All posts tagged "florida"

Trump's most maniacal sidekick is about to ruin Florida — and it's not groveling Ron

Florida announced plans this week to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, INCLUDING FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN.

Read that again.

I had intended to write about the Epstein files today, and the incredibly brave survivors of alleged child rape, who gathered on Capitol Hill to tell their stories. They were there because it is beginning to look like our president who ran on releasing those files, instead has a starring role in them, and will do everything possible to make sure they never see the light of day.

That would generally would be a banner story. In a sane, just world, it would have the potential to end Donald Trump's presidency, and ultimately land him jail for the rest of his miserable life.

But because you hang around places like this and pay attention, you don’t need me to tell you that we are not living in a sane, just world.

Just how insane and unjust is the world? Consider that the possibility of the president being accused of sexual abusing underage women was by far only the second-biggest story of the day ...

Truth is, this vaccine news might be one of the most significant stories of the century, because of its gruesome ramifications on the future of our rattling civilization.

Bluntly: If Florida goes through with this death plan, it could potentially result in one of the largest losses of human life ever.

Look, vaccines have been a life-changing discovery, and one of mankind’s greatest achievements. The advent of vaccines has saved hundreds of millions of lives the past 100 years or so.

That we are reversing our thinking on the use of vaccines in America is almost too absurd to contemplate. The profound stupidity and danger this presents really can't be overstated.

MILLIONS of lives are at risk if Florida out-Floridas itself and actually puts this deranged plan into action.

We need only look at COVID to see this.

Despite what you’ll hear from many ghoulish, anti-life Republicans, millions of lives were saved thanks to COVID vaccines. Maybe even more startling, an estimated 317,000 lives in the United States alone would have been saved during the COVID outbreak had everybody just done their civic duty and gotten vaccinated.

If Florida goes ahead with this insane plan, just as sure as I am typing this, all kinds of otherwise preventable diseases will begin reappearing all over the place — measles and polio just to name a couple. And while our children will be most vulnerable, because Republicans never saw a kid whose life wasn’t worth jeopardizing, Florida’s huge population of retirees will also be under direct threat.

We will ALL be under threat.

Today’s gruesome news comes in the backdrop of the insane vaccine guidance being shoveled out to the American public by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our secretary of Health and Human Services, who listens to everybody but professionals in the medical and scientists communities, ignores a century’s worth of vaccines’ positive results, and has been a vocal vaccine skeptic.

Last month, after Kennedy proudly announced the rollback of nearly $500 million in vaccine funding, I typed this:

“Instead of answers and more science and discovery to make sure we are ready for the next mass-medical emergency, Trump instead has inflicted us with this gruesome stray from the Kennedy dynasty, who is quickly becoming a one-man pandemic.”

Last week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.

Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned because they too had come under extreme pressure from the sickening Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff up. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …

So who are the players down in the Sunset State, who are putting this latest death plan into action?

Let’s start with Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, who made the announcement standing beside the state’s grotesque and Trump-slobbering Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Ladapo is a COVID vaccine-denier. A quack. A nut. A complete moron.

And dangerous as hell.

He has associated with a group of whacko militants called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which is led by Texas physician Stella Immanuel, who has put forth the theory out loud and often that sperm from alien or demon sexual visitations are responsible for much of what ails us.

With qualifications like that, there is a good chance Ladapo has the inside track to the 2028 Republican Presidential nomination …

In announcing what will henceforth be known as the “Florida Death Plan” Ladapo said this:

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?”

Who are YOU to tell us??? You are allegedly a doctor, sonny. Should we be going to an exterminator to get advice on medical issues?

Er … That actually might be advisable in Florida.

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates, because “every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

I’m not making this up.

Not a single word about the lives vaccines have saved, just lies and conspiracy theories, because that is the Republican way in 2025.

And then, of course, there’s DeSantis himself. A dumb man’s idea of a smart person. The ultimate Florida Man. A guy, who says, “Watch this!” while playing with matches and gasoline, as is the case with this maniacal, evil vaccine plan.

While standing next to Ladapo with that beachball-sized smirk on his face, Trump’s willing punching bag announced that his wife, Casey DeSantis, will head the commission on the Florida Death Plan, because if we are going to kill hundreds of a thousands of children best we have a dreadfully unqualified ghoul doing it.

Her beaming husband, Ron, ended the press conference by bragging:

“We’ve already done a lot. I don’t think any state has come even close to what Florida has done.”

He’ll get no argument there.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Here's the sinister truth behind Florida's flourishing book bans

It’s Banned Books Week in Florida!

OK, the observance is in October, but it’s always Banned Books Week in Florida. Every day seems to bring another hissy fit from a state goon or “concerned” parent hell-bent on returning us to the glory days of censorship.

