Garrett Shanley/Fresh Take Florida

Less than three weeks after taking over University of West Florida in Pensacola as interim president, Manny Diaz Jr. abruptly dismissed the school’s top legal officer after she objected to hiring one of his longtime allies: a politically connected law firm that earned millions in contracts when Diaz ran the Education Department under Gov. Ron DeSantis.The same Tallahassee-based firm, Lawson Huck Gonzalez, is now helping steer that university’s search for a permanent president – a post Diaz has said he intends to pursue. Trustees last week approved an annual compensation range for the next president between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

Florida’s public universities and colleges have just two weeks to turn over six years’ worth of records on staffing, research and grant funding as part of the first formal information request under Gov. Ron DeSantis’ newly mandated Department of Government Efficiency — a sweeping effort to identify “inefficiencies” in higher education.The DOGE team outlined the first phase of its audit In a letter to university presidents. Institutions were instructed to submit a vast set of documents: every awarded grant application and agreement, all publicly available research or academic drafts and a full accounting of all non-instructional staff positions — including job titles, salaries and whether the roles are in-person, remote or hybrid.