Florida AG Uthmeier’s $100,000 Secret Side Gig at UF
The Tampa Bay Times reports that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has been quietly collecting a $100,000-a-year teaching stipend from the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law — on top of his $140,000 state salary as attorney general. The arrangement was never publicly announced by UF, surfacing only after the Times began asking questions.
- Staggering Numbers: Uthmeier teaches two hours per week on Monday evenings, making him the highest-paid adjunct professor at UF’s law school in at least 25 years. His adjunct salary is eight times the national median for law school adjuncts. For context, Pensacola’s own Rep. Alex Andrade once taught as an adjunct at the University of West Florida for about $2,500 per course. UF is effectively paying Uthmeier $50,000 per class.
- The combined $240,000 in state-funded compensation makes Uthmeier one of the highest-paid figures in Florida government — nearly $100,000 more than Governor DeSantis himself earns annually.
Dig Deeper: According to the Times, the hiring was initiated by a UF Board of Trustees member — the identity of whom UF refuses to disclose — shortly after DeSantis appointed Uthmeier AG. The board is stacked with DeSantis allies and chaired by one of the governor’s biggest donors.
- Adding a layer of irony, one of Uthmeier’s courses examines “the implications of executive overreach.” When Andrade, a UF law alumnus, heard that, he laughed for ten seconds before delivering his verdict: “He’s an expert in executive overreach.”
UF also has no record of the required conflict-of-interest disclosures from Uthmeier. In DeSantis’s Florida, apparently, accountability is for everyone else.
Florida MAHA Coalition Pushes Back on Casey DeSantis Health Messaging
According to a report by Florida Politics, a Florida-based “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) coalition has drawn a clear line in the sand — Florida’s First Lady, Casey DeSantis, is not welcome to co-opt their movement, and they have polling to back it up.
Polling Says
MAHA Moms of Florida released a survey that paints a damaging picture of the First Lady’s credibility on health and food safety issues. The timing of her “Florida First Initiative,” which promotes removing toxins from the food supply, has struck many GOP primary voters as politically motivated rather than genuine. The group’s memo acknowledged that DeSantis’s push could have been viewed as a welcome development for the movement, but cautioned that her lack of credibility with voters could actually set the cause back rather than advance it.
- Stark numbers: 34% of GOP primary voters say they simply don’t believe the First Lady’s claims about food safety. Another 42% view her sudden embrace of health messaging as a strategic distraction from the ongoing controversy surrounding Hope Florida, her signature charitable initiative. That program faced serious scrutiny after allegations emerged that it was used as a conduit to funnel Medicare settlement money into political campaigns.
Why this poll matters: The MAHA faithful have already decided who owns this movement. A commanding 67% of respondents named President Donald Trump as the better steward of the MAHA agenda, compared to just 9% for the First Lady. Fifty-eight percent went further, saying DeSantis should stop trying to undermine Trump on the issue entirely.
- The message from Florida’s MAHA base is clear — this movement has a leader, and it isn’t Casey DeSantis.