Hillsborough County School Superintendent Van Ayres has been attacked by parents and shouted at by state government for failing to remove materials chest-thumping Attorney General James Uthmeier claims are “pornographic“ from school libraries.

Ayres already had two books — Call Me By Your Name, a gay romance with some sex scenes, and Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts), which has no sex scenes — taken off the shelves.

That was not enough for Uthmeier and some of the school board’s more hysterical members. So, in an abundance of caution, Ayres had 600 more removed from schools for a “review,” estimated to cost $350,000.

It was not enough: During a June school board meeting, one member called many surviving books “nasty and disgusting,” and another, obviously in need of smelling salts, said, “I, as a 56-year-old woman, mother of five and a physician, can’t look at these pages.”

She wants heads to roll:

“Have you considered firing all your media specialists and starting from scratch with women and men who can read, or have a single shred of decency? These people that you trust to review these materials are abusing the children of your county. They’re child abusers.”

Here are some of those child-abusing materials: The Diary of Anne Frank, What Girls Are Made Of, The Bluest Eye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Women and men who can — and do — read will know the authors of those books include a Booker Prize winner, a National Book Award winner, winner of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Nobel Prize laureate.

Obviously, a bunch of perverts and losers.

‘Overbroad and unconstitutional’

The good news is that some at that ambush of a meeting objected to the objections.

One parent said it was not the state’s responsibility to decide what books her kid should have access to, it was hers: “Don’t tell me that it’s inappropriate if I think it’s appropriate for my child to read.”

The chair of the school board also took exception to the abuse heaped on school librarians (annoyingly now called “media specialists”) who are, in fact, experts in “age-appropriate” materials.

The even better news is that a federal judge has struck down the worst parts of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pet book-banning law as “overbroad and unconstitutional.”

A gaggle of big publishers including Simon and Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, plus a bunch of well-known authors and hacked-off parents, sued over the state’s vague decree that if a text “describes sexual conduct” it’s “pornographic.”

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza, probably trying hard not to roll his eyes, pointed out the state can’t seem to define what they mean by “sexual conduct”: Consensual intercourse? A kiss? A rape? A seductive conversation? A hand sliding down (or up) to touch certain body parts which may or may not be named? Joyous marital congress?

The state’s arguments boiled down to:

If a parent or random Moms for Liberty busybody think something is obscene and therefore an assault on the Moral Fiber of Our Youth, it is, even if they can’t quite get specific about what that means. They know obscenity when they see it, by golly.
Books in public school libraries should promote “government speech,” i.e., the views espoused by the DeSantis regime.

Views such as, say, gays are not good; trans people are worse; sex outside of marriage is terrible; authority should not be questioned; climate change should not be studied.

Legal fees

According the state, “When the government speaks, it ‘can freely select the views that it wants to express, including choosing not to speak and speaking through the removal of speech that the government disapproves.”

According to DeSantis’ lawyers, school books are “not subject to the First Amendment.”

You thought free speech was protected in the Free State of Florida?

In 2023, PEN America file a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District for removing or restricting access to books some people found objectionable. Escambia keeps losing in court, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to spend taxpayer money: at least $440,000. So far. To make an obvious point, think about the field trips and school supplies that cash could have funded.

What’s all this book banning really about, anyway?

Authoritarianism for authoritarianism’s sake? That’s probably part of it. Bullies love to bully.

Does it spring from deeply held religious notions of “purity” which hold that any exposure to what some people see as “immoral” words or images will pollute the minds of innocent children?

Y’all might remember the embarrassing kerfluffle at a Tallahassee charter school over showing students one of the great achievements of Western art.

The teacher leading a unit on the Renaissance had the temerity to display a picture of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Some parents freaked out: You could see David’s junk!

As if half the planet does not sport similar junk.

Consider And Tango Makes Three, the famous true story of two male penguins raising a chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo. That book has been snatched off library shelves all over Florida because, well, maybe because it could encourage tolerance toward flightless birds?

Fear factor

The banners seem to think stories with a gay hero or a trans character will turn kids gay or trans.

These people do not assume stories with gun violence will turn kids into mass shooters. But books telling the truth about Native American genocide and slavery will make kids question the essential virtue of America. Biographies of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or novels by Ralph Ellison or Alice Walker will make white kids feel guilty.

It’s true the Left has been known to criticize certain books — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, for racist language, or Lolita for its depiction of pedophilia — but rarely demand they be deep-sixed altogether.

Still, nobody can take away the Right’s title as the undisputed heavyweight champs of the book banning world.

Here’s the real reason for MAGA animosity to books: Fear.

They are scared of an America where white is not the default ethnicity, Christianity is not the dominant religion, heterosexuality is only one kind of “normal,” and history is a complicated tangle of high ideals and low crimes. They cannot bear the thought their children will grow up in the 21st century when all they cherished as solid and eternal can be questioned, even discarded.

