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On the 250th anniversary of the publication of Common Sense and amidst an American crisis, it’s time to re-learn its lessons—and apply them
The author’s copy of Common Sense. (Photo: Author)
Jan. 10, 2026 by David Silverberg
Back in 2002, during a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, Va., I came across a shop selling a facsimile of the pamphlet Common Sense. I wanted to read it the way a colonial would have read it, in the same form.
That proved a bit challenging. There are s’s that look like f’s. It uses British spellings like the frequently-used word “honor” as “honour.” It’s full of old usages like the word “hath,” which evolved into today’s “has,” “doth,” which evolved into “does,” and “‘tis,” which evolved into “its.” At the bottom of each page is the first word of the next page, to guide the printer in the proper order. Still, for all that, it’s worth persisting.
It’s a small publication: my copy measures 4 and ¼ inches by 6 and ¾ inches (10.8 cm by 17.1 cm) and is 80 pages long, not including the covers. The first editions were between 47 and 50 pages.
This little pamphlet was published exactly 250 years ago on this day, January 10, 1776.
It proved to be an intellectual earthquake that birthed a new nation.
There is a story that the author, Thomas Paine, was so enthusiastic and excited upon receiving his printed copies that he opened up the window of his lodging and started throwing copies to people passing by in the street. The story has never been historically verified, but even if untrue, it should be true. Paine knew he had written an original and powerful work. As he foresaw, it went on to shake the American colonies and ultimately the world.
On this day 250 years later, Common Sense is as relevant—and as urgent—as it was on that other January day. Indeed, today Paine might have called it No Kings!
OF MONARCHY AND HEREDITARY SUCCESSION
In Common Sense, Paine set himself the task of convincing American colonists that they should create a separate, sovereign state independent of Britain.
His first task in doing this was to demolish the legitimacy and authority of monarchy, then ruling the colonies, as a form of government.
Paine was writing about the English monarchy but his arguments went much further: he opposed monarchy in its fullest sense: “mono,” Greek for “one” and “archy,” Greek for “power” or “authority.” He was against one-man rule of any kind.
Knowing his audience, Paine first drew on Biblical references to show that monarchy was not only anachronistic but profane.
“Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom,” he wrote. “It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian World hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred Majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!”
He recounted all the arguments over kingship when the ancient Hebrews debated whether to anoint a king but his main point was that worshipping a single man violates the scriptural covenant with God.
“And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honour, should disapprove a form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of Heaven.” Monarchy, he wrote “in every instance is the popery of government.”
He also had no use for hereditary succession, which, he wrote, was another evil that added the “degradation of ourselves” to “an insult and imposition” on future generations.
All men having been created equal, “no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho’ himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”
Ultimately, all kings—and autocrats of any kind—for all their pretensions, ultimately have humble, if not disgraceful, origins.
He put this in a way that strikes a very contemporary chord: “This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have had an honorable origin: whereas it is more than probable, that, could we take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace them to their first rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or pre-eminence in subtilty obtained him the title of chief among plunderers… .”
Kingship, monarchy and autocracy of any kind, he argued, “opens a door to the foolish, the wicked, and the improper, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent.” [Emphasis ours.]
What was more, hereditary monarchy didn’t ensure peace as its advocates argued; quite the contrary, as a form of government it opened the gates to wars foreign and civil and constant strife, he argued.
“In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. ‘Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.” And further, “Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”
The immigrant
Thomas Paine, as depicted circa 1792. (Art: Laurent Dabos/National Portrait Gallery, UK)
The person who penned these words was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England on Feb. 9, 1737 to a humble tenant farmer who also made stays, the ribbing in women’s corsets. His father, Joseph, was a Quaker and his mother Frances was Anglican.
Paine attended grammar school at a time when schooling was not legally required. He apprenticed as a staymaker to his father and mastered the craft but then left home to become a privateer—a credentialed pirate—at the age of 19. Once he returned home he took up staymaking and opened his own shop.
Before 1774 Paine’s life was a chronicle of tragedies and failures. His business went broke and his wife died in labor along with their child. He separated from his second wife. He held a variety of low-level government jobs, ran businesses that failed and taught school for a time.
After moving to Lewes in Sussex in 1768 he became involved in civic affairs and began his first political writing. However, his string of professional setbacks continued.
In 1774 Paine moved to London where he was introduced to Benjamin Franklin, the lobbyist representing the American colonies. Franklin suggested that Paine emigrate to America, specifically the colony of Pennsylvania, and provided Paine a letter of recommendation.
Paine took the suggestion and arrived in America on Nov. 30, 1774, so sick from the passage that Franklin’s doctor had to have him carried off the ship. It took him six weeks to convalesce but once he did, he took an oath of allegiance to the Pennsylvania colony and took up work as editor of Pennsylvania Magazine.
At 38 years of age, Paine had finally found his niche.
‘TIS TIME TO PART!
Having demolished the legitimacy of monarchy as a form of government and specifically a form of American government in Common Sense, Paine now had to urge Americans to seek independence and do it right then.
“Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour,” he argued. To put it off independence was to simply postpone an inevitable conflict to a future generation.
He rejected all prospects of reconciliation. The battles of Lexington and Concord had occurred the previous April 19 followed by the battle of Bunker Hill the previous June. “All plans, proposals, &c. prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e. to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacks of the last year; which tho’ proper then, are superceded and useless now.”
If they sought independence the colonies were not merely establishing a new nation, they were creating a new world full of promise, he argued: “The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” he wrote. “‘Tis not the affair of a City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent—of at least one eighth part of the habitable Globe. ‘Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.”
Then his pen fairly screamed off the page in what today would be an all-caps tweet: “Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘TIS TIME TO PART!”
Hints and suggestions
But if the king were overthrown and America was independent, what would follow?
Paine acknowledged the fear and uncertainty plaguing undecided Americans. “If there is any true cause of fear respecting independance, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out,” he wrote.
He decided to “offer the following hints” and in answering this question Paine laid the intellectual groundwork, not only for the revolution that followed, but for the government that rose out of it. He has never been given the full credit due him for his role in creating the ideas that shaped the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the United States itself.
Writing later in the year in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, he proposed a name for the new country: “until, as other nations have done before us, we agree to call ourselves by some name, I shall rejoice to hear the title of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order that we may be on a proper footing to negotiate a peace.”
That suggestion came to pass.
In Common Sense he suggested that the colonies explain themselves to the world: “Were a manifesto to be published, and despatched to foreign Courts, setting forth the miseries we have endured, and the peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress; declaring at the same time, that not being able any longer to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British Court, we had been driven to the necessity of breaking off all connections with her; at the same time, assuring all such Courts of our peaceable disposition towards them, and of our desire of entering into trade with them: such a memorial would produce more good effects to this Continent, than if a ship were freighted with petitions to Britain.”
That manifesto was published seven months later as the Declaration of Independence. Just as Paine suggested, it was addressed to “a candid world” and set forth the principles, reasons for separation and complaints of the new nation.
Paine may have had a hand in drafting or editing the Declaration since his initials appear on a draft. But when the Declaration was published in July, it was published at the back of the Pennsylvania Magazine that Paine edited as a special feature, a surprising place for such a monumental document. Still, that publication marked its first appearance in an American magazine and appeared at the same time as newspapers carrying it as breaking news.
