearly $4 billion in the 2025-26 school year.
Florida’s State Education Estimating Conference report from April predicts that public school enrollment will decline by 66,000 students over the next five years, or about 2.5%. Over the same period, voucher use is projected to increase by 240,000.
The state projected that only about 27% of the new Family Empowerment Scholarship recipients would be former public school students.
Subsidizing wealthy families?
Since the state removed financial eligibility rules for the scholarships in 2023, voucher use has soared by 67%, the Orlando Sentinel reported in February. And the majority of scholarships have been claimed by students who were already attending private schools.
By the 2024-25 school year, more than 70% of private school students were receiving state scholarships, the Sentinel reported. The total had been less than a third a decade earlier.
The Sentinel published a list of private schools, with the number of students on state scholarships from the years before and after the law took effect.
Among Polk County schools, Lakeland Christian School saw a jump from 40 to 89, a rise of 122.5%. The increases were 102.7% for All Saints Academy in Winter Haven and 60.3% for St. Paul Lutheran School in Lakeland.
The scholarships available to Polk County students for the 2025-2026 school year are $8,209 for students in kindergarten through third grade; $7,629 for those in grades four through eight; and $7,478 for students in ninth through 12th grades. Those figures come from Step Up for Students.
There have been news reports of private schools boosting their tuition rates in response to the universal voucher program. Lakeland Christian School’s advertised tuition for high school students has risen from $14,175 in 2022-2023 to $17,975 for the current school year, a jump of 26.8%.
Stephanie Yocum, president of the Polk Education Association, decried the trend of more state educational funding going to private schools.
“In the 2023-24 school year, 70% of Florida’s universal vouchers went to students who already were in private schools,” Yocum said. “Seventy percent of those billions and billions and billions of dollars are going to subsidize already wealthy families, and our state continues to push welfare for the wealthy, while they are siphoning off precious dollars from our students that actually attend a public school, which is still the supermajority of children in this state.”
Critics of vouchers point to Arizona, which instituted universal school vouchers in 2022. That program cost the state $738 million in fiscal year 2024, far more than Arizona had budgeted, according to a report from EdTrust, a left-leaning advocacy group.
Arizona is facing a combined $1.4 billion deficit over fiscal years 2024 and 2025, EdTrust reported. The net cost of the voucher program equals half of the 2024 deficit and two-thirds of the projected 2025 deficit, it said.
Meanwhile, there is a move toward a federal school voucher program. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress adopted in early July uses the federal tax code to offer vouchers that students could use for private school tuition or other qualifying education expenses.
The Senate revised the initial House plan, making it not automatic but an opt-in program for each state. The Ledger emailed the Florida Department of Education on Aug. 4 asking whether the state plans to participate. A response had not come by Aug. 6.
The federal program could cost as much as $56 billion, EdTrust reported. Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, called the program “a moral disgrace,” as NPR reported.
Canady: Let parents choose
Proponents of vouchers say that it is essential to let students and parents choose the form of education they want, either through traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools or homeschooling.
Canady, who is in line to become state House Speaker in 2028, defended the increase in scholarship funding.
“In Florida, we fund students — not systems,” Canady said by text message. “Parents have the freedom they deserve to make the decisions that are best for their own children. There are a lot of great school options — public district, public charter, private, and homeschool.”
She added: “In Florida, decisions about which school a child will attend are not made by the government — parents are in control.”
Canady has taught at Lakeland Christian for nearly 20 years and is director of the school’s RISE Institute, which encompasses research, innovation, STEM learning and entrepreneurship. She began her career teaching at a public school.
None of Polk County’s other legislators responded to requests for comment. They are Rep. Jon Albert, R-Frostproof; Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, R-Lakeland; and Albritton, Burton and Tomkow.
Canady noted that 475 fewer students were counted in Polk County Public Schools for funding purposes in the 2024-2025 than in the previous year.
“That reflects the choices that families have made,” Canady wrote. “During the same time, the Florida Legislature increased teacher pay by more than $100 million dollars and continues to spend more taxpayer money on education than ever before.”
