A top Florida politician – a guy who was just endorsed by President Donald Trump – is now pushing a plan to help agriculture companies sue MAHA activists, environmental groups, news organizations, and others who criticize the ag industry...

🧵... The idea is buried inside a 60-page "farm bill" just filed in the Florida Legislature that is being spearheaded by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.

It would expand what is known as Florida's "food libel," "food disparagement" or "veggie libel" law...

Last September – as Ron DeSantis was spending Florida taxpayer money on advertisements attacking citizen-led constitutional amendments that would have protected abortion rights and legalized marijuana – his administration made a $1.525 million payment for TV commercials.

🧵... The payment was made by DeSantis’ Agency for Health Care Administration to a small Tallahassee marketing firm called Strategic Digital Services.

And invoice records show that it paid for an ad buy across all 10 media markets that reached an estimated 11.4 million viewers...

Ron DeSantis is actively helping some of the state's biggest developers – and Ron DeSantis donors – exploit a new state law that was supposed to ensure communities could rebuild after hurricanes...

🧵... Last month, the head of the Florida Department of Commerce – a political appointee who briefly served as DeSantis' chief of staff – explicitly threatened commissioners in Manatee County if they moved forward with a plan to raise a local tax on homebuilders...

A few weeks ago, the Governor’s Office ordered two cases of bug spray to be shipped to the immigration detention camp it opened earlier this summer in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

🧵... This was a tiny transaction for a state with a $117 billion budget. The cases of bug spray were bundled together with a few refrigerators, surge protectors and extension cords, and the entire order totaled less than $2,500...

The Trump and DeSantis administrations are trying to open up a legal loophole as they keep immigrants locked in cages in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

Let's walk through it:

🧵... Let's start with a quick bit of background.

First, the the president has sweeping authority to set the nation’s immigration policy and carry out programs like mass deportation.

And courts have relatively little power to review the president’s immigration decisions...

A top aide to Ron DeSantis just admitted that the administration is breaking the law by hiding contracts connected to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigration detention facility it built in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

🧵... This came up at a press conference Ron DeSantis held this morning at the Everglades detention facility, where Florida is now locking up hundreds of immigrants in cages and tents...

One thing is quickly becoming clear about “Alligator Alcatraz,” the immigrant detention camp that the state of Florida just opened in the middle of the Everglades:

The politicians running the place are bigger lawbreakers than many of the immigrants they’re locking up.

🧵... The DeSantis administration, for instance, is staffing the facility with private correctional officers who haven’t had to submit to fingerprinting, pass a physical exam, or pass background checks...

It took a month longer than expected, but Florida lawmakers are about to finish their 2025 legislative session in the exact same place they have ended most sessions in recent years:

Stuffing businesses full of tax breaks — and leaving table scraps for everyone else.... GOP leaders in the House and Senate finally concluded negotiations on a new state budget on Friday, ending a tortured set of talks that had turned what was supposed to be a 60-day blitz into a 105-day slog...

Here's a particularly wild exchange from yesterday's era-defining Board of Governors meeting in Florida, in which a bunch of political appointees rejected the appointment of former University of Michigan President Santa Ono as the new president at the University of Florida... ...During the meeting, BOG member (and former Florida Power & Light chief) Eric Silagy used some shrewd questioning to expose the fact that fellow BOG member (and former state House Speaker) Paul Renner tried to get himself hired as the University of Florida's next president...

In mid-April, amid a rapidly escalating feud with Republicans in the state House of Representatives, Ron DeSantis flew to central Florida to make a surprise appearance at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company’s annual spring auction of two-year-old racehorses.

🧵... The governor used the event to criticize legislation pushed by House GOP leaders that would have let Florida’s two main thoroughbred tracks — Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs — end live racing without losing licenses to run other gambling operations like slots and poker...

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is using his office to do the dirty work of a bunch of car dealers – while taking tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from those very same dealers.

Here’s how:

🧵... Back in February, a group of Volkswagen and Audi dealership owners sued Scout Motors, a VW-backed startup that is developing a new line of electric SUVs and pickups that the company intends to sell directly to consumers over an app.

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There is someone who appears at both the beginning and the end of the still-unfolding “Hope Florida” scandal:

James Uthmeier, who was Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff during the entire sequence of events (and who is now Florida's attorney general.)

🧵... To recap: The DeSantis administration had a Medicaid contractor make a $10 million “donation” to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity founded by Casey DeSantis.

It was part of a $67 million legal settlement with Centene Corp., after the company overbilled the state.

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The appointee picked by Ron DeSantis to run elections in Orlando last year spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on campaign-style self-promotion, contracts with personal friends, and payments to allies of the Republican governor and other GOP leaders.

🧵... During a 10-month stint as Supervisor of Elections in Orange County, records show Glen Gilzean steered work to an assortment of businesses and organizations run by Republican operatives — ranging from DeSantis' former communications director to state Rep. Susan Plasencia.

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Last fall, as Ron DeSantis was raising money to fight a ballot measures to legalize marijuana and end a statewide abortion ban, Florida’s governor turned to an odious source for help: Philip Morris, the Big Tobacco company best known as the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.

🧵...1/x Records show DeSantis took $500,000 from Philip Morris International in the closing weeks of last year’s campaign, making the tobacco company one of the top contributors to the fundraising committee DeSantis used to oppose the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures.

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So earlier this year, commissioners in Orange County (Orlando) voted 4-3 to to block a sprawling subdivision that would have been built on 1,800 acres of largely rural land.

That developer is now spending tens of thousands of dollars on this year's county elections.

🧵... Records show a Texas company behind the development – called "Sustanee" – has in recent weeks donated at least $4,500 to a political committee that Steve Leary has been using to attack Democrat Kelly Semrad in Orange County’s District 5 county commission race.

With early voting underway, the DeSantis administration has ordered nearly $1 million more in taxpayer-funded advertising as it campaigns against Amendment 3 (legal marijuana) and Amendment 4 (abortion rights).

The latest buy was made Oct. 24 through the Department of Health. This brings DeSantis' total estimated taxpayer spending on its campaigns to keep abortion banned and marijuana illegal to ~$19.3 million

Ron DeSantis appears to have taken nearly $4 million that was supposed to be spent combating the opioid crisis – and burned the money instead on advertising against ballot measures that would legalize marijuana and overturn a statewide abortion ban.

🧵... To explain: Over the past few weeks, four state agencies have ordered ~$16.2 million worth of advertising from the same Tallahassee-based marketing agency.

Ron DeSantis has dragged yet another state agency into his tax-funded crusade against two constitutional amendments on this year’s ballot.

This time it's the Florida Department of Education, which is helping pay for a new TV ad warning of the “risks to marijuana."

🧵... The 30-second spot is airing just as voters begin casting ballots on a constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana in Florida.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be preparing to take legal action against television stations airing ads in support of a citizen-led constitutional amendment that would end a near-total ban on abortion in Florida... Records show that DeSantis' Department of Health just signed contracts with a pair of law firms "to provide legal representation...in regard to false political advertisements under chapters 381 and 386."

A trio of Donald Trump-backing billionaires just put half a million dollars into the Florida election that will decide the next top prosecutor in Trump’s home county.

🧵... The sudden cash infusion appears to be financing television ads promoting Republican Sam Stern, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer who is running for state attorney in Palm Beach County.

As voting begins across Florida, Ron DeSantis is ramping up a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign against ballot measures that would overturn a statewide abortion ban and legalize marijuana.

🧵... The DeSantis administration has in recent days launched more television commercials targeting both Amendment 3, which would allow recreational use of marijuana, and Amendment 4, which would end one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation.