Ron DeSantis

In the event of a disaster, a whole host of organizations swoop into the area to help. Everyone from the United Way to the Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and even the Humane Society joins with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deliver water, help people get to shelters, feed folks, help animals and ultimately begin to rebuild their lives.

The work that is done is part of an effort that has existed for decades and gets better and better with each disaster from trusted groups that fall under federal oversight. After an event, most leaders point to such groups to encourage folks to help, but as Hurricane Ian bared down on Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) started his own disaster relief fund, putting his wife in charge of it.

Questions are continuing to surface about the state and local authorities and their role in calling for the evacuation of Lee County, which dealt with a significant hit from Hurricane Ian.

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) claimed that Ft. Meyers and Lee County were never projected to be in the cone of the storm's trajectory until it was too late.

In an interview with The Guardian's David Smith, Larry Jacobs who heads up the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, claimed that the Republican Party's attempts to play the law and order card in the upcoming election is falling flat with voters who are inundated with new revelations of Donald Trump's criminality on a daily basis.

As the report notes, every two years Republicans use their reputation as being tougher on crimes as one key planks of their platform, but Trump -- and the violent Jan. 6 insurrection he inspired -- is creating roadblocks to making it an effective election year tool.

A recent speech by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is drawing criticism after he posted it to Twitter.

Multiple historians have accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of misconstruing facts — in which he declared that "nobody had questioned" slavery until the American revolution.

A private plane took off in Texas with a group of migrants who signed bogus waivers handed to them by a woman only known as "Perla." Now the woman has been found, the New York Times reported Sunday.

According to the report, the woman is Perla Huerta, "a former combat medic and counterintelligence agent, was discharged last month after two decades in the U.S. Army that included several deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to military records.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) spoke to the press while in Arcadia, Florida on Sunday and claimed that Hurricane Ian wasn't aimed at Ft. Myers when they were doing evacuations and that they assumed it was going to hit Tampa.

"Well, was your industry stationed when the storm hit? Was it in Lee County? No, you were in Tampa. So, they were following the weather track and they had to make decisions based on that. But, you know, 72 hours they weren't even in the cone. At 48 hours they were on the periphery. So, you've got to make decisions the best you can," said DeSantis.

Forecasters expect Hurricane Ian to cause life-threatening storm surges in the Carolinas on Friday after unleashing devastation in Florida, where it left a yet unknown number of dead in its wake.

After weakening across Florida, Ian regained its Category 1 status in the Atlantic Ocean and was headed toward the Carolinas, the US National Hurricane Center said Friday.

Twenty-two years after electoral chaos in Florida sent the 2000 presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court, there could be irregularities due to Hurricane Ian.

"Election officials in Florida are discussing alternative means of voting for counties most affected by Hurricane Ian, with just a week before the deadline for mail ballots to be sent out and less than six weeks until Election Day," the Miami Herald reported. "Mark Earley, president of Florida Supervisors of Elections, said that while it was too early to know the full extent of damages, and no final decision has been made, there’s a chance several counties will have to delay their scheduled mail-out dates for domestic vote-by-mail ballots — potentially past the deadline imposed by Florida’s constitution."

Hurricane Ian left much of coastal southwest Florida in darkness early Thursday, bringing "catastrophic" flooding that left officials readying a huge emergency response to a storm of rare intensity.

The US Border Patrol said 20 migrants were missing after their boat sank, with four Cubans swimming to shore in the Florida Keys islands and three rescued at sea by the coast guard.