She added: “Education today looks different than it did decades ago, and districts around the state are all adapting to the new choice model. Funding decisions should always be about what is good for students and honor the choices that families make.”
The 475 net loss of students in Polk’s public schools last year is far below the increase of 3,443 in Polk students receiving state scholarships.
Questions of accountability
Yocum said that public school districts face certain recurring costs that continue to rise, no matter the fluctuations in enrollment resulting from the use of vouchers.
“You’ll still have the same — I call them static costs, even though those are going up — for maintenance, for buildings, for air conditioning, for transportation,” Yocum said. “All of those costs still exist. But when you start to siphon off dollars that public schools should be getting to run a large-scale operation of educating children, then we are doing more and more with less and less.”
Yocum also raised the question of accountability. The Florida Department of Education carefully controls public schools, largely dictating the curricula they teach, overseeing the certification of teachers and measuring schools against a litany of requirements codified in state law.
Public schools must accept all students, including those with disabilities that make educating them more difficult and costly.
By contrast, Yocum said, private schools can choose which students to accept or reject. The schools are free from much of the scrutiny that public schools face from the Department of Education.
The alert that Polk County Public Schools issued on July 17 mentioned another factor in its financial challenges.
“PCPS is facing an immediate $2.5 million state funding shortfall due to what state officials have described as dual-enrollment errors that misallocated funding for nearly 25,000 Florida students,” the statement said.
That seemed to refer to a “cross check” that the Florida Department of Education performs twice a year, said Scott Kent of Step Up for Students. The agency compares a list of students on scholarships with those reported as attending public schools.
If a student appears on both lists, the DOE freezes the funding. Step Up for Students then contacts the students’ families and asks for documentation that they were not enrolled in a district school, Kent said.
“This is a manual process that can be time-consuming, as the state and scholarship funding organizations want to ensure accuracy and maintain the integrity of the scholarship programs,” Kent said by email. “The DOE currently is checking the lists before releasing funds to Step Up to pay eligible students.”
In the 2025 legislative session, the Florida Senate passed a bill that would have clarified which funds are dedicated to Family Empowerment Scholarships, a way of addressing problems in tracking students as they move between public and private schools. But the bill died, as the state House failed to advance it.
Yocum said the House rejected transparency.
“They want it to look like they’re funding public schools at the level that they should be funding it, where, in reality, more and more of our dollars are running through our budgets but being diverted to corporate charter, private schools and home schools that have no accountability to our tax dollars,” she said.
Effect of charter schools
The warning from the Polk County school district mentioned funding for charter schools as part of a “diversion” of $45.7 million traditional public schools.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate independently. Polk County has 36 charter schools covering all grades. Those include two charter systems: Lake Wales Charter Schools with seven schools, and the Schools of McKeel Academy with three.
Some other charter schools are affiliated with national organizations, including for-profit companies.
Yocum lamented the passing of public funds through the school district to charter schools, though specified that she had no criticism of the McKeel or Lake Wales systems.
“We’re talking about the corporate-run charters that are in it to make money,” she said. “We keep seeing billions and billions of our state dollars diverted to those money-making entities that do not make decisions in the best interest of children. They make decisions in the best interest of their bottom line.”
Canady sponsored a bill in 2023 establishing the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from traditional public schools to charter schools’ capital budgets by 2028. It passed with the support of all Polk County lawmakers, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law.
The Florida Legislature passed a bill in the 2025 session (HB 1105), co-sponsored by Kincart Jonsson, that requires public school districts to share local surtax revenues with charter schools, based on enrollment share.
The bill, which DeSantis signed into law, also makes it easier to convert a public school into a charter school, allowing parents to initiate the change without requiring cooperation from teachers. It also authorizes cities or counties to transform public schools with consecutive D or F grades into “job engine” charter schools.
Since Governor Ron DeSantis got his “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2023, Florida has led the nation in book banning. That nefarious activity is currently on hold because a federal judge struck down DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Anytime a book banning law gets knocked down, we should celebrate a victory for the freedom to read. Another court, higher-up, may overturn the decision, but for now it’s good news.