In Common Sense Paine proposed creating districts in each colony and annual assemblies of delegates to a Continental Congress, with a rotating president. Indeed, along the lines of this suggestion, the colonies founded a Continental Congress, which evolved into the House of Representatives.
Paine’s use of the word “president” was notable. At the time “president,” meaning “one who presides” (literally, from the Latin, “praesidens,” derived from “prae” or “before” and “sedere,” “to sit”) was not a widely used honorific. Ultimately it would be adopted as the title of the nation’s chief executive.
He proposed “A Committee of twenty six members of congress, viz. Two for each Colony.” This became the Senate.
“The conferring members being met, let their business be to frame a Continental Charter, or Charter of the United Colonies; (answering to what is called the Magna Charta of England) fixing the number and manner of choosing Members of Congress, Members of Assembly, with their date of sitting; and drawing the line of business and jurisdiction between them: Always remembering, that our strength is Continental, not Provincial.”
This “Charter” came to fruition as the Constitution of the United States.
Then he addressed another big issue.
“But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain.”
When the Charter was adopted, Paine proposed: “let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
Once the ceremony adopting the Charter was completed, Paine suggested that the ceremonial crown be taken down, smashed to pieces and the pieces distributed to the crowd, symbolizing NO KINGS!
An asylum for mankind
Paine fully understood that what could be created was entirely new.
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind,” he wrote. “…We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” he wrote.
He also stood straightforwardly for freedom of religion, religious diversity and open immigration.
When he suggested the Charter he argued that it should be “Securing freedom and property to all men, and above all things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience… .”
He went further in advocating “liberal” religious “diversity,” specifically using those terms: “For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us. It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness: were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle I look on the various denominations among us, to be like children of the same family, differing only in what is called their Christian names.”
Those ideas went on to be embodied in the Bill of Rights and the first sentence of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… .”
What is more, he saw America as a haven such as the world had never before known and he put it in passionate and emotional terms: “O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the Globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
As Paine conceived it, that was what America was founded to be; a haven and asylum for those seeking free faith and freedom.
Bestseller and author
A statue in Burnham Park, Morristown, NJ, of Thomas Paine writing the pamphlet “The Crisis” on a drumhead. (Photo: Diane Durante, used with permission)
Common Sense was a viral hit.
Paine estimated that it sold 100,000 copies. That would have been in a colonial population of about 2 million. Its sales may have been much higher and there were likely many unauthorized editions. It took pride of place next to the Bible in colonial homes. It was read aloud in taverns and at public meetings. It may very well be the bestselling American publication of all time and certainly the most widely circulated.
Paine deliberately kept his name off the publication, according to one telling, because he feared retaliation by the English government. However, as he put it in a note in the third edition: “Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man.”
Paine donated his proceeds to the Continental Army, which he joined after independence was declared.
During the conflict Paine marched with the troops and penned a series of pamphlets called “The American Crisis.” It was during the darkest days of the Revolution at the end of 1776 after defeats in New York that he sat down, writing on a drumhead according to legend, and penned what would become what was probably the most famous paragraph he ever wrote, starting with the words, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
In 1777 Paine was named secretary to the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs but clashed with the leadership and resigned. He was sent on a fundraising mission to France, where he worked with Benjamin Franklin, and then traveled to other countries in Europe to raise funds.
After the revolution Paine traveled back and forth from America to Britain, writing and pamphleteering the whole time.
As the French revolution broke out he became a passionate advocate for French republicanism, writing the tract Rights of Man in 1791 to counter Edmund Burke’s anti-revolutionary Reflections on the Revolution in France. He was granted honorary French citizenship and elected a member of the National Convention although he didn’t speak French.
As passionately republican though he was, Paine was a moderate in the spectrum of French politics and opposed execution of King Louis XVI. When radicals took over and initiated the reign of terror, Paine was imprisoned.
The story is that he was sentenced to be guillotined. However, the night before executions jailers would mark the cell doors of the condemned with chalk. Paine got the chalk mark but because the door was open, it was on the inside of the door and was overlooked the next morning.
A deliberate mistake? No one will ever know for sure but Paine was spared. He was released and readmitted to the Convention after the radicals fell.
Paine kept writing and pamphleteering, ever independent and contrarian. He advocated a French invasion of England and overthrow of the king, opposed Napoleon Bonaparte as “a charlatan,” attacked George Washington for not coming to his aid during his imprisonment and called him treacherous, hypocritical and unworthy of his fame.
He returned to America in 1802 on the invitation of President Thomas Jefferson and published The Age of Reason, submitting religious faith to his searching and intense logic.
“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life,” he wrote. “I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”
It was widely read but also widely condemned.
Paine died in New York City at the age of 72 on June 8, 1809. Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of them black freedmen honoring his consistent opposition to slavery. Quakers would not allow him to be buried in the cemetery he requested and the location of his bones—if they still exist—are unknown today.
Thomas Paine’s death mask. (Photo: WikiMedia Commons)
Legacy, relevance—and immediacy
When he started writing Common Sense, Paine had only two tools at his disposal: language and logic.
He was just another immigrant to America, someone unremarkable and ordinary in daily life, in no way prepossessing or outstanding. His greatest asset was the letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Otherwise, he had nothing.
But he was caught up in the spirit of America and it inspired him to express his thoughts. He could not know if his ideas would meet public approval or even be noticed. Still, the concept of starting anew, of a continent full of potential, of creating something better, of righting wrongs and seeking freedom were so inspiring that he made the effort.
That effort and the pamphlet it produced created the intellectual framework for the American revolution. But more, it created a mindset and outlook and birthed fundamental principles that molded American thinking and behavior that have lasted 250 years.
Until now.
The Enlightenment ideas in Common Sense were attacked when they were published. They have been under threat ever since. In the 20th century they came under attack from European Fascism. But those ideas inspired defiance and resistance. Ultimately, they triumphed with the democracies and went on win over a part of the world that called itself “free.” With the fall of the Soviet Union they swept the part of the world that had been under the Communist heel and went on to spark color revolutions and the Arab Spring.
Today the ideas of Paine and Common Sense are under attack in the country whose birth they inspired and by a president whose office Paine conceived.
They are threatened by a man who sees himself as king, one who is most “foolish,” “wicked,” and “improper” as Paine warned.
All of Paine’s admonitions against the concentration of power in a single man’s hands, about elevating one person high above other people, about immunity from the law, about the potential for insolence, corruption and arrogance, are suddenly blazing anew in the person of Donald Trump.
What is more, they are under direct physical attack. The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis at the hands of masked and unaccountable agents and long before her, the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va., at the hands of a neo-Nazi, are attacks on Common Sense and its ideas of law, justice and democracy. As Paine would have put it, “the blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature” cries out for redress.
But Paine also understood that in addition to revolt and resistance, freedom required friendship and cooperation among all people of like mind. He put this very well in Common Sense.
“WHEREFORE, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissention. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen; an open and resolute friend; and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND, and of the FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.”