So, they fight for control.

Until March of this year, a website called BookLooks, founded by a member of Moms for Liberty, touted a ratings system for books it deemed unsuitable for decent eyeballs.

BookLooks has shut down, saying that “after much prayer and reflection it has become apparent that His work for us here is complete and that He has other callings for us.” However, the ratings system is still all over the Web, with “0″ (no sex, no swearing, no nudity, no booze or drugs), to “4″ denoting a text with “depictions of sexual organs in a state of arousal” plus oral sex of every kind.

Level 5, “Aberrant Content,” means stuff so filthy (“sadomasochistic abuse, assault, and ‘beastiality’” (sic) it’d burn the retinas of a saint.

‘Book of Books’

Take a look at the Moms’ Book of Books, a document that is at once alarming, absurd, and not a little prurient.

It quotes carefully curated and utterly out of context scenes of sex and sexual assault from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Yaa Gyaasi’s Homegoing. (Newsflash: in a novel about slavery, you’re pretty much going to encounter sexual assault.)

They react with horror at novels about kids coming to terms with being gay, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower. They declare books dangerous for supposedly promoting “alternative gender ideologies.”

The Book of Books also lavishly shares sex act image after sex act image from graphic novels including The Handmaid’s Tale and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. That stuff is, admittedly, pretty raw, even hard to look at. However, you can’t help wondering why they couldn’t have done with just two or three explicit pictures — and whether the compilers were getting a naughty thrill out of the whole thing.

We expect the Moms and their ilk to freak out over sex of any flavor, but even more of their ire has been directed at references to race, which they label “controversial social commentary” or just “hate.” They don’t mean “hate” as in scenes of racist violence or oppression of people of color. They mean people of color daring to expose or criticize or otherwise express strong disapproval of racism.

‘Nasty white folks’

Adding to the many transgressions of The Bluest Eye, they point to this sentence: “Nasty white folks is about the nastiest things they is.”

In Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, the Moms clutch their pearls at: “A sixteen-year-old black boy is dead because a white cop killed him. What else could it be?”

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian raises alarm for this: “Our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.”

This nonsense would be hilarious if it weren’t driving public education policy in Florida. Those who want to ban or suppress books are closing the barn door after the horse has bolted and is now in the next town, sitting in a bar drinking a Mai Tai. They’re also exposing themselves as the frightened creatures they are.

The bans will continue: Escambia County has removed another 400-plus books from its libraries without reviewing a single one. The lawsuits will continue. And the 21st century will continue, despite the state of Florida trying its best to drag us back to the 19th.

MAGA rep accused of threatening ex-girlfriend with nude photo dump

Florida Rep. Cory Mills (R) is firing back at accusations he threatened to release nude photos and videos of a woman after she says she broke up with the married lawmaker, according to Politico.

Lindsey Langston, a Florida Republican state committee member and 2024 winner of the Miss United States beauty pageant, told police that following the break-up, "Mills contacted her multiple times threatening to release nude images and videos of them having sex, according to the report, which said she provided law enforcement with messages that allegedly backed up her claims."

Langston also told authorities that Mills "threatened to harm any of her future romantic partners," according to the police report obtained by Politico.

The report reveals that Langston began a relationship with Mills in 2021 after he allegedly told her he was separated from with wife. Langston said she broke it off this year "after seeing media reports that police in Washington were called to investigate an alleged assault by the representative against a woman."

Mills was not charged in that incident.

When contacted by Politico, Mills said he was unaware of Langston's police report.

“We have not been made aware of any report or allegations from law enforcement or the alleged complainant,” Mills said in a statement. “These claims are false and misrepresent the nature of my interactions. I have always conducted myself with integrity, both personally and in service to Florida’s 7th District.”

A recent report by The Daily Beast said Mills was being evicted from his Washington, D.C., penthouse after failing to pay rent. The report continued that "on Feb. 20, Mills' girlfriend reported him to police for attacking her at the penthouse. She later recanted the report." It wasn't clear whether that girlfriend was Langston.

Langston's attorney, Anthony Sabatini, is a Lake County, Florida commissioner who challenged Mills for Congress in 2022. Mills told Politico, "he believes Sabatini is 'weaponizing the legal system to launch a political attack.'"

Mills has not been charged in relation to Langston's claims.

Read the full Politico story here.

'Blindsided': DeSantis accused of 'abusing power' to build 'Alligator Alcatraz'

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) reportedly left county officials in the dark when he decided to create the 'Alligator Alcatraz' migrant detention facility in Southwest Florida, according to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump toured the makeshift detention center comprised largely of FEMA tents and trailers earlier this month, claiming it would "house some of the menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”

AP obtained more than 100 emails revealing that "local officials were blindsided by the plans" for Collier County, "a wealthy, majority-Republican corner of the state that’s home to white-sand beaches and the western stretch of the Everglades."

