Attention is being paid.

DeSantis' Week of Wins💯
✅ Disney drops suits; last minute agreements
✅ End of the Squatters Scam
✅ Congressional Maps survive activist challenges
✅ End of needless regulations (more wine!) https://t.co/GYCdaJYD4d

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) March 29, 2024

Here are some details.

Now that Disney settled the last of its lingering lawsnits over the dissolving of its private governmental domain in Central Florida (and with its stock price recently surging to a 23-month-high high while analysts fall back in love), the House of the Mouse looks ready to resume investing heavily in its theme park resort kingdom.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney are moving into a new chapter of a dramatic political story that captured the nation’s attention, one that could see better relations between the two.

Lawsuits have been settled, and now, both sides are striking a collaborative tone. A lot of money is at stake. Disney is planning to invest billions of dollars into its theme parks over the next decade.

Florida stands to benefit with new jobs, more tourists and huge economic investments. Disney needs to compete with Universal Studios’ fourth theme park Epic Universe opening in 2025. Working with Florida politicians will be key to success. …

Walt Disney World Resort President Jeff Vahle … spoke of “constructive engagement” with Florida officials that would enable continued investment and thousands of new jobs.

Remember when Donald Trump and Nikki Haley poked fingers at DeSantis for his presumed folly? Remember that? Good times. But wait! It turns out Dopey isn’t just a love-struck miner in a classic animated fairy tale.

Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida, sees the political dynamics somewhat differently. State officials prevailed in the courts, and DeSantis succeeded in both reforming Disney’s special district and boosting his political profile with conservative voters by making Disney into a national issue, he said.

“Disney has raised the white flag and surrendered over Cinderella’s castle,” Jewett said. “It is pretty clear they just folded, legally speaking.”

Disney likely made a calculation that its chances of winning in court weren’t good, and its financial interests were best served by working with Florida’s GOP leadership, he said.

Floridians also have witnessed plenty of righteous indignation from the usual suspects complaining DeSantis was spending millions of tax dollars defending against legal challenges he couldn’t possibly win. Such as the congressional maps he forced on the Legislature in response to the 2020 census.

About that. It turns out you can’t spell “dominated” without DEsANTIs.

A panel of federal judges upheld Florida’s congressional map, turning away a challenge that alleged it was discriminatory against Black voters after the district held by former Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat, was dismantled.

The decision is a substantial victory for Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who muscled the map through Florida’s GOP-controlled Legislature. The congressional map his administration crafted ultimately resulted in Republicans gaining four seats, helping the GOP flip the U.S. House during the 2022 midterm elections.

The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that those who challenged the map did not prove that Republican legislators discriminated against Black voters by adopting the map that was shaped by the DeSantis administration. Instead, the judges pointed out lawmakers initially resisted the governor’s plan only to then “run out of steam” and bow to the governor’s wishes.

“Consequently, whatever might be said about the Legislature’s decision to give up the fight for preserving a Black-performing district in North Florida, it did not amount to ratification of racial animus in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,” the opinion read.

So much winning.

It may turn out — we’re just spitballing here — that a former practicing litigator who graduated with honors from Harvard Law may have an understanding of what’s legal that is simultaneously greater, deeper, and more subtle than left-wing punditry and their hangers-on.

It is with that understanding in mind that we note DeSantis putting his signature to a couple of pieces of legislation this week designed to curtail the impact of homeless folks inflicting their sad conditions on property owners.

Consider the recent plague of squatters — some abetted by a mischief-making Venezuelan national living in Columbus, Ohio — commandeering private homes, then using the legal system to keep that they have stolen. 

Not on DeSantis’ watch.

Homeowners soon should be able to quickly remove squatters from their homes with a new law signed on Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis signed the "Property Rights" bill (HB 621) in Orlando, saying the law was the first of its kind in the United States.

"We don't want the law to have the thumb on the scale in favor of people that are violating the law," DeSantis said at a lectern with a sign that read "Ending the Squatters Scam."

"We want the law to have the thumb on the scale in favor of law abiding property owners, and that's what you're going to see here with this piece of legislation," he added.

Similarly, the governor signed into law legislation designed to prevent people from camping or sleeping on public property. The alternative: Municipalities will, by Oct. 1, designate a space, if shelters are full, where folks can spend the night. These camping facilities will have state-supported “wraparound services” designed to help “homeless individuals [access] resources they need to get back on their feet,” DeSantis said. Win-win.

We mentioned wind farms, which julienne birds and vex sea life, getting no love in Florida. Or climate change tomfoolery cropping up in official state documents. The demise of both in the third largest state recently became law with DeSantis’ quiet nudging. You could look it up.

We'd even acknowledge the jokes made on Xwitter about putting DeSantis in charge of restoring the felled Francis Scott Key Bridge, but it's way too early for that.

As for those who cannot take all this conservative winning, but who enjoy the climate (literal and low-tax), there’s also this: Come July 1, thanks to the Legislature and DeSantis, a proper son of Italy, retailers will be able to sell wine in jugs of up to four gallons.

Salut!