A federal judge has struck a blow against Florida’s book bans, ruling that part of a DeSantis-backed law used to sweep classics and modern novels off school shelves is so vague that it’s unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza of the Middle District of Florida focused on the portion of the law that prevents books that “describes sexual conduct” in his Aug. 13 order, saying it’s “unclear what the statute actually prohibits” and to what detail of sexual conduct is prohibited.
The statute (HB 1069) was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, and it’s been used to remove thousands of books from Florida’s school library shelves.
Mendoza drew concern with classical literature and more modern works such as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” among 23 books removed from Orange County and Volusia County schools.
To defend book removals, DeSantis and state officials have pointed to “government speech,” a legal doctrine that the government has the right to promote its own views without being required to provide equal time or a platform for opposing views.
Mendoza disagreed.
“A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all,” he said. “Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.”
The judge’s order is a win for Penguin Random House and five other publishers, the Authors Guild, two parents and authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Angie Thomas, Laurie Halse Anderson and Jodi Picoult. Green is famous for his books “Looking for Alaska” and “Paper Towns,” both of which were mentioned in the order.
Penguin Random House is “elated” that the federal judge upheld First Amendment protections for students, educators, authors and publishers, and that books may only be removed if they lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when considered, said Dan Novack, vice president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House.
“This is a sweeping victory for the right to read, and for every student’s freedom to think, learn, and explore ideas,” Novack said in a statement…
The judge’s order does not cast down all of the law, which restricts teachers from using preferred pronouns in schools outside their assigned sex at birth and expedites a process for people to object to reading materials and books in schools..
Upset that “pornographic” novels were in public school libraries, state leaders demanded administrators remove 55 books from their shelves, and Orange County Public Schools complied last month. But newly obtained library data shows many of those books were rarely, if ever, checked out by students during the past academic year.
OCPS had 41 of the books on the state list in circulation during the 2024-25 school year, district data shows. Twenty-two of the books were never checked out from any of the district’s schools. The 19 that were checked out left the shelves fewer than 10 times each in a district with almost 60,000 high school students.
The state’s push to rid schools of the 55 books — documented first in a threatening letter from Florida’s attorney general to Hillsborough County schools — frustrated some Orange school leaders who called it a “non-issue” given that most of the books never got checked out.
Donald Trump is so panicked by what is contained in the Trump-Epstein files that he’s now slamming his own followers demanding its release, calling them “stupid” and “weaklings.” Whine as he may, Trump has lost control of the narrative given a new poll released Wednesday which found nearly 70% of Americans believe the Trump regime has engaged in a cover up of the Epstein files–including 59% of Trump supporters. At the very least it appears that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein was involved in sex ring where children were raped yet did nothing to stop that evil. But Trump’s actions could be worse than that.
However, lost in the discussion is that Trump’s current Attorney General Pam Bondi was Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019 in the very state that was ground zero for Epstein raping and trafficking children. Why didn’t she investigate and prosecute Epstein for these heinous crimes committed in Florida?!
Taking a quick step back, Epstein received in 2008 the “deal of a lifetime” from local Florida prosecutors and George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. At the time, Bush’s DOJ had identified 36 underage girls who were victims of Epstein. But they offered the well-connected Epstein a deal to plead guilty to just two prostitution charges in state court. He was then sentenced to 18 months in jail–which he served in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed daily work release. In addition, Bush’s DOJ agreed not to prosecute him for federal crimes. Worse, Epstein’s victims were not even told of the deal in advance so they could object.
After Epstein’s release from jail in 2009, Epstein returned to his lavish lifestyle and was able to “continue his abuse of minors”—a point made in a 2020 report by Trump’s own DOJ after Epstein died in the custody of the Trump administration. So again, why didn’t Bondi investigate Epstein for his crimes while she was AG from 2011 to 2019?!
The editorial board of the Sun-Sentinel in Florida expressed shock and disgust at the creation of the detention camp for immigrants now called Alligator Alley. The existence of this hell-hole offended their sense of decency but they were offended even more by the casual glee that Trump, DeSantis, Noem and others expressed about the inhumanity of the detention center. Inmates will die of the scorching heat and humidity. That’s predictable. And these swells in their air-conditioned offices will laugh.