As county officials tried to "chase down a 'rumor' about the governor's plans, "state officials were already on the ground," getting the facility ready for the president's visit, the report said.

The confusion underscored "the breakneck speed at which the governor’s team built the facility" to hold thousands of detainees, according to the report.

In addition, the report said that DeSantis relied on an "executive order to seize the land, hire contractors and bypass laws and regulations."

The executive order "granted the state sweeping authority to suspend 'any statute, rule or order' seen as slowing the response to the immigration 'emergency,'" the report said.

"Allowing the state to seize county-owned land and evade rules" is being denounced by critics as an "abuse of power."

Read the AP article here.

Alligator Alcatraz: how DeSantis bent the law to build it

The state of Florida has opened a migrant detention center in the Everglades. Its official name is Alligator Alcatraz, a reference to the former maximum security federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay.

While touring Alligator Alcatraz on July 1, 2025, President Donald Trump said, “This facility will house some of the menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.” But new reporting from the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reveals that of more than 700 detainees, only a third have criminal convictions.

To find out more about the state of Florida’s involvement in immigration enforcement and who can be detained at Alligator Alcatraz, The Conversation spoke with Mark Schlakman, a lawyer and senior program director for The Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. He also served as special counsel to Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, working as a liaison of sorts with the federal government during the mid-1990s when tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans fled their island nations on makeshift boats, hoping to reach safe haven in Florida.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has characterized the migrants being detained in facilities like Alligator Alcatraz as “murderers and rapists and traffickers and drug dealers.” Do we know if the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz have been convicted of these sorts of crimes?

The Times/Herald published a list of 747 current detainees as of Sunday, July 13, 2025. Their reporters found that about a third of the detainees have criminal convictions, including attempted murder, illegal reentry to the U.S., which is a federal crime, and traffic violations. Apparently hundreds more have charges pending, though neither the federal nor state government have made public what those charges are.

There are also more than 250 detainees with no criminal history, just immigration violations.

Is it a crime for someone to be in the U.S. without legal status? In other words, is an immigration violation a crime?

No, not necessarily. It’s well established as a matter of law that physical presence in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation, not a criminal offense.

However, if the federal government previously deported someone, they can be subject to federal criminal prosecution if they attempt to return without permission. That appears to be the case with some of the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz.

What usually happens if a noncitizen commits a crime in the U.S.?

Normally, if a foreign national is accused of committing a crime, they are prosecuted in a state court just like anyone else. If found guilty and sentenced to incarceration, they complete their sentence in a state prison. Once they’ve served their time, state officials can hand them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. They are subject to deportation, but a federal immigration judge can hear any grounds for relief.

DHS has clarified that it “has not implemented, authorized, directed or funded” Alligator Alcatraz, but rather the state of Florida is providing startup funds and running this facility. What is Florida’s interest in this? Are these mostly migrants who have been scooped up by ICE in Florida?

It’s still unclear where most of these detainees were apprehended. But based on a list of six detainees released by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office, it is clear that at least some were apprehended outside of Florida, and others simply may have been transferred to Alligator Alcatraz from federal custody elsewhere.

This calls to mind the time in 2022 when Gov. Ron DeSantis flew approximately 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts at Florida taxpayer expense. Those migrants also had no discernible presence in Florida.

To establish Alligator Alcatraz, DeSantis leveraged an immigration emergency declaration, which has been ongoing since Jan. 6, 2023. A state of emergency allows a governor to exercise extraordinary executive authority. This is how he avoided requirements such as environmental impact analysis in the Everglades and concerns expressed by tribal governance surrounding that area.

For now, the governor’s declaration remains unchallenged by the Florida Legislature. Environmental advocates have filed a lawsuit over Alligator Alcatraz, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision by a federal judge temporarily barring Florida from enforcing its new immigration laws, which DeSantis had championed. But no court has yet intervened to contest this prolonged state of emergency.

This presents a stark contrast to Gov. Lawton Chiles’ declaration of an immigration emergency during the mid-1990s. At that time, tens of thousands of Cubans and Haitians attempted to reach Florida shores in virtually anything that would float. Chiles’ actions as governor were informed by his experience as a U.S. senator during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when 125,000 Cubans made landfall in Florida over the course of just six months.

Chiles sued the Clinton administration for failing to adequately enforce U.S. immigration law. But Chiles also entered into unprecedented agreements with the federal government, such as the 1996 Florida Immigration Initiative with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. His intent was to protect Florida taxpayers while enhancing federal enforcement capacity, without dehumanizing people fleeing desperate circumstances.

