Florida governor has consistently opposed any legislation to curb planet-heating emissions, calling it a ‘radical climate agenda’

A life-sized statue of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, was unveiled and promptly began melting in front of an audience in Tallahassee in a symbolic protest at his rejection of action on the climate crisis.

The silvery statue, revealed to an audience of onlookers last week, melted away to show a skull under DeSantis’s face. The structure was cast from solid gallium, a metal that melts at 85.6F (29.8C), which is below summertime high temperatures frequently reached in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.

Amerikas Vizepräsident reist durchs Land, als wäre schon Wahlkampf. Doch zwischen Beleidigungen, Iran-Krieg und miserablen Umfragewerten muss J. D. Vance vor allem eines fürchten: Donald Trumps Eifersucht.

Office of inspector general’s report says practice at Florida immigration jail is not aligned with ‘humane treatment’

Before the facility was shuttered, detainees at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” federal immigration jail were frequently locked in outside metal cages no bigger than a phone booth, according to a damning government watchdog report that said the practice “does not align with standards for humane treatment”.

The findings from the office of the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were published on its website – and offer rare criticism of the Trump administration by one of its own agencies.

Governor believes Florida would ‘welcome’ juror if under harassment after alleged domestic violence incident in 2021

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, has offered the unidentified holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial “asylum” in the state if he comes under harassment after reports that he once faced a criminal charge for alleged domestic violence and is under an active restraining order.

DeSantis accused the media of launching a smear campaign against the juror. “If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum – I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis wrote on social media.

State kills Dominick Occhicone, 80, and James Duckett, 68, as Ron DeSantis pushes executions before term ends

Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, putting to death an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern US history.

Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of the killing of a young girl.

Changes inside the Florida international airport are hardly evident as state and county hold back funds for full remodel

One of Donald Trump’s most grandiose vanity projects, a multimillion-dollar makeover of Florida’s Palm Beach international airport into a self-aggrandizing, gold-plated transportation hub, is running into turbulence, barely a week after the first plane’s wheels touched the runway.

At first glance, the rebranding of the airport less than 5 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago resort appears to be complete. Its website bears the name and oversized logo of the President Donald J Trump international airport, and state transportation workers were quick to erect highway signs leaving drivers in no doubt where they were heading.

Groups cite detainee maltreatment and degradation of surrounding land as reasons to close facility permanently

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An alliance of environmental groups has welcomed reports that detainees have been moved from Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail, but have promised to press ahead with legal action to ensure its permanent closure and the restoration of the fragile Everglades wetlands where it is located.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement late on Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and authorities in Florida “have moved illegal aliens from the soft sided facility [and] transferred them to other facilities” for their safety, citing this month’s beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Documentary First They Came for My College goes inside the fight for academic freedom at Florida’s New College

It took a half century to build New College into a sanctuary of independent thought and less than a year to destroy it. In 2023 the beloved Florida liberal arts school became state governor Ron DeSantis’s latest target in his so-called war on woke. DeSantis decimated the school’s trustee board and installed a cabal of rightwing cronies, aiming to transform it into a conservative institution modeled after Michigan’s evangelical Hillsdale College.

Library shelves were stripped, with books from Black and Indigenous authors and the shuttered gender studies department tossed into dumpsters. Frat boys arrived in droves and the campus was transformed into a meathead’s playground where queer couples stopped holding hands for fear of homophobic slurs. In a move ripped from the playbook of a spiteful cartoon villain, the community garden with its koi pond and roosting owls was bulldozed and a plans were hatched to build a baseball stadium.