But as he learned—and as Americans are learning now—good intentions are not enough. Today, at a time of duress as acute as that 250 years ago, it makes sense to draw on Paine’s wisdom written in the cold and misery of failure and crisis. It’s his most famous paragraph and one that sheds light in even the darkest times, and one so immediate that it might have been written this morning. But as it did then, today it provides inspiration to persist and look to the dawn of the day after tomorrow.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Art: Dennis Goris
To read and download a full PDF of Common Sense from Google Books, click below.
Floridians face a fork in the road in the year ahead in this artificial intelligence-generated illustration. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Jan. 5, 2026 by David Silverberg
This year Florida voters will face choices that will determine how they live their lives as well as the direction and destiny of their state—even more so than in “normal” election years.
At the top of the list will be the race for governor.
Then there is election of a senator. The current senator, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), is running in her own right after being appointed in January by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to fill in the unexpired term of Marco Rubio, who was appointed Secretary of State.
The race for Chief Financial Officer will be unusually important and competitive this year as well and the race for Attorney General will see the incumbent, James Uthmeier, creator of the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp, defending his seat.
On the same ballot will be elections for offices at all levels including members of the House of Representatives but also state, county and municipal offices. Because President Donald Trump will be on the road stumping for his candidates, Floridians should expect some Trump rallies to boost their chances.
In the legislature two major issues will dominate the session that begins Jan. 13, or possibly a special session: whether to redistrict Florida in mid-decade and whether to abolish property taxes.
Beyond these political occurrences, Florida is scheduled to host two major scheduled events this year: Miami will be one of 11 American cities hosting Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup games.
In December, Miami will again be the host city for the G20 summit of the world’s leading economic powers at the Trump National Doral Miami resort and spa.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is term-limited and so his seat is up for grabs.
Media coverage of the race conveys the impression that only three Republicans and two Democrats are seeking their parties’ nomination.
In fact, as of Jan. 3 there were 11 Republicans, 9 Democrats and 14 non-party, independent, other party and write-in candidates running for Governor, according to the Florida Department of State.
Declared candidates for governor, as of Jan. 3, 2026. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
The ultimate filing deadline is noon, June 12, 2026, so this list can be expected to get perhaps a bit shorter as candidates drop out—but more likely a lot longer.
It’s in this kind of situation that a free and independent media should play its democratic role in winnowing the field to what are generally considered the “serious” candidates.
On the Republican side, the leading candidate is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who was endorsed by President Donald Trump even before he declared his candidacy in February. Donalds has also been endorsed by businessman Elon Musk, other large donors and a slew of Republican officeholders in the state and has a reported war chest of $40 million. However, this includes contributions to his congressional campaign, which the Federal Election Commission ruled must be refunded to donors, a dispute that was unresolved as of this writing.
Two other credible Republican candidates are former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, and businessman James Fishback.
Hovering in the wings are Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R) and Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, who was long considered a possible contender. By the end of the past year she had not definitively stated her status one way or another, although a run seemed doubtful, and Collins had not declared his candidacy, despite much media speculation.
On the Democratic side the leading contender is David Jolly, a former congressman and converted Republican who has been actively campaigning throughout the state. To the degree that he has any serious challenger within the Party, it comes from Jerry Demings, the Orange County mayor and former sheriff.
(Editor’s note: The most notable candidate in the running, based entirely on name alone, is Republican Shea Cruel. A Cruel versus Jolly race would generate headlines for the ages.)
Two big issues hovering over the gubernatorial race are the degree to which the new governor will continue DeSantis’ culture war against “woke” and policies—particularly against immigration and migrants—and the new governor’s relations with Trump if Trump is in office during the governor’s full tenure.
Despite the seriousness of these issues, the contest on the Republican side has already turned nasty and personal and can expected to become more so as Primary Election Day, Aug. 18, approaches. Candidates clearly see the race turning on personal factors and there is no indication this will change as the year progresses.
(The Paradise Progressive will be covering the gubernatorial race and candidates in much more detail in days to come.)
The Senate race
Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.) will be defending her seat this year. Serving as the state attorney general, she was appointed senator by DeSantis in January when sitting senator Marco Rubio was named Secretary of State. In this election Moody will be seeking the office in her own right.
There are already a slew of candidates both on the Republican primary side and among Democrats and independents.
An early Democratic opponent, Joshua Weil, who made a name for himself as a very effective fundraiser in a special congressional election, dropped out of the race in July due to medical conditions. Alexander Vindman, a resident of Broward County and retired US Army colonel whose whistleblowing on Trump’s phone call leading to his first impeachment, has also fueled speculation about a Democratic run for the seat.
However, Moody as the incumbent has the clear advantage in name recognition, funding and endorsements. She won attorney general seats twice in statewide races in 2018 and 2022, although without serious opposition.
However, the unexpected always lurks around the corner.
Candidates for Florida’s Senate seat as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
The Chief Financial Officer race
The state of Florida created the office of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in 2002, consolidating several finance-related positions into a single Office of Financial Regulation.
This is an elected, Cabinet-level position that is third in line to succeed the governor after the lieutenant governor. There have been four CFOs since its creation, three Republicans, one Democrat as well as a brief acting CFO.
Blaise Ingoglia (R) is the fifth CFO, appointed in July 2025 when the previous one, James “Jimmy” Patronis, stepped down to run for a congressional seat in a special election in the 1st Congressional District to replace the resigning Matt Gaetz.
This year Ingoglia is running to fill a full, four-year term in his own right.
Ingoglia served as a state senator from the 11th District, which covered the largely rural Citrus, Hernando, and Sumter counties and part of Pasco County. Before that he served as a member of the state House of Representatives.
Ingoglia, originally from Queens, NY, moved to Spring Hill, Fla., in 1996 where he worked in real estate and then entered politics in 2008.
Ingoglia has been a consistently extremely conservative politician, often pushing the most radical ideas on issues like immigration enforcement, voting accessibility and taxation.
While there are 6 candidates running for the office, the most credible other candidate is state Sen. Joe Gruters (R-22-Sarasota) who is currently also serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). He was also former treasurer of the RNC and served as chair of the Florida Republican Party from 2019 to 2023.
Gruters received Trump’s “complete and total” endorsement for CFO in 2024 and is promoting himself as the true America First, Make America Great Again (MAGA) believer, in contrast, he says, to Ingoglia. At the same time DeSantis attacked Gruters as insufficiently conservative.
There is only one non-Republican candidate for the office, John Smith, an Orlando businessman with a hurricane storm shutter business, who is running as non-party affiliated. As of Jan. 3 there were no Democratic Party candidates.
Smith’s candidacy closes the Republican primary to non-Republicans, effectively disenfranchising Democratic voters unless a Democratic candidate appears before the deadline. In this he is effectively functioning as what is known as a “ghost” candidate.
Unless the field changes, this will be a cramped, internecine Republican Party battle based on the fervor of the various candidates’ belief, the purity of their extremism and the ability to appeal to a hardcore MAGA base. It will likely be decided in the August 18 primary.
Candidates for the position of Florida CFO as of Jan. 3.(Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Attorney General
This year James Uthmeier (R) will be defending his seat as Florida Attorney General against a Republican challenger and two Democratic Party candidates.
Uthmeier, 38, was appointed in February 2025 to take the place of Ashley Moody when she was made senator by DeSantis. Prior to that he served as the governor’s chief of staff.
