Grand Jury Says DeSantis “Misused” $10 Million in Medicaid Funds

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration “misappropriated” $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement to lobby against weed.

According to a Florida grand jury report, which was first obtained by CBS News, the money moved from a state Medicaid settlement, to a charity tied to the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, to a pair of dark-money PACs, and finally into a campaign to help kill a marijuana legalization ballot measure opposed by the governor.

It is not clear who directed the transfer of funds, which were meant to help poor children receive health insurance, the grand jury noted. As a result, the grand jury found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally.”

“Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida,” the jury concluded. “While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again.”

The grand jury’s report is dated January 28, 2026, and is still officially sealed.

The Hope Florida Foundation is the fundraising arm of a charity, Hope Florida, started by Casey DeSantis in 2021. The organization intends to connect low-income families with churches and local groups to keep them off public assistance. In its own words, Hope Florida goes “beyond government to create a pathway for Floridians to live up to their God-given potential and accomplish the American Dream.”

The $10 million transferred to the charity was initially part of a Medicaid settlement between the state of Florida and Centene Corporation, a for-profit health care company, over claims of over-billing. In February 2023, Centene Corporation offered to pay the entire $67,048,611 settlement to the state. More than a year and a half later, the settlement was split up: “On September 27, 2024, State of Florida officials agreed that Centene would pay $57,048,611 to the State of Florida and $10,000,000 to Hope Florida Foundation, Inc.,” the grand jury’s report read. “Within days, the $10,000,000 was transferred to other organizations for political purposes because money was spent on a political campaign and went to the Republican Party of Florida.”

According to the grand jury report, “after the money was transferred to Hope Florida, it was quickly funneled from there into two political action committees”—$5 million to Secure Florida’s Future and $5 million to Save Our Society From Drugs, both “dark money” groups that are not required to release detailed financial reports. The two groups then used the cash to bankroll Keep Florida Clean, another PAC created specifically to oppose a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. Although the marijuana amendment was popular across the state, it ultimately failed.

The report goes on to implicate a series of officials in Florida state government who may have had knowledge of the transaction, including Republican Senate candidate Ashley Moody, who was the state’s attorney general at the time. Moody allegedly “authorized” her chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement diverting $10 million to Hope Florida.

When asked about the grand jury’s report on Thursday, DeSantis claimed the only crime that was “apparent was whoever leaked the grand jury report.”

Representative Max Miller is needling his former father-in-law, Senator Bernie Moreno.

The embattled Ohio Republican representative issued a veiled threat against Moreno at the Cuyahoga County family court Wednesday, claiming that his marriage to Moreno’s daughter had revealed things that he believed the senator would like him to “remain quiet about.”

“I was a part of that family for a very long time,” Miller told Mother Jones’s Abby Vesoulis on video. “There are certain things that he would like me to remain quiet about, and I respectfully have, and I will always intend to do that because that’s not my business to share. But it’s politically motivated.”

The comment came right after a hearing in Miller’s contentious custody battle over his two-year-old daughter. Miller initially declined to speak with reporters, but then decided to cut his attorney off mid-sentence to voice the warning.

“No, no,” Miller’s lawyer could be heard saying in the background of the clip.

Emily Moreno, Miller’s ex-wife, alleges the congressman physically hurt her and their toddler. In court filings and police reports, Moreno has accused Miller of throwing her against a wall, leaving an “obvious grab mark on her upper arm”; throwing scalding water on her (an incident that Miller refuted as “horseplay”); and having “held a gun to her head.” Moreno also recounted an instance in which their daughter told her, “Daddy kill you.”

Medical records submitted during the couple’s custody dispute cited several injuries to their young daughter, as well, including a broken collarbone that Moreno claimed occurred during Miller’s care.

In other instances, Miller allegedly withheld his daughter’s favorite toy from her, and accidentally published audio recordings alleging his drug abuse as well as naked images of his daughter in misguided attempts to prove his own innocence.

It took the Ohio senator weeks to get publicly involved in the dangerous affair affecting his daughter and granddaughter, but Bernie Moreno finally denounced Miller earlier this month, writing in a post on X that the Donald Trump–backed Republican should “not serve in the House of Representatives.” At least five other senators have also urged Miller to drop out of his respective House race.

Miller has categorically denied the allegations and sued his ex-wife for defamation in May. He was never charged with a crime, and the Department of Children and Family Services did not find evidence to substantiate allegations of child abuse, according to court filings.

A science professor says he was fired from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, for refusing to ignore the human causes of climate change, and is now suing the institution in federal court.

Dr. Adam Kalkstein, a professor of geography, told The New York Times that the dean of West Point’s academic board, Brigadier General Shane Reeves, in a meeting last year ordered him to remove everything about human contributions to climate change, as President Trump sets the agenda as commander in chief. Kalkstein told Reeves that such a change would be immoral, and possibly illegal. When Reeves suggested Kalkstein resign, Kalkstein declined, after which the dean stormed out of the room.

“We’re only telling cadets part of the story. We’re lying to them, deceiving them. It would be like trying to teach the law without being able to even mention the Constitution,” Kalkstein reportedly said during the meeting, according to Stars and Stripes.