During my tenure on Chiles’ staff, the governor generally opposed state legislation involving immigration. In the U.S.’s federalist system of government, immigration falls under the purview of the federal government, not the states. Chiles’ primary concern was that Floridians wouldn’t be saddled with what ought to be federal costs and responsibilities.

Chiles was open to state and local officials supporting federal immigration enforcement. But he was mindful this required finesse to avoid undermining community policing, public health priorities and the economic health of key Florida businesses and industries. To this day, the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s position reflects Chiles’ concerns about such cooperation with the federal government.

Now, in 2025, DeSantis has taken a decidedly different tack by using Florida taxpayer dollars to establish Alligator Alcatraz. The state of Florida has fronted the US$450 million to pay for this facility. DeSantis reportedly intends to seek reimbursement from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program. Ultimately, congressional action may be necessary to obtain reimbursement. Florida is essentially lending the federal government half a billion dollars and providing other assistance to help support the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.

Florida is also establishing another migrant detention facility at Camp Blanding Joint Training Center near Jacksonville. A third apparently is being contemplated for the Panhandle.

ICE claims that the ultimate decision of whom to detain at these facilities belongs to the state of Florida, through the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Members of Congress who visited Alligator Alcatraz earlier this week have disputed ICE’s claim that Florida is in charge.

You advised Florida Division of Emergency Management leadership directly for several years during the administrations of Gov. Charlie Crist and Gov. Rick Scott. Does running a detention facility like Alligator Alcatraz fall within its typical mission?

The division is tasked with preparing for and responding to both natural and human-caused disasters. In Florida, that generally means hurricanes. While the division may engage to facilitate shelter, I don’t recall any policies or procedures contemplating anything even remotely similar to Alligator Alcatraz.

DeSantis could conceivably argue that this is consistent with a 287(g) agreement authorizing state and local support for federal immigration enforcement. But such agreements typically require federal supervision of state and local activities, not the other way around.

Alligator Alcatraz has troubling echoes — of Dachau

When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986-87, we visited Dachau with our family. The crematoriums shocked our children, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps. The ovens were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera.

The death camps, it turns out, were all located outside of Germany so Dear Leader could deny responsibility for them. You know, like Gitmo.

Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (aka the “GOP Donor Fellatio Act”) contains a 13-fold increase in ICE’s budget, turning it into the largest single (secret, masked) police force in America, along with, in aggregate, close to $100 billion to build a new series of “detention facilities” all across America.

If this passes, soon the country will pockmarked by concentration camps. As Trump said on Tuesday:

“Well, I think we'd like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know Ron’s doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you’re going to keep it for a long time.”

Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop dancing around the language, around the morality, and around the history.

What’s being built in the Florida Everglades, for example — what they’re calling “Alligator Alcatraz” — is not just another immigration facility. It’s a political prison engineered not merely to detain, but to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror.

It’s America’s first open-air symbol that our democracy is not just dying: it is being dissected publicly, cruelly, and with calculation.

Trump is back in the White House. The Republican Party controls Congress. And with a permanent “immigration emergency” in place, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is running point on an experiment in authoritarian governance.

Alligator Alcatraz is the proof-of-concept.

Rising in a remote wildlife preserve in Big Cypress National Preserve — Indigenous land, no less — Alligator Alcatraz is expected to hold thousands of undocumented migrants. Some reports say 1,000 at launch; others say 5,000. Either way, it is the largest civilian detention project built on U.S. soil in a generation.

It’s surrounded by dense marshland, home to pythons and alligators.

“Let them try to escape,” Trump smirked at a recent rally. “They better know how to run from an alligator.”

This isn’t just cruelty. It’s performance. It’s state-sponsored sadism, broadcast as patriotism. DeSantis and Trump are now competing in a bizarre effort to show who can be more cruel.

But it’s not unprecedented. If you want to understand what’s happening in Florida, you have to travel back to 1933, to a small, remote town in Bavaria.

When Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, the first thing he built wasn’t a tank or a warship. It was a “detention facility.”

The Dachau concentration camp, opened in March 1933 just three months after he became Chancellor, was described at the time as “the first concentration camp for political prisoners.” As the Dachau memorial site explains:

“From the very beginning, the camp was a place of brutality. During the first years, most prisoners were political opponents of the Nazi regime.”

They weren’t criminals. They weren’t traitors. They were “undesirable immigrants.” Trade unionists. Communists. Jews. Catholics. Writers. Teachers. Students. They were anyone the regime considered a threat or a convenient enemy.

The Nazis didn’t hide Dachau. They advertised it. It was a warning. A message. Step out of line, and this is where you go.

Sound familiar?