In his short time as Attorney General, Uthmeier has proven an aggressive, heavily ideological and outspoken partisan.
Uthmeier’s Republican opponent is Steven Leskovich, a trial attorney who has lived in Florida for 30 years and states that he’s running to defend the Constitution, eliminate corruption, fight crime, “and political weaponization in the justice system.”
There are two Democratic candidates.
Jim Lewis is a political aspirant who previously ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic attorney general nomination in 2022 and mayor of Fort Lauderdale in 2023 as well as a variety of other state and county offices.
Jose Javier Rodriguez served in the Florida House and Senate and was Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training from April 2024 to the end of President Joe Biden’s term in office.
Candidates for the position of Florida Attorney General as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Commissioner of Agriculture
While the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture has broad responsibilities and authorities to support and regulate the state’s agriculture, consumer protection and environment, the office is usually a non-controversial one. However, as a Cabinet position it has also proved a platform for aspiring statewide candidates.
In 2018 Nicole “Nikki” Fried won the seat, the only Democratic Party candidate to attain statewide office that year. After leaving office in 2023 she became chair of the Florida Democratic Party. In 2018 Adam Putnam was the leading contender for the Republican gubernatorial nomination until Trump endorsed DeSantis.
This year, as of Jan. 3 there were three candidates for Agriculture Commissioner: Republican Matthew Taylor, Democrat Chase “Andy” Romagno and non-party affiliated Kyle Gibson, who is currently seeking petition signatures to run for governor, rather than commissioner.
Candidates for the position of Florida Agriculture Commissioner as of Jan. 3. (Chart: TPP from FDoS)
Midterms and The Big Rig
Florida appears on the brink of joining Trump’s effort to gerrymander congressional districts nationwide in order to determine the election’s outcome in his favor. Given his use of the word “rig,” “rigged” and “rigging” to denote manipulation of a process, it seems only appropriate to dub his gerrymandering project “The Big Rig.”
It is very difficult to say how the rigging process will play out in Florida. At the end of the year, as the legislature began its early committee hearings, DeSantis and House Speaker Rep. Daniel Perez (R-116-Miami) were both pushing for it. However, DeSantis was floating the idea of a special session while Perez wanted to get it done by the end of the regular session on March 13. By contrast, Senate President Sen. Ben Albritton (R-27-Bartow) was more cautious and in agreement with DeSantis.
Regardless of the timing, there seems agreement to rig Florida’s districts among the legislature’s Republican supermajority. Democrats, as to be expected, are opposed and are backed by grassroots opponents. However, when the House held its first procedural committee hearing on redistricting, the public was shut out and no comments from the floor were allowed—no doubt a preview of what is likely to be a forced, arbitrary and undemocratic effort by lawmakers.
If Florida does rig its congressional map, every federal representative and challenger will be affected. Even if Republicans pick up some additional ostensibly Republican districts, that may not matter as much as it would in previously “normal” elections. There is also virtually no doubt that any new map will be challenged in court.
However it ultimately turns out, the battle is already introducing a new level of tumult and turmoil in this year’s already roiled Florida political scene.
Affordability and the property tax debate
Life for everyday Americans is getting more expensive and difficult. The only person who seems to disagree with this assessment is President Donald Trump, who has dismissed discussion of affordability as “a Democratic hoax.”
Florida Democrats, like their counterparts across the country, recognize voters’ stress and are making affordability key plank in their 2026 platform.
“Prices are rising, period. And we are seeing Republican politicians pander to DC and squabble amongst themselves instead of fixing the problem, so Democrats are offering ideas,” Florida House Democratic Leader Rep. Fentrice Driskell (D-67-Temple Terrace) told a press conference on Dec. 8.
The Democrats are already offering legislation to make inroads on high costs but as a minority in a supermajority Republican legislature, the road to passage is steep and the odds are long.
In Florida the affordability crisis is especially acute and the result of a variety of factors like the high proportion of seniors on fixed incomes.
But playing a major role are natural factors like prevalent and frequent disasters like hurricanes, which drive up insurance costs while at the same time making insurers flee the state. Furthermore, climate change is driving up the risks to the state’s residents while the Republican-dominated state government determinedly denies its existence. That in turn dampens efforts to build climatic resilience, increasing the state’s vulnerability to disasters, which in turn drives up costs and insurance rates, in a vicious cycle.
This has had the practical effect of devastating Florida’s low-cost labor pool, which previously provided migrant and immigrant labor, particularly in the construction, hospitality, tourism and agricultural sectors. That in turn has driven up the costs of goods and services as labor becomes scarcer and more expensive, the cost of which is passed on to consumers.
(Additionally, Trump’s threats to Canada and his enmity to visiting foreigners has dampened a once-robust tourism industry important to Florida’s economy.)
That their own policies might be exacerbating the affordability crisis for Floridians is not an admissible notion for the Florida Republicans in power, so they must seek some relief in a different remedy.
Taxation has never been popular in Florida and now DeSantis wants to take anti-taxation to a new level and abolish property taxes altogether.
Florida is already a low-tax state. It has no income tax, estate or inheritance taxes. Its tax collection is very low per capita. Most importantly, it features a homestead exemption that reduces the assessed, taxable value of a lived-in home and limits annual property tax increases.
DeSantis floated the idea of ending property taxes in his annual State of the State address on March 4, 2025.
“While Florida property values have surged in recent years, this has come at a cost to taxpayers squeezed by increasing local government property taxes,” he said. “Escalating assessments have created a gusher of revenue for local governments—and many in Florida have seen their budgets increase far beyond the growth in population. Taxpayers need relief. You buy a home, pay off a mortgage—and yet you still have to write a check to the government every year just to live on your own property? Is the property yours or are you just renting from the government?”
Since then the debate over the future of property taxes in Florida has been percolating at a relatively low level but this year when the legislature convenes on Jan. 13 it will be coming to a full boil.
Local governments depend on property taxes to provide basic services, income for schools and infrastructure maintenance and improvement—and the revenue has hardly been a “gusher.” Experts and local officials have been making the case that an end of property taxes would cripple their operations.
“Local governments would lose fiscal autonomy as they would no longer collect property taxes, and they would become dependent on the state for funding (whether it is for schools or other public services like police and fire services),” warned the Florida Policy Institute in an in-depth paper, “A Risky Proposition: Weakening Local Governments by Eliminating Property Tax Revenue,” issued in February.
At the same time CFO Ingoglia has been prowling the state in imitation of Elon Musk and the now-abolished Department of Government Efficiency (locally renamed FAFO, which has a profane generic meaning but in this case stands for the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight).
Ingoglia was trying to highlight what he said was wasteful spending by local governments but they pushed back.
“This whole thing is a made-for-television event, and it’s specifically made for television for the CFO’s re-election,” said Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine (R-District 3) at a forum in November. At the same event Broward County Democratic Commissioner Steven Geller (D-District 5) was similarly scornful. “Check the numbers,” he said of Ingoglia’s audit of his county. “Because they are fictitious. Made-up. Phony. False.”
In addition to its impact on local governments, experts are warning that abolishing property taxes would have to be made up with sales taxes that fall most heavily on the least wealthy Floridians, the working and middle classes, while benefiting the rich. Florida is already the most “regressive” tax state in the nation and ending property taxes would make the burden even more extreme.