Unable to resist the political clickbait, President Donald Trump muscled Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier out of the limelight Tuesday, to celebrate the opening of a Florida first.
It is an armed camp where thousands of immigrants targeted as undesirables will be confined, possibly without hearings, under the brutal conditions of a swamp in the Everglades in a place most Floridians have never heard of, called Ochopee.
It wasn’t the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” that brought the president to the camp.
It’s not Florida’s fast-tracking of construction that’s entrancing right-wing media, breathing new life into DeSantis’s national political dreams, and boosting Uthmeier’s reelection profile.
It is the savagery.
The headline-grabbing power of “Alligator Alcatraz” lies entirely in the imagery of brown people getting out of line and being ripped bloody by alligators or suffocated by snakes.
Strip out the celebration of suffering and grotesque inhumanity and it’s just a row of tents in the middle of nowhere.
No respect for the land
This is one more scar on land environmentalists are waging a decades-long battle to save.
It’s just one more insult to the Miccosukee Tribe, which called it home long before Uthmeier embraced it as a stepping-stone to his election campaign.The imagined torment of immigrants at this camp is not a glitch. It’s the main selling point.
This distinguishes it from World War II’s horrific internment of families and orphans of Japanese descent in tar-paper shacks, because they were of the wrong ethnicity at the wrong time. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt called them concentration camps.
But FDR didn’t hawk T-shirts emblazoned with images suggesting gruesome deaths or show AI-generated images of alligators in ICE hats. The Republican Party of Florida did. So did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The World War II White House did not mark the opening of an internment camp by breathlessly reporting a ravenous cannibal detainee said to be eating himself while in federal custody on a deportation flight. DHS did.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and internment cheerleaders want you to believe that comparisons to other inhumane camps is hysterical hyperbole, as if the cynical marketing of Alligator Alcatraz is not.
The heat and humidity
In a particularly vivid example of his trademark cluelessness, DeSantis rebuffed criticism of inhumane conditions by pointing out the new camp’s showers.
Of course it is inhumane. Of course Trump, DeSantis, Noem and Uthmeier will deny bathing in the specter of savagery, even as Trump’s GOP raised money off it, while sidestepping their role in likely deaths that will have much less soundbite potential.
As Floridians know so well, heat is among the deadliest of weather events. High humidity prevents the body from cooling. Combined, the two are lethal.
The detention camp will place thousands of immigrants in wire cages in a humidity-intense swamp that is all but inaccessible to hospital ambulances, and where the summertime heat index can soar above 100 degrees.
Evacuating in advance of severe storms presents its own dangers, especially as it does not take a hurricane to flood a swamp or the two-lane road running next to it.
On Tuesday, when a typical summer shower dumped less than two inches of rain during the opening tour, water seeped through the edges of buildings, walls shook and water spread across electrical cables, Spectrum News video showed.
On Wednesday, forecasters upped the odds of a major windstorm moving across Florida.
Trump has bigger plans
Environmentalists are suing to stop construction, but Trump has even bigger plans for detention.
It’s wishful thinking to believe South Florida’s immigrant communities within driving distance of Alligator Alcatraz will be exempted, regardless of citizenship status.Trump made clear during Tuesday’s tour that naturalized U.S. citizens — who live in virtually every community in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — may be next to face detention and deportation.
“I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters. “So maybe that will be the next job.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
As part of his war on “woke,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis packed the board of New College with likeminded right wingers intent on purging the small college’s progressive character.
Two financial officers who were ousted during the transition revealed that the DeSantis board dipped into restricted gifts to pay the bloated salary of DeSantis-selected President, Richard Corcoran, a politician with no academic credentials. In other words, one of DeSantis’s cronies.
Suncoast Searchlight reported:
Two former top finance officers at the New College Foundation say they were ousted in 2023 after pushing back against college administrators who sought to use donor-restricted funds to cover President Richard Corcoran’s salary and benefits — a move they said would violate the terms of the donations.
Ron McDonough, the foundation’s former director of finance, and Declan Sheehy, former director of philanthropy, said they warned administrators not to misuse a major gift — the largest donation in the school’s history — which they said was not intended to fund administrative salaries.