Alligator Alcatraz is not Dachau. It’s not exterminating people. Yet. But Dachau didn’t begin as a death camp either. It began as a “protective custody” facility, built on the idea that “certain people” posed a threat to the national body simply by existing.

That’s what Florida’s new facility represents. Not immigration enforcement. Not public safety. Protective custody for political purposes.

Under Trump’s new national emergency framework, virtually anyone deemed “unlawfully present” can be detained indefinitely without trial.

That means asylum seekers. Victims of trafficking. Children.

And if you believe this won’t expand — if you believe this power will remain solely focused on brown-skinned migrants fleeing violence in Central America — then you haven’t read a history book lately.

Stripping people of their citizenship is called denaturalization, and it was one of Hitler’s favorite tools against his enemies and Jews, who were referred to as “undesirable foreign elements” and denaturalized en masse in 1935.

Trump’s DoJ just updated their guidelines relating to the 25 million American citizens who first came to this country as immigrants and then obtained citizenship through the naturalization process. It used to be that you could only lose your citizenship if you committed a serious enough crime.

And, on Tuesday, Trump said:

“Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together.”

So now, the DoJ says, Trump can choose to denaturalize anybody and then immediately send them to Alligator Alcatraz:

“Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue [may be stripped of citizenship]. These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.” (emphasis added)

And as a special bonus, the memo notes that stripping American citizens of their citizenship is a civil, not criminal, process so you are not entitled to have a lawyer or any of the other normal aspects of legal procedure like a trial that we generally think of as our rights. Franz Kafka would be proud.

Dachau didn’t just hold communists. Over time, it expanded to include denaturalized Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and anyone who opposed Nazi policy. It became a national crucible of cruelty. It normalized the idea that “certain people do not deserve legal protections.”

That is the fire that Alligator Alcatraz is stoking today.

How is this being done? Through a cunning abuse of emergency powers.

Florida has been under a rolling immigration “state of emergency” since 2023, a legal status that allows the governor to bypass environmental protections, override public procurement processes, and redirect funds without oversight.

Sound familiar? It should. The Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree to grant themselves emergency powers in perpetuity. One crisis, one convenient boogeyman, and suddenly all democratic guardrails are removed.

Today, DeSantis is using FEMA funds intended for hurricane victims to build migrant cages. Tomorrow, it could be protesters. Journalists. Teachers. You.

This isn’t alarmism. It’s precedent.

Let’s talk about the location, because it matters.

Big Cypress is a remote and largely inaccessible swamp, home to endangered species, sacred Indigenous land, and — now — a prison surrounded by natural predators.

Human rights lawyers and journalists will find it hard to access. Escapes will be all but impossible. Oversight will be nonexistent. That’s by design.

Dachau, too, was deliberately chosen for its isolation. As the memorial website explains:

“The camp was constantly expanded and served as the prototype and model for all later concentration camps.”

It became a template. A blueprint. And its very existence reshaped what the German public considered “normal.”

Alligator Alcatraz is the same. A testing ground. If it succeeds — not as a legal institution, but as a political spectacle — there will be more. One in Texas. One in Arizona. One in Arkansas. Maybe even one in your backyard.

The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn’t the alligators. It’s the message.

The message that some people are less than human. That caging them is acceptable. That they deserve no rights, no hearing, no compassion. Just mud and barbed wire.

That was the logic behind Dachau.

And it’s becoming the logic behind Trump’s America.

This facility is being built not to solve a problem, but to create one. To manufacture outrage. To train the public to see brown-skinned immigrants not as workers or families or survivors but as invaders. Intruders. Animals.

And that’s when the door opens for something far worse.

We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to be polite. The time for half-measures and technocratic rebuttals and “strongly worded letters” is over.

America stands at a crossroads. Down one road lies the fragile promise of democracy: messy, imperfect, but built on the belief in human dignity and the rule of law. Down the other lies the swamp — literal and figurative — where cruelty is policy, and fear is law.

Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a prison. It’s a mirror. And it’s asking us: Who are we, really?

The answer, as always, is up to us.

We must engage:

Lawsuits: Civil liberties groups and Indigenous tribes must continue challenging this facility in court. Environmental statutes, tribal treaties, and international human rights laws can still be leveraged.
Documentation: Journalists must risk everything to document the construction, conditions, and policies of Alligator Alcatraz. We need eyes in the swamp, or darkness will reign.
Direct Action: Peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and national mobilization must become central. This is a fight for the moral compass of our country.
Language: Stop calling this a “detention center.” Call it what it is: a political prison. A migrant concentration camp. Words matter.
History: Teach your neighbors about Dachau. Show them how it started. Not with mass extermination, but with silence. With a single camp, surrounded by a fence, where people were put “for their own protection.”

Democracy doesn’t fall all at once. It decays from the inside. It erodes at the margins. It disappears not with a bang, but with a shrug.

