Snippet:

• A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologist fired in September over a Charlie Kirk post has secured a settlement from the state.
• The ACLU of Florida announced today that Brittney Brown will be awarded a $485,000 settlement in the case Brown v. Young. The ACLU says FWC will pay Brown $275,000, including $40,000 in back wages and $235,000 in compensatory damages, as well as $210,000 in attorney fees and costs.

EDITED TO ADD:

>She agreed as part of the deal to not seek future employment at the agency.

Snippet:

• Gov. Ron DeSantis says he isn’t sure what kind of security will be necessary to keep him and his family safe after leaving office as the Legislature weighs setting aside funds to pay for it.
• A recent Senate budget offer would put state funds toward that unprecedented effort.
• Per the offer, “the Department of Law Enforcement shall continue to provide and maintain the security of the individual currently serving as Governor and such individual’s immediate family for a period of twelve months following the expiration of the Governor’s term.”
• DeSantis explained security concerns while speaking in Miami.
• “In terms of my security, I’ve let the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handle that. They make assessments on all these things. I tend not to think about it because, you know, I don’t think it really helps you to think about it,” DeSantis said.

>Delgado and other “local journalists” identified as staff of the South Florida Standard are creations of artificial intelligence – complete with fake headshots and made-up biographies

Snippet:

• South Florida journalist Sofia Delgado was having a great year.
• Reporters at the news outlet she helped launch a few months ago, the South Florida Standard, had been regularly publishing three stories a day, every day of the week – including weekends – with articles ranging from a story detailing the Florida Legislature’s budget breakdown, to federal health care workers quitting rather than taking mandatory assignments at Guantanamo Bay, to revelations that deaths at state mental hospitals were linked to systemic neglect.
• Born and raised in Hialeah, the bilingual editor-in-chief and mother of two, and her team even published four stories on Easter Sunday.
• It would be an impressive – and gruelling – output for many local news outlets in this era of shrinking newsroom budgets.
• If it were real.

Snippet:

• President Donald Trump earlier this year bought as much as $680,000 in stock of Eli Lilly, the maker of blockbuster obesity drugs, as the agencies he oversees undertook an agenda that largely benefited the company.
• On May 14, the federal government released ethics disclosures revealing a list of stock and bond trades made on Trump’s behalf from January to March of this year. They included extensive trades across the economy, including investments in tech giants such as Microsoft and Nvidia, aerospace firms such as Boeing, and household-name companies such as Target and Chipotle.
• In healthcare, however, the trades for Lilly — a company valued by the stock market at just under $1 trillion — stand out. That’s because the timing of Trump’s purchases coincides with several favorable government decisions benefiting the drugmaker’s GLP-1 business, including progress toward a long-held goal: qualifying the drugs for reimbursement from Medicare, the government health insurance program primarily serving seniors, when they are prescribed for weight loss.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new bill that will allow staff at state colleges and universities to carry guns on campus.
• The new law expands Florida’s existing school guardian program.
• Under the new law, staff members who choose to carry guns must undergo weapons training.
• These staff members must also be certified by a sheriff to participate in the program.
• Participation in the school guardian program is not mandatory for educators.
• The new law has drawn criticism from some, including a professor at Florida State University.
• The professor, who survived a mass shooting last year, expressed concern that the new measure could be detrimental.
• The professor believes the law may do more harm than good.

WHY wasn't this mandated from the start??

• A Senate Democrat is proposing a bill that would require large data centers to secure their own power in a bid to reduce energy costs.
• Dubbed the Energy Cost Fairness and Reliability Act, Sen. Adam Schiff‘s (D-Calif.) bill is the latest effort in Congress to tackle energy affordability as Americans decry high electricity costs and power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers.
• The bill requires data centers that are over 50 megawatts to bring their own power, a common call among Democrats and Republicans amid national pushback against data centers. President Donald Trump received pledges in March from large technology companies that they would secure their own electricity for data centers and pay for grid upgrades.
• A spokesperson in Schiff’s office said the bill intends to enforce the pledge through a law change. The bill doesn’t have any GOP co-sponsors, though a spokesperson said they’re having conversations with other lawmakers to drum up support for the proposal.
• “Artificial intelligence is already deeply impacting our society, economy, and national security, and it is critical that we maintain our international leadership—however that growth cannot come at the cost of consumers or society,” Schiff said in a statement.
• Data centers must pay for the grid upgrades they require and can’t siphon power from existing power plants, according to the bill. It also directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to update its rules related to transmission lines — which transport electricity — to allow data centers to reduce demand during peak energy hours.