Realtors have also warned that ending property taxes would drive up home prices by 9 percent, repelling new home buyers and renters from the market.
These are thorny, difficult and ultimately increasingly emotional issues that will likely dominate the legislative session and all of 2026.
Two paths diverged
The year’s elections will take place amidst an increasingly fragmented Republican legislative majority.
The days of automatic obedience to DeSantis when he was running for president are over. State Republicans, especially House Speaker Perez, are proving contrarian and intractable—or skeptical and independent, depending on one’s point of view.
This is in no way implies a repudiation of Trumpism. In fact, during the 2025 session the battle between DeSantis and Perez was over who was more passionate and committed in the service of Trump’s hatred of migrants and immigrants. DeSantis viewed the proposals by Perez and the legislature as too weak and when the legislature passed its own TRUMP (Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy) Act, (CS/SB 2B), DeSantis vetoed it.
While the rest of the country may be revolting against Trump’s threats and bullying, in Florida legislative pushback against an equally bullying and autocratic state government remains relatively tepid and weak.
Ultimately, the fissures and faults in Florida’s governance will have to be resolved by the primary and general elections this year.
It’s as though Floridians stand at a crossroads: one path leads into sunshine and a brighter future, the other into a dark, watery swamp—and as every Floridian knows, where there’s water, there may be alligators.
When you live in Florida, you have to pick your steps with care, whether in the streets, by the streams—or in the voting booth.
A new flag for a new movement? (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Jan. 2, 2026
The United States of America today has gone from a beacon of democracy to a dictatorship. The time has come to end that dictatorship.
This can be done non-violently, democratically, legally and constitutionally but it needs to be a revolution nonetheless.
This year’s political activity, whether grassroots street protests or midterm election efforts, whether rhetorical or physical, should be seen, not as fragmented, individual efforts but as part of a broad and reaching cultural, political and legal movement—and revolution.
Perhaps the best metaphor for this revolution and a physical expression of it lies in a small patch of ground, about 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House.
It was known as the White House Rose Garden.
In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, working with professional landscape architects and botanists, reshaped the space into a formal garden, bordered by flowers, primarily roses. It was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected her own.
Views of the White House Rose Garden in 2007. (Photos: National Park Service)
In the first administration of President Donald Trump, a new limestone walk was installed, many of the previous trees were removed and flowers were consigned to the sides, all allegedly at the command of First Lady Melania Trump. Presidential historian Michael Beschlosscalled the alteration an “evisceration” and said that “decades of American history [was] made to disappear.”
In the second administration of President Donald Trump the Rose Garden was paved over entirely. It is now a Mar-a-Lago-style patio with a private “Rose Garden Club” to go along with it, restricted to Trump’s closest sycophants and enablers.
The paving over of the White House Rose Garden in the second Trump administration. (Photo: Instagram)
President Donald Trump dines with co-conspirators on the White House patio. (Photo: White House)
In the Rose Garden can be seen the struggle between Trump and the American people.
Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He has demolished the East Wing, on his own authority, to replace it with an expensive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name.
But the White House does not “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people whom each resident serves and holds in trust for the next occupant.
The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.
The time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.
And it is time to restore the Rose Garden to its previous state of beauty, grace and elegance.
But it’s not just about restoring the Rose Garden itself; the time has come to restore democracy, dignity and decency to American public life.
The time has come for an American Rose Revolution.
A new color revolution
In the past, a wave of what were called “color revolutions” swept the world when people long deprived of freedom and democracy demanded it. The very first of these was in the country of Georgia, which had long been part of the Soviet Union. When Georgia regained its independence, its people mounted a Rose Revolution to say that they didn’t want the kind of dictatorship they had endured in the past, they wanted freedom for the future.
The Georgia Rose Revolution was followed by others as people strove for freedom and democracy: the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the People’s Movement (Otpor! or “outpouring”) in Serbia and the Arab Spring in the Middle East.
When Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower in July 2015 (a descending metaphor in itself!) no one believed that this one man would turn the greatest democracy in the world into a source of fear, oppression and threat reflecting his own hatreds, prejudices and rages. No one imagined that he would turn a people’s presidency into a despotic dictatorship.
But he has done that and the time has come to end it.
What is the American Rose Revolution?
The American Rose Revolution needs to be an effort that transcends political party or past allegiances. It should be the effort of every single American at all levels to right the wrongs that have been done and restore democracy—and not just its outward forms but its inner values: civility, respect and allegiance to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and the rights to participate, enjoy and contribute to the common good of each and every American, regardless of his or her race, creed, or place of birth.
It needs to be a revolution to gain freedom from fear as Americans cease to cower in the face of insults, threats and bullying by Donald Trump and his regime.
One of democracy’s great strengths is that it provides hope—hope that things can change for the better, that there will always be new chances and new opportunities to improve one’s own life and the lives of others. Dictatorship, by contrast, thrives on hopelessness—crushing any hope that anything can change without the intervention or approval of the dictator. Americans have always rejected this and they must reject it again.
So an American Rose Revolution needs to be a cultural revolution of hope and joy against hopelessness and despair.
An American Rose Revolution should be a revolution in which every American can participate by simply being civil to neighbors, by fully, actively and legally participating in political activities and civic life in contrast to the threats, insults and lying of Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) cult; by calling out obvious wrongs and exposing wrongdoing.
This year the first opportunity to support the American Rose Revolution comes with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If still in office on July 4th 2026, there can be no doubt that Trump will try to hijack and make this celebration about himself. There is no other possibility. He cannot abide a situation where he is not the center of attention and flattery and that will certainly apply to the observation of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
But for all other Americans, the 250th anniversary has to be a time to rediscover and remember the ideals and principles that led to the first American revolution; that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and that no one man should be able to take them away.
It will also be a time to read some of the original complaints that impelled that Declaration when they wrote about King George III: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither;” he has “obstructed the Administration of Justice;” he “has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures;” he was “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”
And it is worth remembering the conclusion that the Founders reached: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Fortunately, the American Constitution provides a civil and peaceful means to enact change and the next chance for that will come in elections slated for November. By vigorously participating in election activities, supporting campaigns, working for democratic candidates, registering voters, working at the polls and then being sure to vote, all Americans can contribute to making the change that’s needed.
These are traditional, legal and legitimate activities that have long been the essence of democratic, elected government. But this year not only are they more important than ever, they are revolutionary. It won’t just be an election, it has to be turned into an American Rose Revolution.
And those who wish to show their support and approval can use the rose as a symbol of their defiance, courage and hope, wherever, whenever and however they choose to do so.
New amendments
But beyond the general commitment to restoring American dignity and decency, there are some specific proposals that would improve and protect the United States, built from the experience of Trump’s tyranny. These presume that the Constitution remains in force and the procedure for amendments intact.
Passage of a 28th Amendment
The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.
On July 1, 2024 the majority of the United States Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity from the law for their official actions in the case of Trump vs. United States.
In practice, this ruling gave Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate for the second time, immunity from American laws when he gained the presidency. He won the presidency and began governing—actually, ruling—without regard to law, precedent or the Constitution, secure that nothing he did would face legal restraint or recrimination. It effectively led to a dictatorship.
Not only that, Trump vs. United States violates the very principle emblazoned on the lintel of the Supreme Court building: “Equal Justice Under Law.” The ruling creates a single, unaccountable individual above and beyond the reach of the law that applies to all others, in effect, a king. It violates the very first truth of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
It is time to correct this. In the future, everyone, whether president or everyday citizen, must be subject to the same laws. Since the inherent meaning of the Declaration is unclear to the majority of the current Supreme Court, it must take a constitutional amendment to state this principle outright. All people are created equal in the eyes of the law and that is what the 28th Amendment will do. No kings.
Passage of a 29th Amendment
No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.
When ratified in 1788, the only qualifications for the position of President were that the individual be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.
Those requirements were sufficient to ensure that relatively qualified people filled the office. Given that there had not been a United States before ratification of the Constitution, a prior-office qualification could not be included.
But after 250 years it is time to add to the qualifications for president. It seems a rather low bar to require that a person qualified for President should have the experience of serving in at least one prior elected position—and the position can be anything, from school board to dog catcher. The main point is that the person should have at least one experience of winning the approval of voters and experience the responsibility of serving them before aspiring to the highest office in the land.
As with a prior elected position, the amendment includes holding a military command as a qualification. From such a command the person in question, who has already proven his or her service to the country, will have the experience of being in a position of responsibility and authority. The amendment does not designate a rank, it just requires the experience of command at some level as a qualification.
This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a candidate running—or governing—from prison. And it says: criminals need not apply.
Other measures
There are many other issues that need to be addressed and what follows are only a few of them, in no particular order. This list does not go into details, it simply proposes principles that all reasonable people can work toward as part of an American Rose Revolution.
Immigration: “To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”
America is special because it’s not just a country, it’s also an idea. In the past, America’s ideals of life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness were considered so compelling and attractive that any thinking human could grasp them, live by them and become an American by adhering to American laws and contributing to American society.
Trump and his regime not believe this. They believe in hatred, prejudice and rage. But more, they no longer believe that American ideals and values are sufficiently compelling to inherently attract the allegiance and support of immigrants once they’re American citizens. Nor do they want non-white immigrants to become Americans and live by American laws and principles. They reject these ideals and express their rejection with brutality, threats and violence.
This should not continue. Borders need to be secure, the law must be enforced and those currently in the country without documentation need to comply with American requirements—but they should also have an incentive for compliance and lawful behavior and be treated with due process and reasonable humanity. Those undocumented migrants who came to the United States as children through no volition of their own deserve to have an opportunity for citizenship if they seek it as long as they have clean criminal records.
This all can be done in a rational, humane and lawful way. Requests for asylum should be evaluated on reasonable, humanitarian grounds with the wellbeing and dignity of the requestor as key factors. Citizenship should be granted on the basis of knowledge of the country, its laws and an oath of allegiance.
Asked what the attitude of the new United States might be toward the Jewish community, Washington replied that in America, toleration extended to all.
As he wrote: “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Every American, every naturalized immigrant, as long as he or she performs as a good citizen, obeys the laws and gives the country “their effectual support” should be welcomed and protected by the United States.
It is time that the United States once again, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
All this requires comprehensive immigration reform and the federal government—both legislative and executive branches—should work toward a solution that secures the country, provides a legal path to citizenship, allows for guest workers and treats migrants and asylum seekers with dignity and respect.
Ending ICE
Every sovereign nation must secure its borders, protect them, allow legitimate trade and travel while filtering out criminals and contraband, and have a mechanism to enforce its laws.
This is ostensibly the job of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
However, ICE has been vastly misused and its mission twisted into pursuing mass ethnic and racial population changes. Its warrantless searches and seizures, its masked and unidentified agents, its lack of legal approval, its concentration camps, its absence of due process, its secret transportations and deportations and its deliberate efforts to instill fear are all in contravention of not only the letter of the Constitution but its spirit. It has gone from a form of law enforcement to a paramilitary tool of terror.
ICE cannot be allowed to continue in its current form and is so tainted by its conduct it cannot be sufficiently altered to regain public confidence. It should be abolished as a DHS directorate and taken out of DHS. The previously independent Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should be revived to serve immigrants and the American public. Enforcement should be handed to the Border Patrol or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with creation of an internal enforcement element in whatever agency is appropriate. INS and Border Patrol or the FBI can then coordinate with DHS for other homeland security functions.
All anti-immigrant concentration and deportation camps must be closed, starting with Florida’s infamous Alligator Alcatraz.
Real Americans don’t build concentration camps—real Americans liberate them.
Reaffirmation of birthright citizenship
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the United States is an American citizen: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
That should not be allowed to happen. The United States Congress needs to resoundingly reaffirm its support for the 14th Amendment with its grant of birthright citizenship so that there can be no mistake about where the United States stands. Full stop.
Restraints on tariffs
There must be some form of oversight and restraint on the imposition of tariffs. While any President must have some leeway and flexibility to respond to changing conditions there clearly has to be some enhanced form of congressional oversight and restraint.
This could take the form of a congressional veto: If the president proposes a tariff then Congress has 30 or 60 days to stop it. This could take place in one chamber or both. But the kind of wild, unnecessary and very personal and whimsical tariffs that Donald Trump imposed cannot be allowed to disrupt American trade and impoverish Americans again.
Healthcare as a right
The American people have a right to expect that their government will aid the state of their health to the greatest extent possible, through all possible means.
The Affordable Care Act must be repaired from the damage done to it during the Trump presidency.
Reliance on science
Throughout its history the people of the United States have relied on the scientific method to determine the physical state of the world around them and to safeguard their health and wellbeing. As a basic principle of governing, the United States needs to return to reliance on rigorous, unbiased scientific research and investigation in making the decisions affecting its policies and the welfare of its people.
Protecting public health
The government of the United States has a duty to protect and improve the health of the people of the United States based on sound science and rigorous research independently pursued without political or ideological interference.
The United States had the most robust, reliable and principled public health system in the world before Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration and the entire health infrastructure and the people who served it.
The damage done to these critical institutions must be repaired and the research that was under way restored. Sound science and the health of the American people must be the principles that guide the protection of Americans’ health and wellbeing and government of the people has a responsibility to do that.
Supporting climate science
Before the Trump presidency the United States was the world’s leader in the objective study and evaluation of the world’s climate and the changes occurring to it through either human or natural processes.
Because the results were unfavorable to current practices and prejudices, this effort was denounced by opponents as a “climate alarm industry” and its conclusions rejected in favor of old energy uses and routines.
This is unsustainable and will cost lives. It is a course that will ultimately destroy the planet. The United States must restore its efforts to scientifically study and respond to climate changes and prepare for their effects. It must once again take a leadership role in protecting and nurturing all life on the planet and its continuation. The United States must rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, adhere to its principles and recommit to doing what it can to slow damaging climate change.
Helping in disasters and building resilience
Because the climate is changing Americans need to prepare for its impacts and their government needs to assist them in every way possible.
The chief agency for aiding Americans in the event of disaster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As imperfectly as it may have functioned in the past, over time it became the most effective possible mechanism to respond to natural and man-made disasters and then assist in resilient rebuilding after they passed. As its motto stated, it helped Americans before, during and after disasters.