The United States of America has reached a threshold. We can step back and reaffirm our commitment to human dignity, to due process, to liberty and justice for all.

Or we can cross into the swamp. And never come back.

Dachau was the beginning of something monstrous. Let Alligator Alcatraz be the end of something: the end of our innocence, the end of our complacency, and the start of a renewed resistance.

Because if we wait too long, we may wake up one day and discover we are no longer the land of the free, but only the home of the caged.

'Alligator Alcatraz' is a temple to Trump's cruelty

Some 63 years and a week ago, a young attorney general named Robert F. Kennedy announced the closure of one of the world’s most infamous institutions.

Alcatraz.

RFK’s move was largely pragmatic. The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was located on a remote island in San Francisco Bay that had no fresh water — a million gallons had to be barged to it every week. Its infrastructure was crumbling, exacerbating its many design flaws. It was a mess.

But over time, Alcatraz would become notorious not for inefficiency but as a dark chapter in U.S. history. The prison’s image as a grim monument to cruelty and isolation would become etched into public consciousness through iconic films like Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Murder in the First (1995), and even the action thriller The Rock (1996).

No wonder Donald Trump wants to reopen it.

Trump’s desecration of the nation demands rehabilitation of dark institutions such as Alcatraz, because to him they embody the strength, power, and violence that his own damaged psyche craves. Besides, the movies did good box office.

The stupidity of reviving the original Alcatraz is apparently an ongoing Trump obsession. Regardless, the state of Florida decided that it needs its very own Alcatraz.

And now it has one.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is the catchy name slapped onto the recently repurposed Immigration Detention Center in Immokalee, Florida. Spanning up to 900 acres, the site is being converted into a mass migrant detention center, featuring treacherous swampland filled with reptiles serving as backup prison guards.

“Alligator Alcatraz” is not a Trump property. Instead, it was a name picked up by James Uthmeier, the Florida attorney general appointed by Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whom Trump disemboweled in the 2024 Republican primary.

So, at least in the short run, Trump is content to allow Florida Republicans to bask in a sliver of his limelight. Their mission: to orchestrate a mass MAGA drool-in over the prospect of torturing the migrants they’re programmed to despise — and then cheer the idea of alligators and snakes devouring the fleeing souls.

For every such backdrop, a grift cannot be far behind. If there’s a surprising part of this story, it’s that Trump has not personally served as drum major for the grifter parade. The Florida GOP has taken the lead in selling “Alligator Alcatraz” branded merchandise, including T-shirts, trucker hats and — get this —baby onesies.

Uthmeier announced his own spinoff merch line, with proceeds helping to fund his 2026 campaign. What better way to shout out Americana than with a celebration of barbaric cruelty?

Naturally, Trump couldn’t resist getting a piece of that. He toured the site, joked about escapees being eaten by snakes and alligators, and told reporters the only way out was “a one-way flight.” He beamed with pride. And he knows a branding opportunity for robbing rubes when he sees one. Don’t be surprised if he gets into the action, perhaps with a bitcoin twist.

The footnotes to this story should be its headlines. The large majority of inmates to be housed in this celebrated house of horrors won’t be violent criminals — indeed, the number of actual convicts of violent felonies is minuscule.

But the news media seemed not overly interested in that — at least not on this day when photos of cages and reptile imagery provided the shock and awe necessary for ratings. If there was mention of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — that superfluous language forbidding “cruel and unusual punishments” — it died on the cutting-room floor.

One prominent Trump Cabinet member not visibly joining in the frivolity was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, and son of the man who closed Alcatraz.

That’s too bad. Even though Junior’s portfolio is destroying the nation’s health — torturing public health experts, not immigrants — it would have been fitting for the twisted offspring of RFK to have provided the bookends for the Alcatraz story.

The great RFK closes down Alcatraz. The wayward son applauds its wannabe replacement, one committed to demonizing immigrants. That’s the mother’s milk of authoritarianism around the globe.

For a fleeting moment after the demise of Alcatraz, America seemed to recognize that the punishment had gone too far — that an institution notorious for “The Hole,” the psychological torture, the pain and the suffering, wasn’t something to be glorified. Even if it took movies to open eyes, there was a glimpse of moral clarity.

Today, that view seems squishy to some, off-topic to others. No need to shut down symbols of state cruelty.

Just monetize them.

'People are going to die': Rain floods 'hurricane proof' Alligator Alcatraz

New video showed a "garden-variety South Florida summer rainstorm" flooding tents and drowning out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as he touted the "Alligator Alcatrez" detention facility he claimed was ready to house deportees, according to The Miami Herald.

Rain began shortly after President Donald Trump finished up his tour of the Everglades facility that the White House claimed needed little security due to pythons and alligators surrounding it, the report said.