Both said their contracts were terminated after they raised concerns internally.
“The college was trying to find the money to pay the president,” McDonough said. “And I kept on going back, saying, ‘We don’t have this unrestricted money.’”
The accounts of their final days on the job, shared publicly for the first time with Suncoast Searchlight, come as former foundation board members and alumni demand greater transparency and accountability from New College amid rising costs and sweeping institutional change.
Since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new slate of trustees in early 2023, the small liberal arts college has undergone a dramatic transformation — eliminating its Gender Studies program, reshaping student life, and launching a costly new athletics department. Critics say the administration has also sidelined financial safeguards, raising questions about whether the college is honoring donor intent and maintaining public trust.
Last month, a group of former foundation board members sent Corcoran and New College Foundation executive director Sydney Gruters a demand letter requesting an audit of how restricted donor funds were used and threatening legal action if they do not comply. The letter follows a string of high-profile board resignations and dismissals, including those who held key financial oversight roles.
Their exits, and the college’s move last year to hand Corcoran the unilateral power to fire foundation board members, have deepened fears that independent checks on the foundation’s spending are being systematically dismantled.
A “direct support organization” with close ties to New College, the foundation has never operated independently of the school. But in giving the college president the power to unilaterally remove board members last year, the Board of Trustees further eroded its autonomy.
“Good governance is not a side item,” said Hazel Bradford, a former foundation board member who sat on the organization’s investments committee and resigned in April, citing concerns about the college’s handling of the foundation. “It’s the beginning and end of any foundation handling other people’s money…”
After the DeSantis-backed overhaul of the Board of Trustees, New College named Corcoran president in early 2023, approving a compensation package that made him the highest-paid president in the college’s history —earning more than $1 million a year in salary and perks.
Because state law limits taxpayer funding for university administrator compensation to $200,000 — an amount that covered only the first four monthsof Corcoran’s salary — New College has turned to its foundation, which manages the school’s endowment and donor funds, to make up the difference.
“Corcoran’s salary is not a one-time thing,” said McDonough. “It’s not sustainable…”
So the new leadership had to find money to pay Corcoran’s lavish salary, and they turned to the College’s foundation. Most of its funds were restricted by donors for purposes like scholarships. Donor intent is a crucial concept. If a donor give $1 million for scholarships, it should not be used to pay the College president’s salary. Future fundraising will be crippled by violation of that trust.
The older alumni, graduates of the only progressive college in the state, are not likely to make new donations to New College. The new alumni do not yet exist. Maybe Betsy DeVos will bail out New College, which is no longer “new.”
Scott Maxwell, opinion columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, wrote about the unusual public protest against the Legislature’s plan to cut funding for AP classes in public schools. For years, Republicans who run the state have inflicted blow after blow on the public schools, preferring to divert billions of public dollars to private and religious schools. But not this time. This time, the public organized fought back and blocked the latest effort to inflict damage on the state’s public schools.
Maxwell writes:
Chalk one up for the Floridians who are willing to stand up and make themselves heard. Tallahassee politicians were forced last week to abandon their plans to gut funding for AP classes in public schools after they ran into something they rarely encounter in this state — a wall of public opposition.
GOP lawmakers have been pulling the rug out from under public education for the better part of two decades, driving away teachers, injecting political wars into classrooms and diverting public money to private schools. But their plan to cut funding to AP, IB and dual enrollment programs was a bridge too far.
Why? Because this plan to sabotage public schools would’ve impacted a population beyond the marginalized families that these insulated politicians are usually happy to short-change. Legislators were trying to undercut the college prospects of kids who go to high school in Windermere and Winter Park — the children of parents who normally write campaign checks.
And everyone banded together to object. “I was getting emails from people asking: ‘What do I do? How do I help? Who do I email?’” said Orange County School Board member Stephanie Vanos. “And before long, we started hearing legislators saying: ‘Please make the parents stop emailing us. Please, just make it stop.’”
My thanks to those of you who did not relent, because this idea was as bone-headed as it was backwards.