FEMA became a target of Donald Trump’s unreasoning hatred for partisan political reasons during the 2024 election campaign. He wanted to abolish it. His Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was similarly critical, personalized disaster aid and added an approval requirement that virtually stopped the agency from functioning altogether.
FEMA needs to be restored because its mission is too important to the American people and will become even more vital as a changing climate imposes new contingencies.
FEMA should be broken out of DHS and made a full Cabinet department. The experiment of having it part of DHS has failed and the Trump regime has made clear that it is too prone to abuse in its current form. Its head should report directly to Congress and the President and it needs the latitude of independence to completely and neutrally fulfill its mission.
An independent, Cabinet-level FEMA, responsibly managed, will truly help the American people prepare, respond and recover from disasters and emergencies.
Cleaning up corruption
The Trump regime is notorious for its dubious deals, questionable pardons, personal enrichment and commercial schemes—and those are the practices that are blatantly obvious in public. There’s no telling what has gone on below the surface.
Corruption and crime in the presidency, among high officials and their accomplices must be exposed, investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by an impartial, incorruptible and objective federal government and law enforcement establishment motivated by adherence to the law and commitment to seeing justice done on behalf of the American people. All ill-gotten gains at the expense of the American taxpayer must be clawed back.
Supporting and encouraging education
Ignorance is not strength. Ignorance leads to disaster. America should strive to return to being the world’s leader in thought, inquiry and free expression.
The Trumpist assault on education has to be stopped. Teachers should no longer be treated as enemies. Institutions of higher learning are not piggy banks for extortion and targets for threats. American higher education has to resume its place as a leader in the world, a center for inquiry and knowledge, pursuing truth wherever it leads, without political interference.
Public primary and secondary education is essential to a free, healthy and prosperous society. Public schools need to be supported, encouraged and improved to as great a degree as the federal government can provide. While private and non-public schools are welcome they should in no way damage or detract from the quality of public education.
Restoring a free media
As the Framers were well aware, a free media is critical to maintaining a free society. Presidential bullying, extortion and threats to an independent media must come to an end. Journalists and communicators in all media and on all platforms must be able to pursue, report, analyze and comment on the truth as best they are able to determine it. This is a fundamental to American right as part of the 1st Amendment but it needs to be re-learned and renewed.
America abroad
The Framers of the Constitution gave the power to declare war to Congress, which is where it belongs. When it is necessary for the nation to enter into armed conflict it should do so united and with the advice, consent and approval of representatives of the people and states, who after all, will be providing the blood and treasure required.
Pressing contingencies will always require a quick response. But wars of necessity nonetheless require congressional approval under the Constitution and that requirement must be respected when American lives are being put in harm’s way.
But America should always try to make its way in the world without conflict, violence or threats. War and conflict must always be a last resort. The strength and power of the United States should be vested in a Department of Defense that protects the American people and looks after American interests.
Nonetheless, for all its wealth and power, the United States is a nation among nations and it needs to treat all other nations, large and small, rich and poor, with the respect and dignity they deserve.
The United States needs to repair its relations with its closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and earn back the respect, friendship, trade and mutual prosperity it previously enjoyed with them. Their security contributes to the security of the United States.
The United States needs to recommit to its friends and allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and again stand as a pillar for democracy, freedom and peace through strength against aggression, autocracy and tyranny. An attack on any of them is an attack on the United States and should be treated as such.
The United States should return to its previous place in the world by aiding the development, health and welfare of all people, assisting in responding to disasters, promoting democracy, and being a responsible role model and steward of the planet.
The front line of Ukraine is the front line of the United States and should be regarded as such. A peaceful and internationally recognized Ukraine was the victim of unprovoked, unjustified and unacceptable aggression by Russia. The United States needs to totally recommit to the defense, independence and sovereignty of a free, democratic and independent Ukraine, which should be enabled to achieve its victory conditions and pursue its own destiny as its people see fit. The United States should aid Ukraine in defeating Russian aggression and provide whatever material, intelligence and strategic assistance it can offer.
American democracy and opposition to tyranny inspired Ukraine’s Orange Revolution—now Ukraine’s Orange Revolution should inspire America’s Rose Revolution. As the Ukrainian people ejected a Putin puppet, the American people need to now reject another on their own soil.
Borders should never be changed through acts of aggression and invasion and that principle applies to the United States as it does to all nations. And the United States should always support fellow democracies when they are threatened with conquest, invasion or suppression.
Begin the beginning
This is hardly an exhaustive list—indeed, it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done to make America good—and thereby great—again.
What is more, its suggestions—apart from the constitutional amendments—are not completely original and are in no way radical. They are firmly rooted in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, democracy and American history.
Nonetheless, perhaps this manifesto can provide at least some ideas for a revolution that will expunge tyranny and restore democracy to the United States of America.
There is much to be done and little time to do it but the American people, when they are mobilized, determined and awake have always shown themselves unstoppable.
The American Rose Revolution should manifest itself in daily actions and commitment, political and personal. It will express itself in elections at all levels.
But it will truly know success when the American people again take possession of their White House and make clear that presidents serve them rather than rule them, when they emerge from the toilet to which Donald Trump has consigned them and regain their place as the owners and arbiters of their home, their White House and their destiny.
That moment will be known when the ugly and oppressive stones of the Trump patio are dug up and smashed and their pieces distributed as souvenirs and Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Rose Garden is replanted and restored. When those flowers burst into glory again, the American people will know that they have regained their freedom and liberty. It is a goal to be sought and not an easy one to achieve.
But to bring forward that day, let a billion roses bloom.
The time for an American Rose Revolution has arrived.
Coming Jan. 5: The Year Ahead: Swamp or Sunshine? Florida’s choices
Last October 18, President Donald Trump published images that perfectly summarized his worldview in 2025. In a 19-second Truth Social video, a military plane labeled “King Trump” takes off on a runway.
The opening image of President Donald Trump’s Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
At the controls is Trump, wearing a an oxygen mask covering his mouth (although not his nose) and most importantly, wearing a crown.
Donald Trump piloting his plane in his Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
High above New York City, the aircraft opens its bomb bay doors and drops Trump’s waste on massive crowds of “No Kings” protesters in the streets.
The aircraft dumps its load in President Donald Trump’s Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
It fully encapsulated Trump’s attitude: He’s a king, high above all other humans. “We the people” are worthy only of his waste. In his view, Americans’ proper place is at the bottom of his toilet. To put it in personal terms: He doesn’t serve us; he dumps on us.
What President Donald Trump thinks of the American people. An image from his Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
And lest he leave any doubt of his view of himself, on Nov. 23, he re-posted an image of himself as an armored king, with Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) kneeling at his feet and the caption “NONE shall escape his justice.”
Donald Trump as king with conquests in an AI image reposted by the White House. (Image: WH)
This is the attitude with which Trump and the American people go into a year that marks the 250th anniversary of the United States.
It is a year when Trump will either fully impose his reign and sweep away the vestiges of American democracy, constitutionality and law, or the American people will assert themselves and restore government of, by and for the people.
Trump has made this an either/or proposition. As in 2024, by his actions he has a created a situation in which he can only win everything or lose everything. There is no middle ground, no halfway result.
