Between 2016 and 2025, Michelle Shoemaker spent more than $1,000 on songs and games for her tablet — a rudimentary, prison-approved device she purchased from JPay, a subsidiary of the massive prison communications company Aventiv. Her tablet also held hundreds of emails and photographs, including treasured photos and messages from her deceased father, daughter, and mother. One email contained the…
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A new state law limits Florida communities’ aims to offset greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the global climate and intensifying disasters such as hurricanes. Specifically, HB 1217 prohibits local governments from pursuing net-zero emissions goals. At least 10 cities and counties have implemented such policies, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Orlando and Leon County…
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This story originally appeared in The Progressive Magazine on June 18, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
Florida has a magic that only Floridians truly understand. The mix of whimsy, bravery, and devotion you find here is unique, as is the land itself: lush acres of forest and marshy wetlands, puppy like creatures found in springs and slow-moving rivers, beaches of white sand, and off-the-beaten-path trails.
It’s tough to be from here—we’re plagued with hurricane season, mocked with GIFs like Bugs Bunny sawing from the rest of the country, and absurd “Florida man” jokes reflecting the tired 2010s-era cliché that our state is a den of drug-addled chaos and bizarre misadventure. If you mention Florida in conversation, you’re often met with a disgusted or concerning gaze.
The state has also long served as the country’s playground—or, as scholar Julio Capó Jr. describes it in his history of queer Miami culture, a “fairyland” that lures in tourists with the promise of a quick getaway surrounded by Disney animatronics and dreamy beaches. It may be unrecognizable to visitors from outside of the state, but Florida has always been a little queer, even beyond the periphery of the gay club scene in Miami.
In the past several years, however, Florida has become increasingly known for being hostile to queer people. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis—whose term began in 2019, less than three years after the June 2016 mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub that killed forty-nine people—is fixated on decimating Florida’s queer population and crushing the morale of our indomitable spirit. In 2021, DeSantis signed into law a provision that redefined a public demonstration of more than three people who “commit a breach of
Federal immigration officials have transferred detainees out of the controversial detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” but environmental advocates say the fight to shut down the Florida Everglades site is far from over. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that detainees were removed from the facility, located at a remote airstrip in Big Cypress National…
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced last week that all persons detained at the Alligator Alcatraz immigration jail were transferred to other facilities, and that the site’s giant tents and cages had been emptied. The reason given to the public was the risk posed by Florida’s hurricane season, with the agency offering this…
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On June 12, 2016, a man opened fire at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 queer people and injuring at least 58 others. An entire decade later, protections for LGBTQIA+ people in Florida and across the country continue to be stripped away under a government that insists on inflicting harm. Queer nightlife spaces, like Pulse, are designed to be deeper than DJ sets and drink specials…
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