Basically, Republican lawmakers in both chambers wanted to cut funding allocated for AP (Advanced Placement), IB (International Baccalaureate), AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) and even dual enrollment programs at places like Valencia College for students who want to get ahead.
One of the most nonsensical parts about this attack was that it targeted a program that awarded funding based on students who passed these courses. In other words, one that only paid for successful results.
The politicians were also targeting one of the few things Florida really does well in public schools. While Florida’s scores for the SAT and other tests have plummeted in recent years, Florida’s AP test scores have historically been quite good. The College Board ranked Florida in the Top 5 for passage rate in 2021, largely because of this successful and aggressive funding model.
So Republican lawmakers were attacking something that was both successful and popular, affecting more than 110,000 students. There was no valid reason for this funding cut, other than trying to make public schools less attractive.
See, AP classes are one of the advantages public schools have over many private schools, especially the fly-by-night voucher ones that hire uncertified teachers and can’t even think about offering classes like AP calculus, Chinese and 3-D art and design.
“These are the programs that are among the most popular in our high schools,” Vanos said. “Families come back to our high schools specifically for these programs.”
So parents and supporters of public education banded together and spoke up.
I sensed a revolt brewing as soon as I published a column on the topic a few weeks ago entitled: “Cutting AP classes would dumb down Florida schools.”
House Republicans had just advanced their defunding plan by a vote of 22-6 in a subcommittee, and I urged anyone who thought this was a rotten idea to let their lawmakers know. Boy, did they.
One reader said she and her sister, a retired teacher, were gathering as many others as possible to get “riled up to action.”
Another said she sent Gov. Ron DeSantis an email that asked him a simple question: “Are you TRYING to drive us out of the Republican Party?” Conservatives objected alongside liberals.
Seniors alongside teens. I heard from everyone from fired-up retirees in Osceola County to a genuinely perplexed Eagle Scout in Maitland. Even Florida TV stations that usually pay more attention to car crashes than legislative subcommittees carried stories about Floridians who were up in arms.
Local elected officials noticed the widespread discontent and decided to weigh in as well. Jacksonville’s large and heavily Republican city council voted 16-1 to tell GOP lawmakers to back off their plan to sabotage AP classes.
The pressure ultimately worked. When leaders from both chambers went behind closed doors last week to hash out their final budget proposal, they ditched this latest attack on public schools in quiet, unceremonial fashion.
Imagine for a moment if Floridians used their voices more often.
Not just to protect public education, but to support other issues that the vast majority of Floridians on both sides of the aisle support. We might not live in a state where more than 20,000 families grappling with special needs are stuck on a years-long waiting list for services.
Or a state that has allowed so much pollution to kill so many manatees that two rounds of federal judges had to step in to tell the state it had to stop allowing the slaughter of the state’s official marine mammal.
It’s often said that we get the government we deserve. But we also get the government we demand.
In this case, Floridians demanded that the politicians take their stinkin’ hands off a successful educational program that has helped countless students get a head start in college, careers and life.
Imagine if we all did that more often. “Advocacy works,” Vanos said. “It’s all about people power.”
DeSantis has prided himself on being a leader of the War on Woke. He passed a bill to ban any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), which was known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ annual statement on the Pulse shooting anniversary released Thursday makes no mention of the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities — the two groups most devastated by the massacre that left 49 dead.
DeSantis mentioned those communities last year and in other previous statements recognizing the shooting on June 12, 2016. Those anniversary statements called it a “a horrific act of terrorism against the LGBTQ and Hispanic communities.” In his first year in office, however, the two-term governor faced blowback when an initial statement also failed to note who was most impacted by the shooting.
The deletion this year seems in line with efforts by both the DeSantis and Trump administrations to purge what it calls “diversity, equity and inclusion” from the government, which has included similar deletions that reference sexual orientation and race from the National Park Service website and others.
“Gov. DeSantis’ erasure of the LGBTQ+ and Latino communities today may say a lot about what kind of person he is, but it doesn’t change the fact that those were the communities most directly impacted at Pulse,” said Brandon Wolf, a Pulse survivor from Orlando who serves as spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.
Diane Ravitch's blog 