An appeals court has temporarily blocked a federal judge’s decision ordering Florida and federal officials to begin winding down operations at Alligator Alcatraz, the controversial immigration detention center in the Everglades that opened in July.  As I reported last month, in response to a lawsuit filed in June by environmental groups, US District Judge Kathleen Williams had ordered the dismantling of equipment at the detention camp, such as fencing, lighting, generators, and other infrastructure, as well as a pause on the transfer of detainees to the site. The groups had argued that the construction of the camp proceeded without an environmental review or opportunity for public comment, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. But the state of Florida argued that the facility was a state-run operation, and, therefore, federal environmental protection laws did not apply. Hastily erected in late June on a remote airfield by Big Cypress National Preserve, Alligator Alcatraz has been fraught with reports of malfunctioning air conditioners, scarce food, and rampant mosquitoes. Detainees are held in large white tents, each containing multiple fenced areas with 32 beds and three toilets. State and federal officials running the center have previously stated that the camp would be for immigrants with criminal records, but as the Miami Herald reported in July, many detainees have no prior arrests. In July, nearly 1,000 detainees were being held at Alligator Alcatraz. This week, The New York Times reported that between 120 to 125 detainees are currently at the center.  In her ruling, Williams had sided with the environmentalists. “The project was requested by the federal government; built with a promise of full federal funding; constructed in compliance with ICE standards; staffed by deputized ICE Task Force Officers acting under color of federal authority and at the direction and supervision of ICE officials,” she wrote, “and exists for the sole purpose of detaining and deporting those subject to federal immigration enforcement.” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier promptly filed a notice indicating the state would appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In a 2-3 decision on Thursday, the three-judge panel in Atlanta granted the defendants’ request to pause Williams’ ruling pending a future decision on the appeal. The judges found that the detention center did not violate NEPA because it was funded by the state and not the federal government. “Obtaining funding from the federal government for a state project requires completing a formal and technical application process,” the ruling states, which has not yet occurred. Alligator Alcatraz is predicted to cost $450 million a year, and the DeSantis administration has previously stated it would seek FEMA funds to cover those expenses. > “Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we always said, open for business.” Florida officials celebrated the ruling on social media. “Alligator Alcatraz is in fact, like we always said, open for business,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a video posted to his X account. “We are going to continue leading the way when it comes to immigration enforcement.” Meanwhile, Friends of the Everglades, one of the plaintiffs in the case, issued a statement saying that “the case is far from over.” “While disappointing, we never expected ultimate success to be easy,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in the statement. “We’re hopeful the preliminary injunction will be affirmed when it’s reviewed on its merits during the appeal.” Talbert Cypress, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, which later joined the lawsuit as a plaintiffs due to the detention center’s close proximity to their communities in the Everglades, told the Miami Herald they were “disappointed in the majority’s decision to stay the injunction. We were prepared for this result and will continue to litigate this matter.”

Deep in the Everglades, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration has swiftly begun construction of an ICE detention center on an airfield surrounded by wetlands that will house up to 1,000 detainees and could open as soon as next week. In a Friday interview with Fox News, DeSantis called the new center “Alligator Alcatraz” and said deportation flights could also take off from the airfield, which was previously used for military and law enforcement training. “This is going to be a force multiplier and we’re really happy to be working with the federal government to satisfy President Trump’s mandate,” he said. > DeSantis has pushed anti-immigrant laws and encouraged police to collaborate > with ICE. Florida is expected to pay $450 million a year to run the facility, with the possibility of being reimbursed by the federal government, the Miami Herald reported. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said the detention center will be mostly comprised of “light infrastructure,” the Herald reported, such as tents and trailers. He suggested in a video posted to X that the facility’s location would deter escapes: “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” Uthmeier said The project has faced considerable backlash in recent days from immigrant advocacy groups, environmentalists, and Miami-Dade county mayor Daniella Levine Cava. The Miccosukee Tribe has also publicly opposed the construction of the center on its ancestral lands. “The state would save substantial taxpayer dollars by pursuing its goals at a different location with more existing infrastructure and less environmental and cultural impacts,” Talbert Cypress, chair of the tribe, wrote in a statement posted to Facebook.  On Friday, two environmentalist groups filed a lawsuit in federal court against federal and state officials to halt the project, the Tampa Bay Times reported, arguing that the project proceeded without an environmental review and opportunity for public comment. Instead, the complaint reads, construction has already commenced at a “breakneck pace,” as crews transported kitchen facilities, restrooms, industrial lighting, and dump trucks onto the airfield. The site is located within the Big Cypress National Preserve, “a nationally and State protected, and ecologically sensitive, area that serves as habitat for endangered and threatened species like the Florida panther, Florida bonneted bat, Everglade Snail kite, wood stork, and numerous other species,” according to the environmental groups’ complaint.  Plans for the center are largely a response to a nationwide surge in immigration detention. As my colleague Isabela Dias recently reported, the number of people held by ICE now surpasses 56,000—an unprecedented level. “The record high detention numbers also raise concerns about overcrowding, especially since the Department of Homeland Security is imposing new rules restricting access by members of Congress to ICE facilities,” she wrote. That Florida is undertaking such a massive detention center project is not a surprise. As I reported in April, under DeSantis the state has passed a slew of anti-immigrant laws and has encouraged local police and jails to collaborate with ICE on immigration arrests.   

Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston. Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. “They’re targeting us,” Hixenbaugh recalls. “My wife, my kids, me—and it’s about race.”  So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating and soon discovered that “the ugliness of our national politics was really playing out at the most visceral level in these suburbs.” Hixenbaugh’s reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools, specifically those in Southlake, Texas, a suburb of Dallas where parents were engaged in heated, emotional battles over race, gender, DEI programs, and the role of public education in the US. As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app.

If you want a glimpse into what Project 2025’s education agenda might look like if implemented nationwide, look no further than Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has already been leading book-banning, inflaming culture wars over LGBTQ rights, and dismantling comprehensive sex education. Recent reporting by the Orlando Sentinel revealed that Florida state officials are pressuring some districts to adopt an abstinence-only approach, stripping students of basic knowledge about contraception, anatomy, and human development. Students are being taught abstinence as the sole method of avoiding pregnancy and STDs, and terms like “abuse,” “fluids,” and “LGBTQ” are absent from classrooms. “Under recent changes to state law,” reports the Associated Press, “it’s now up to the Florida Department of Education to sign off on school districts’ curriculum on reproductive health and disease education if they use teaching materials other than the state’s designated textbook.” This week, Mother Jones Creator Kat Abughazaleh analyzes one of these state-approved plans, “Real Essentials,” which encourages “spiritual intimacy” and traditional marriage. The plan’s author has a history of citing pro-abstinence education research from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025. Florida’s approach is a test for a much broader movement, Kat argues. Just pages into Project 2025, you’ll find a promise to register “educators and public librarians” who purvey “pornography”—a term so vaguely defined as to potentially include any term currently being weaponized in the culture war—as registered “sex offenders.” Another section calls for provisions to prevent types of sex education that might “promote prostitution, or provide a funnel effect for abortion facilities and school field trips to clinics.” For more details, watch Kat’s full breakdown of Florida’s new sex education laws.

When the US Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion in its 2022 Dobbs decision, one argument the justices made was that it was not banning abortion across the country, but rather granting states, and their voters, the opportunity to regulate the procedure. Since then, seven states have voted on their local abortion laws through ballot measures. From the liberal paradises of Vermont and California to redder states like Ohio and Kansas, all seven voted to protect abortion. In November, 10 more states are using ballot measures to address the topic, too. Among them is Florida. Until 2022, the state allowed abortions until the third trimester. But since Dobbs, the state first enacted a ban on abortions after 15- weeks gestation, and subsequently a ban on abortions after six weeks, which took effect in May. Floridians Protecting Freedom (FPF) is trying to change that with Amendment 4, which the reproductive rights group added to Florida’s November ballots by collecting more than 900,000 signatures. If enough Floridians vote “yes” on the ballot measure (official summary shown below), the referendum will theoretically enshrine in the Florida Constitution the right to abortion access up until fetal viability—which is generally around 23 to 24 weeks. As the referendum states: > No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability > or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the > patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the > Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or > guardian before a minor has an abortion. More than half of Florida voters support expanding abortion rights, according to polling by both Florida Atlantic University and the Hill/Emerson College. But whether this support ultimately alters the abortion landscape in the state is a different question. That’s because Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using the power of his administration to threaten the initiative. He’s appointed people to the Financial Impact Estimating Conference—a panel responsible for gauging potential costs of ballot measures—that required the amendment be accompanied by language stating, without evidence, that access to abortion may cost taxpayer dollars. State law enforcement has also been sent to question Floridians who signed the petition for Amendment 4 to appear on the ballot. He’s enlisted a state agency to create a misleading website about abortions in Florida. Local television channels playing an advertisement supporting Amendment 4 have also been threatened with prosecution over the alleged violation of Florida’s sanitary nuisance law, which is generally used to combat health risks like the improper disposal of human waste or dead animals. On Friday, DeSantis further escalated his intimidation campaign when his state department released a 348-page preliminary report alleging FPF may have committed “widespread petition fraud” to reach the 891,000 signature Florida statute requires to advance ballot measures. In a statement, FPF says its campaign has been “run above board and followed state law at every turn.” Further, the state deadline to challenge amendment signatures has already passed. Anna Hochkammer, the executive director of the Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, says the administration is “using the resources of the state