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DeSantis is betting his presidential bid on Iowa. Will it work?

At an Iowa barbecue this summer, Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke behind a lectern bearing a poster with a telling slogan: “Iowa Picks Presidents.”

Those three words, while oversimplified, are not far off from summarizing DeSantis’ strategy heading into the final months before 2024. Since May, DeSantis has spent at least 19 partial or full days in Iowa, even with a break from the campaign trail to manage Hurricane Idalia prep and recovery back in Florida. As polls show DeSantis’ nationwide support continuing to plummet, success in Iowa is becoming increasingly make-or-break for his campaign.

From April through this week, paperwork filed by the super PAC providing the bulk of DeSantis’ political operation, called Never Back Down, shows the PAC has spent nearly $17 million on promoting DeSantis in Iowa. That’s more than eight times what it’s spent in the much more populous early primary state of South Carolina, which had the second-highest sum. Of the expenses Never Back Down has reported so far this month, 99% have gone toward Iowa, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

There’s just one problem: The slogan on the poster isn’t really correct. Iowa hasn’t picked a Republican in a contested primary who would go on to win the presidency since 2000. Lately, the state hasn’t even picked the man who would win the Republican nomination. Recent Iowa GOP presidential caucus victors include Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Ted Cruz in 2016.

Florida joins 3 other states in adopting new, paid maternity leave for state workers

With a tight labor market and more than 7,000 vacancies in state government, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet did something this week that the state government has never done in agreeing to offer paid maternity leave to expectant mothers.

Under the proposal approved Tuesday during a nine-minute meeting via telephone, eligible state employees can receive paid maternity leave for up to seven weeks and parental leave for two weeks. For mothers, that amounts to combined family leave of nine weeks. For fathers and partners of the expectant mother, that gives two weeks of paid leave.

It is a substantial change from previous state policy that required state employees seeking leave for the birth or adoption of a child to be treated as if they were sick. Under that plan, state workers were required to use sick and annual leave or unpaid leave following the birth of a child.

With the change, Florida joins North Carolina, South Dakota and Texas that adopted paid parental leave policies this year, said Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow for gender equity, paid leave and care policy, and strategy at the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Book bans surged across the US in 2023. Florida was the blueprint.

The number of books banned in school districts across the U.S. reached a peak this year, a new report says, with Florida leading the way in more ways than one.

The state topped the country in the number of books banned alone, representing 40% of the country’s total cases, with over 1,400 books removed from libraries in the 2022-23 school year, according to a report issued on Thursday by PEN America, a free speech advocacy group. Across the country, over 3,000 books were removed.

But Florida’s influence also extends far beyond the number of books it has banned — the state’s conservative advocacy groups and legislation have helped pave the way for the rest of the country to follow suit.

“Florida is not an anomaly,” said Kasey Meehan, the lead author of the report, titled “The Mounting Pressure to Censor: The Drivers Behind Book Bans,” and the Freedom to Read Program Director at PEN America. “It’s almost like an incubator.”

One common theme emerged as researchers studied the success of book bans: The combined presence of conservative advocacy groups and state legislation.

Florida agriculture losses between $78M and $371M from Hurricane Idalia, preliminary estimate says

Florida agriculture losses from Hurricane Idalia are estimated at between $78 million and $371 million, with producers also suffering widespread damage to such infrastructure as irrigation rigs and fences, according to a preliminary report Thursday from the University of Florida.

The Category 3 hurricane came ashore Aug. 30 along Florida’s Big Bend region with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph (205 kph), sweeping across rural areas that include crops such as peanuts and cotton as well as cattle, poultry and aquaculture operations.

Predicted losses for livestock are pegged at between $30.1 million and $123.4 million, according to the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences report. Estimates for field and row crop losses are between $30.7 million and $93.6 million, with greenhouse and nursery products accounting for between $4.7 million and $68.8 million.

Researchers said the wide ranges in these estimates will narrow as more on-the-ground assessments are completed. The storm’s main farm impacts occurred in Dixie, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madison, Suwannee and Taylor counties in an area between the Gulf of Mexico and the Georgia state line. Four people in Florida were killed during the hurricane, according to medical examiner reports to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.