"The water seeped into the site — the one that earlier in day the state’s top emergency chief had boasted was ready to withstand the winds of a 'high-end' Category 2 hurricane — and streamed all over electrical cables on the floor," wrote reporters Syra Ortiz Blanes, Ana Ceballos, and Alex Harris.

They quoted Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, as saying, “For those people that don’t think we’re taking that into consideration. This is Florida, by the way. We have a hurricane plan.”

But The Herald reported "that at one point the roof was shaking as the rain pounded down, drowning out Gov. Ron DeSantis’ voice as he spoke to reporters."

Spectrum News reporter Jason Delgado posted video of the flooding, and of DeSantis trying to talk over the cacophony.

"A good lil storm passed over us here at 'Alligator Alcatraz,’" Delgado posted. "Here's what it looks & sounds like inside one of these tents. The state says the sites here are rated to withstand a category two hurricane (~120mph winds)."

Liberal commentator Christopher Webb also posted video of the flooding, writing, "It’s costing taxpayers $450 million annually and Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp is already flooding. Imagine a hurricane. People are going to die. There’s always enough money to hurt folks, but when it comes to public transit, low-income housing, schools, or public healthcare, 'Sorry, we’re broke.'”

In a follow-up post, Delgado included a statement by the Florida Division of Emergency Management, saying "they’ve taken action to address the water leaks that happened Tuesday during a thunderstorm at ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’"

The statement read, “Overnight, the vendors went back and tightened any seams at the base of the structures that allowed water intrusion during the heavy storm, which was minimal.”

Ron DeSantis plans to 'deputize' Floridians as 'judges' of immigrant detainees

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) used a photo opportunity with President Donald Trump to share his plan to move undocumented migrants through Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida detention facilities as quickly as possible.

Trump traveled to Ochopee, Florida, Tuesday to tour the detention facility comprising heavy-duty tents and FEMA trailers that are expected to detain up to 5,000 migrants awaiting deportation.

"I know Secretary [Kristi] Noem and her team have said, as soon as the president departs, we'll be open to start receiving folks. And, so, we'll see what the tempo is," DeSantis told the press.

DeSantis then explained his plan to hasten deportations.

"One of the things I think that is exciting about this is, we're offering up our National Guard and other folks in Florida to be deputized to be immigration judges. We're working with the Department of Justice for the approvals. I'm sure Pam [Bondi] will approve," DeSantis said as Trump nodded his head and said, "Yep."

DeSantis didn't elaborate on who the other "folks" would be.

DeSantis continued, "But then...I'll have a National Guard judge advocate here. Someone has a notice to appear, Biden would tell them to come back in three years and appear. Now, you'll be able to appear in like a day or two. So, they're not going to be detained, hopefully, for all that long."

DeSantis praised recent Supreme Court ruling that he said will allow Trump "to be able to exercise Article II the way the founders intended." The ruling allowed the administration to deport detainees to countries they are not citizens of.

"But you still have bureaucracy. So, we want to cut through that so that we have an efficient operation between Florida and DHS to get the removal of these illegals done."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'Chilling': Newspaper hits back at MAGA governor after 'bully' attempt

The Orlando Sentinel editorial board took a firm stance against what it claimed was "intimidation" and "bullying" by the DeSantis administration over its investigation into a charity connected to the governor's wife.

The board reported that it received an unsigned cease-and-desist letter from the Florida Department of Children and Families demanding that reporter Jeffrey Schweers stop his "reporting for a story about funding flowing through Hope Florida, the nonprofit spearheaded by the governor’s wife, Casey."

The letter accused Schweers of "trying to 'harass and intentionally cause distress to foster families by threats and coercion' to get them to talk to him for the story."

The board wrote, "This attempt to bully our newsroom away from a story is clearly intended to be chilling, but it won’t impact our reporting. Hope Florida has already had a lot of questions raised about its funding and grants not just by the Sentinel and other media in Florida but also by state lawmakers."

The editorial board detailed how it found evidence "that the state used Hope Florida as a funnel to divert millions of federal Medicaid-settlement money from its intended destination (health care for poor people) to two political organizations opposing the November ballot amendment on recreational marijuana."

A state representative who investigated the charity said the fund transfer could lead to "money-laundering or other criminal charges.“

"In the real world, if someone defrauded the state or a charity out of $10 million, they’d go to prison," State Rep. Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola) told Florida Politics.

The editorial board quoted Sentinel executive editor Roger Simmons saying, “We stand by our stories and reject the state’s attempt to chill free speech and encroach on our First Amendment right to report on an important issue. The state’s characterization of our reporter’s conduct is completely false.”

First Lady Casey DeSantis has denied any wrongdoing.

Read The Orlando Sentinel editorial here.