to suppress the purest form of democracy, which in this case is necessary because an entrenched unrepresentative cabal of elected officials refuses to legislate in accordance with the overwhelming preferences of the citizens…Despite all of that, we are unbowed and unbroken.” > “An entrenched unrepresentative cabal of elected officials refuses to > legislate in accordance with the overwhelming preferences of the > citizens…Despite all of that, we are unbowed and unbroken.” But the report could provide basis for a new, albeit insincere, legal argument against the ballot measure—and it seems it already has. On Wednesday, anti-abortion advocates filed a lawsuit citing the state missive, alleging that, “When all fictitious, forged, illegally obtained, or otherwise invalid signatures are removed from consideration, Amendment 4 failed to reach the constitutionally required number of signatures for ballot placement.” Accordingly, the lawsuit against FPF says, “The invalid petitions must be stricken and Amendment 4 removed from the 2024 General Election.” DeSantis didn’t personally wage the lawsuit, but he did tee it up for the petitioners who did. Such tactics should not be surprising. Other GOP leaders, such as Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state lawmakers in Missouri, respectively tried to thwart similar initiatives through politically motivated lawsuits, exaggerated cost estimates, disinformation, and more. As my colleague Ari Berman points out in his recent magazine story, this is particularly concerning because ballot measures are the only method in which majority rule by a plurality of a state’s citizens can supersede the minority rule of increasingly and disproportionately powerful GOP state lawmakers who have re-drawn districts to benefit them staying in power. > In hyper-gerrymandered states like Ohio, the only way to ensure that the will > of the majority is followed is to override representative democracy and go > directly to the people. This strategy has taken on renewed urgency in response > to recent US Supreme Court decisions taking away fundamental rights, from the > gutting of the Voting Rights Act to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These > initiatives can garner support across party lines in a way that is otherwise > impossible in a highly polarized partisan political climate. The Supreme Court explicitly noted that the solution to abortion access is not—in the majority’s opinion—protected by the US Constitution. Instead, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion, the 2022 Dobbs decision “properly returns the Court to a position of neutrality and restores the people’s authority to address the issue of abortion through the processes of democratic self-government.” In other words, the court said, abortion is an issue that should be regulated through voting: either for political candidates whose reproductive rights views align with those of the voters or, even more directly, for ballot measures. This is also—in theory—the party line of the GOP. In his presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump has emphasized this point. “It’s all about the states, it’s about state rights. States’ rights,” Trump told Time magazine in April. “States are going to make their own determinations.” Even without DeSantis putting his thumb on the scale, Florida already had a high bar for passing referenda: As of 2006, 60 percent of voters are required to amend the state’s constitution. Among conservative-leaning states—Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio—that have voted on abortion ballot measures, none have had to hit that high a mark. (Kansas was closest, at 59 percent). Organizers of Amendment 4 say they believe Florida could be the first state to do so, but it’s a harder task when the DeSantis administration is engaging in what Hochkammer calls “asshole politics,” which values “power and posturing over good policy.” For example, both the proponents and opponents of Amendment 4 have television advertisements in Florida. A pro-Amendment 4 ad depicts a woman describing how a pre-ban abortion saved her life when she found out she had a brain tumor while also pregnant with her second child. “The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby. I would lose my life. And my daughter would lose her mom,” the mom says in the 30-second clip. “Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine.” Florida’s Department of Health alleged the advertisement was false in cease-and-desist letters, citing Florida’s “exception” to save the life of a mother. But many physicians, who risk fines and prison time, argue that life-or-death scenarios are extremely complicated and often do not conform to the vague language of abortion-ban exceptions. In the case of the woman who had a brain tumor, her diagnosis was terminal. According to a lawsuit filed in federal court by Floridians Protecting Freedom on Wednesday, the woman would not have met the requirements for an exception because an abortion only would have “extend[ed]” her life, not saved it. There are post-ban examples, too. In another case, a 15-week pregnant woman was leaking amniotic fluid for an hour in a Broward County, Florida, hospital waiting room. Her ultrasound showed she had no amniotic fluid around her fetus, a condition that can quickly lead to serious infection and death. She was discharged and miscarried in a public restroom later that day, at which point was rushed to another hospital and put on a ventilator. She stayed in the hospital for six days. “When you don’t want to talk about the fact that your state has an abortion ban that’s forced rape survivors to go out of state for care, that’s led to women almost losing their lives,” FPF campaign director Lauren Brenzel recently told Mother Jones, “you create distractions because you don’t want to talk about the harmful policy that you’ve implemented.” She added, “It’s not shocking. It’s the national playbook.”