Six months later, Kalkstein, a tenured professor, was told his contract wouldn’t be renewed, and on Monday, he sued the institution in the Southern District of New York, alleging that his First Amendment rights were violated. The lawsuit states that the institution’s order would require Kalkstein “to omit a massive, fundamental, essential component of the court and to defy science.”

According to the Times, Kalkstein is a conservative Republican who believes military cadets need to know the truth about climate change for national security reasons rather than social justice. He wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arguing that knowing the causes of climate change was important for competing over resources in the Arctic and understanding why sea ice was melting.

Hegseth, along with the rest of the Trump administration, is trying to purge “wokeness” from government and military institutions, including any acknowledgment of climate change. Early in his tenure last year, Hegseth boasted on X that “The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”

That’s a major departure from previous administrations. In 2021, the Pentagon concluded in a report that “increasing temperatures; changing precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and unpredictable extreme weather conditions caused by climate change are exacerbating existing risks.”

Those risks still exist, but the Trump administration is flat-out ignoring the science for financial and culture-war reasons. Professors like Kalkstein, and the knowledge of America’s future military officers, are among the casualties.

The Iran war has gravely exacerbated the U.S. military’s advanced missile interceptor shortage in Europe.

The shortage is “beyond critical,” as supplies have been quickly and unexpectedly drained by the Iran war, according to a Europe-based U.S. defense official, as well as a NATO official who spoke with the Associated Press Thursday.

The deficit is most serious for the country’s Patriot missile interceptors, which are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles and aircraft but have been heavily relied upon during the war to stave off Iran’s Shahed swarming attack drones.

The deficit boils down to a supply chain problem. Iran’s drones are small, simple to manufacture, and cost roughly $20,000 to produce. They can be launched from almost anywhere, and use GPS to find their target. They’re typically launched en masse to overwhelm opposing defense systems.

Patriot missiles, meanwhile, cost between $3 million and $4 million per unit. An entire Patriot battery system can cost as much as $1.1 billion, including the launcher, radar, and missiles. As a result of the missiles’ enormous price tag, production of America’s highly sought-after Patriot system is relatively slow compared to its demand. In 2025, Lockheed Martin created 620 units of the Patriot missile. Iran, in comparison, is capable of producing about 10,000 drones per month, reported Reuters.

U.S. missile stockpiles were transferred from Europe to the Middle East to aid the war effort, but that has left NATO and American forces based in Europe empty-handed in the face of a potential Russian attack on the continent. The U.S. defense official told the AP that the situation could force America or its European allies “to take punch after punch in the mouth” should the Kremlin decide to launch an assault on a regional military base or nuclear facility.

European and NATO officials have warned that Russia could be in a strategic position to attack the alliance by 2030—though defense contractors have projected that America’s Patriot missile stockpiles should rebound by that point.

Russia has been involved all along: Just over one week into the conflict in March, The Washington Post reported that Russia had funneled military intelligence to Iran to assist the country in targeting U.S. forces. Afterward, Iran systematically destroyed U.S. missile defense systems across the Middle East, including radars and command infrastructure. In the early days of the war, an Iranian drone attack on a Kuwait operations center killed six U.S. soldiers and seriously wounded dozens more.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has rejected opportunities to buy tech that could have given U.S. forces a dramatic advantage in the war. Kyiv offered its expertise, as Ukraine has more experience fighting Shaheds than practically any other country, downing the same design under Russia’s flag (Russia rebranded the military tech as “Geran drones”). But the Trump administration passed.

However, the White House has expressed little public concern over the rising tensions. Speaking with reporters Thursday, Donald Trump said that he recently had “good talks” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he believed Putin’s “not going to be attacking.”

While Americans pay the price for President Trump’s war in Iran, he appears to be cashing in on it.

Trump made more than 1,000 dubiously timed stock trades in June, including thousands of dollars in exchanges with companies directly impacted by the Iran war, according to a CNN analysis of a filing with the Office of Government Ethics. As the war drags on, Trump’s portfolio seems to be thriving.

The filing reveals that Trump got involved with U.S. defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and RTX. Although the exact amounts the president traded are not disclosed in the filing, the dates conspicuously coincide with Iran negotiations between June 12 and 24. According to the filing, Trump purchased Lockheed Martin stock on June 15 and sold on June 16, one day before signing the now-defunct memorandum of understanding with Iran. He purchased Lockheed Martin stock again on June 23, less than a week after signing the deal.

Alongside those eyebrow-raising investments, the president bought and sold energy stocks with ExxonMobil and Chevron, each to the tune of somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500, as oil and gas prices skyrocketed for consumers.

Those investments join others in Palantir, Meta, Boeing, SpaceX, Broadcom, and Nvidia, all of which are currently in business with his administration. It’s no secret that Trump has used the presidency for profit—according to his 2025 financial disclosure, he made over $2 billion in his first year back in the White House alone. His personal gains, boosted by cryptocurrency ventures, foreign real estate, and his many, many stock trades, eclipse what any of his predecessors made during their time in office.

Still, the White House claims that Trump is not personally involved in his own investment portfolio. According to spokesman Davis Ingle, there are “no conflicts of interest,” and Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children.

The Iran war has made life more expensive for Americans. Gas prices are higher, groceries are more expensive, and inflation has crept back up. For Trump, it’s another investment opportunity.