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As of this morning, President Donald Trump has signed 35 executive orders since his inauguration, setting a record for the most executive orders issued by a president within the first week of a term. They encompass a range of directives, and several underscore the administration's commitment to tightening immigration policies and enhancing border security. And the president says he intends to implement 25% across-the-board tariffs on all goods from Mexico. So, we get some context on all of this from an FGCU political science professor who focuses on Mexican politics and history.

We talk with a political scientist who has been collaborating on a project to explore how minority parties are able to accomplish their goals. Dr. Andrew Ballard is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. His forthcoming book distills research that he, and his co-author have been doing that looks at U.S. Congressional power dynamics in history to see just how minority parties approach getting their goals into legislation, or in some cases obstruct the majority party’s efforts.

Florida is home to more than 500 nonnative species, more than 50 of which are reptiles. Current monitoring techniques depend on visual surveys by scientists, and this is far from an exact science because reptiles — particularly snakes — are extremely elusive. A new technique being developed by scientists at University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) can identify DNA traces of Burmese pythons — as well as northern African pythons, boa constrictors, and rainbow boas — weeks after they have left an area using soil or water samples.

At the 32nd Annual Southwest Florida Model United Nations conference at Florida Gulf Coast University in March, high school teams were challenged to imagine solutions for the problem of land-based plastics and the micro and nano plastics that we now know are in the world all around us. Cypress Lake High School’s Model UN team took top honors and a $1,000 prize for their presentation proposing a creative and actionable — and ambitious — plan to address plastic pollution along Southwest Florida’s Gulf Coast. We learn about their plan from one of the team's members.

Bacardi Jackson took over the role of Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida in May of 2024. Prior to joining the 60-year-old organization, Jackson was deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Democracy: Education and Youth” advocacy and litigation team, where she led efforts to stop the school-to-prison pipeline and to ensure equitable access to mental health services and high-quality public education in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. We talk about the work the ACLU of Florida is focusing on now, as the executives, both here in Florida and at the federal level, are exerting their executive power beyond the bounds of what we’re accustomed to.

The Lee County Supervisor of Elections Office says that the March 4 regular election in the village of Estero is canceled.

A week after an FGCU alert cautioned that bears were seen in the North Village student housing area of the university, a student at the South Village captured a wandering Yogi on video.The morning of June 24 the university issued a warning — "Eagle Alert: Bears seen near North Lake Village area, searching for trash. Please exercise caution. Use trash compactor-no trash bags in breezeways or open dumpsters."

Tim Love spent more than four decades in the world of global advertising. Since retiring in 2013, he has focused much of his attention on the way the online world operates today, and how it has been used to polarize us, and has greatly impacted mental health, particularly among young people. Love is author “Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World” and he’s host of a podcast called Tim Love's Discovering Truth where he interviews major players in the online and corporate world about the nature of truth and the trouble we find ourselves in.

Model UNs are educational simulations — basically role playing — that teach participating students diplomacy, international relations, and how the United Nations works. At Model UN conferences student delegates deeply study a United Nations member country, research topics of global interest, and work to get resolutions passed on that country’s behalf. They happen around the world at the high school and college level, and this week the Southwest Florida Model UN is happening on the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University, bringing together high school teams from schools around southwest Florida. It’s sponsored by the Naples Council on World Affairs in partnership with FGCU. Today we talk with its Keynote Speaker.

April 10 is Gopher Tortoise Day, as designed by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and the nonprofit Gopher Tortoise Council. So, we have a conversation about the importance of these large, long-lived reptiles that can be found in all of Florida’s 67 counties. These large, slow moving reptiles are crucial to ecosystems because of the deep burrows they dig and live in. More than 350 other species — known as commensals — take advantage of those burrows for shelter. Their main threats are cars while trying to cross roads, and development that occurs on the land where they live.