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Ron DeSantis floats building a prison next to Disney World as he escalates feud

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday raised the stakes of his already acrimonious feud with the Walt Disney Company, not-so-subtly floating the possibility of opening a state prison on a plot of land adjacent to the corporation's Disney World theme park.

Speaking at the Reedy Creek Improvement District headquarters outside Orlando, DeSantis claimed Disney was acting in "direct defiance of the will of the people" when it preemptively stripped the RCID board's authority just as the state was poised to assume control of that body late last month.

"We want to make sure that Disney lives under the same laws as everybody else," DeSantis told the press, before putting forward a new legislative effort to undo Disney's regulatory maneuver. He also offered a number of proposals seemingly designed as punitive measures against the entertainment juggernaut, with whom he's been feuding for more than a year after Disney criticized his administration's anti-LGBT legislative push. Among DeSantis' proposals was potential legislation that would force the theme park to submit to state regulatory inspections for its rides, and potentially use land adjoining the park to "maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks."

"Someone even said like, maybe you need another state prison," he added. "Who knows? I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless."

In spite of DeSantis' claim that these measures were simply a matter of applying the "same laws as everyone else," he later reportedly hinted that other theme parks in the state would, in fact, remain exempt from the state's ride safety standards and inspections, and be allowed to continue their own regulation. Only Disney would be targeted by this latest proposed move. Earlier this month DeSantis also floated levying new hotel taxes and roadway tolls against the company, prompting CEO Bob Iger to gently push back in an interview with Time magazine, where he said that although he didn't see this latest round of posturing as a "going-to-mattresses situation for us — if the governor of Florida wants to meet with me to discuss all of this, of course."