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YouTube takes down a video of Gov. DeSantis and controversial health policy experts, saying it spread misinformation about kids and masks to stop COVID-19. The governor says it’s another example of what he calls Big Tech stifling free speech. Plus, lawmakers advance a ban on transgender student athletes.

CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ reported Gov. Ron DeSantis gave vaccine access to favored groups and Publix. DeSantis called the TV report a smear campaign. Allegations around Rep. Matt Gaetz grow more intense as the Panhandle Republican says he won’t step down. And Florida scrambles to avert an environmental disaster.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order prohibiting the use of COVID-19 vaccine "passports" and preventing Florida businesses from requiring patrons to provide documentation that they have been vaccinated.

A year after the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. DeSantis is touting his response to the pandemic by comparing Florida to other states. But one expert says it’s not a fair comparison.

As the immigration detention system flourished since the 1980s, it led to the creation of the private prison industry. The last episode of WLRN's podcast Detention By Design looks at the inextricable links between the two, and how, in turn, the picture has gone full circle in 2022, leaving us in a place very similar to the early days of Haitian and Cuban arrivals in Florida.

The amount of Haitians held in immigration detention skyrockets and the federal government starts holding them in federal prisons. Facing accusations of racism inside and outside the courts, the Reagan Administration decided to make a drastic policy shift: instead of treating Haitians like everyone else, it would now treat everyone else like Haitians.

Florida's only statewide elected Democrat, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, is running for governor. She calls for "something new." And Gov. Ron DeSantis' stand-off with the cruise industry.

The fight intensifies over how race and history are taught in Florida schools. The state’s economy keeps improving. And squaring off with social media speech.

Place your bets. Florida lawmakers have okayed a new gambling deal but will it survive expected legal challenges? And Democrats are already starting the 2022 election campaign.

Charlie Crist wants to move back to his old address — the Florida governor’s mansion. The one-time Republican governor is the first Democrat to declare his candidacy for the 2022 race. And local mayors react to canceling local pandemic restrictions.

Episode 4 of Detention By Design looks at the 1980 event that came to be known as the Mariel Boatlift and the turning point it marked for the U.S. immigration detention system. As 125,000 Cuban refugees landed in Florida, most spent only a day or two in a processing center - while Haitians were held for much longer. The lessons learned by the federal government during this often chaotic time would shape the years that followed.

By 1976, an estimated 1,500 Haitians had arrived in South Florida by boat. Even amid widespread repression and persecution at home, successive U.S. governments categorically denied Haitians were asking for political asylum. In the third episode of Detention By Design, we look at how the Cold War shaped immigration detention in the late 1970s - with those fleeing Communist regimes being granted asylum, while Haitians were being thrown in jail.

The second episode of Detention By Design follows the revealing story of Abel Jean-Simon Zephyr, a Haitian who arrived in Miami by boat in 1973. He asked for political asylum, but authorities - caught flat-footed - paid the sheriff's office at remote Immokalee, Florida, to hold him and others at its tiny jail. It marked the miserable, and at times tragic, beginning of the modern immigration detention system.

The first episode of the Detention By Design podcast looks at how Haitian president Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier went from popular Black nationalist to dictator, starting a reign of terror that forced the first wave of refugees to set off in rickety boats to Florida's shores 50 years ago. A new phrase was coined - 'I'd rather get a shark visa' - and a new era in American and Haitian history began.

America’s immigration detention nightmare started in Florida. Listen to the trailer for WLRN's new six-part series.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that Florida would expand its vaccine eligibility to everyone 50 and older. State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith is among those saying the move is not enough.

There's confusion and new frustration for Floridians as they try to get vaccinated for COVID-19, because the rules, critieria, and eligibility seem to change daily.

Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature is back in session and eyeing new laws aimed at slowing climate change and sea level rise.

This is the second of two reports on a potent new synergy between protests and protest music in Latin America, from Cuba to Colombia, San Juan to Santiago.