The Great Equalizer
A traditional tarot card depiction of Death. (Art: Wikipedia Commons)
The projections in this look ahead are premised on the assumption that Trump will be in office and command throughout the year. But at 79 years old, that is hardly a given. While Trump may cheat on taxes, he can’t cheat death.
Trump’s physical and mental deterioration have been extensively detailed in media coverage, from the swelling of his ankles, to his dozing off in meetings, to his hand’s discoloration, to his well-documented and unpredictable rages, to his increasingly disjointed and unhinged speeches and social media postings. His doctors routinely give him clean bills of health but in a presidency where lying is equally routine they can be dismissed.
One of the most extensive and seemingly knowledgeable public diagnoses was posted in a 1-minute, 51-second video on Tik-Tok on Dec. 4. A person claiming to be a physical therapist with a doctorate in his field and experience treating geriatric patients with dementia argued that Trump’s obvious dementia and overall physical deterioration are so advanced that he only had three to five months to live, which means he could pass in the March to June timeframe.
If Trump should die in office, Vice President James David “JD” Vance would succeed him. At that point the rest of the year will revolve around the question of whether Vance will continue Trump “policies” and retain Trump’s personnel.
On the presumption that Vance would follow the Constitution the transition should be orderly. However, in personality-based regimes transitions are never smooth and the infighting and maneuvering in a new Vance regime will be spectacular. (A very good depiction of the succession to a dictator is the 2017 movie The Death of Stalin. Something similar can be expected from the Trump regime.)
Another possibility is that Trump suffers a debilitating medical episode, likely a stroke.
On the one hand his handlers may try to hide it, so any prolonged presidential absences should be vigorously probed by Congress and the media.
On the other hand it could be so debilitating the Cabinet has no choice but to invoke the 25th Amendment and take control of government. In this regime nothing less than an event so devastating that it could not be hidden from the public would trigger such action.
Otherwise, among the cultists and sycophants closest to him, his obvious and increasing dementia will be exploited, manipulated and rationalized for as long as possible regardless of the damage it does to the country.
Despite these very real possibilities, in attempting to look ahead at 2026, this analysis will proceed on the assumption that Trump will be in command and control.
Under any circumstances 2026 would be an eventful year.
War?
A view of a US strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2, 2025. (Image: WH)
The year may see the United States in a full-blown war with Venezuela—or possibly other countries.
Politically, war is the ultimate distraction, effectively shifting attention from domestic matters and internal turmoil. (During the American Civil War, Union Secretary of State William Seward floated the idea of a war with Britain, France or Spain to distract from turmoil at home. “One war at a time,” answered President Abraham Lincoln.)
For months the United States has been making hostile moves against Venezuela and the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who is also an autocrat by any measure of the term. Trump has been insisting this is an attack on narcotics-smuggling terrorists, hence his attacks on boats in the Caribbean and seizure of an oil tanker. However, actual evidence has not been presented that any of this is related to narcotics and the killing of two survivors of a boat strike on Sept. 2 appears to have been a war crime that was allegedly committed on the orders of Secretary of War Peter Hegseth.
If Trump enters the United States into an all-out, undeclared war with Venezuela, the ups and downs of that conflict will dominate headlines until the conflict is resolved.
But just as Trump has learned so much from Russian President Vladimir Putin, he should also absorb the lesson that what may seem like an easy invasion and quick victory can turn into something much bloodier, unpredictable and protracted.
Epstein’s ghost
Ever since Elon Musk mentioned in June that Trump was in the federal files about sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the files have been a bleeding ulcer for Trump, a painful, oozing wound that won’t go away.
Trump opponents have been hoping that the Epstein files would deliver a knockout blow to Trump’s presidency. Republican members of Congress defected from party discipline to vote to allow their release and thousands of pages were made public on Dec. 19 in response to congressional legislation—and as was to be expected, it appeared that massive redacting had been done to protect Trump.
Then, on Christmas eve, there was a further release of material by former federal prosecutor Jack Smith, which gave rise to lurid but unconfirmed allegations of rape—male and female—murder and infanticide by Trump.
What is year ahead likely to bring in the Epstein affair?
Given Trump’s weathering of other scandals that seemed to be knockout blows like the Hollywood Access tapes or the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021, it’s hard to imagine that even the torrent of Epstein revelations will be much more than a reminder of his corruption. Will it prove that he’s a pedophile? Does anyone doubt that now? Will it reveal a new level of depravity? So what? Will Epstein be proven to have been murdered on his orders? Who’s going to investigate and prosecute? Attorney General Pamela “Pam” Bondi and her Justice Department? Kash Patel and his Federal Bureau of Investigation? Will the utterly subservient Republican-majority Congress investigate and initiate impeachment proceedings? Doubtful. Nor can anyone imagine a weeping and remorseful Trump announcing his resignation in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Aside from further revelations in the year ahead, the Epstein files appear likely to mainly be significant in affording Republican politicians a justification for stepping down from their positions as they dissociate from Trump and the increasingly fracturing Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. On the other side of the aisle the Epstein evidence will give Democrats a nail to keep driving into Trump’s standing and reputation.
Most of all, though, Epstein revelations are likely to just keep feeding public outrage and disgust with Trump as more evidence of pedophilia, perversion and abuse come to light.
Politically, though it seems unlikely to provide the legal or judicial mid-term knockout blow his critics are seeking.
Semiquincentennial storms
For Americans 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the country, its semiquincentennial (a term virtually no one is likely to use, despite it being an official designation).
Clearly this will heighten political sensitivities given clashing views of the country and its course.
As with all things, Trump is likely to try to make the anniversary about himself. He just can’t help it, it’s essential to his nature.
While most Americans will want to celebrate the past 250 years and look to a promising future for the country as a whole, Trump will likely do everything he possibly can to put his personal stamp on the event. He will likely try to complete his ballroom in time for the celebration (perhaps hold his first party there on July 4th?).
He has also floated the idea of building a triumphal arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery to glorify himself.
He will no doubt try to personalize the celebration in ways impossible for normal people to conceive at this point.
Nor is he likely to be content merely with hijacking the celebration; he will want to force others to do the same and he may attempt to rewrite history to suit his own preferences.
This is already occurring as the White House Task Force pushes its own artificial intelligence (AI) exhibit of American history, which was created and produced by the conservative PragerU. The exhibit has caused concerns among historians. For example, in an AI video, John Adams uses the phrase “facts do not care about your feelings” a phrase more common to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro than John Adams. (Adams was better known for his phrase: “a nation of laws, not men.”)
As Trump tries to make the 250th anniversary about himself there will also likely be mass demonstrations against his abuses. This raises the possibility that he will exaggerate them as a threat and use the commemoration for a crackdown that laps over into an attempted coup or a military occupation of American cities and imposition of martial law.
There is no doubt that instead of a celebration of unity and pride, the 250th anniversary will be a time of tension and stress with grave dangers to the country that is celebrating its semiquincentennial.
(This is also not to forget that June 14th will mark Trump’s 80th birthday. Last year he celebrated with a $30 million military parade through Washington, ostensibly marking the US Army’s 250th birthday. Without that cover this year, Trump will no doubt find some expensive way to celebrate his birthday and then pile on top of that celebration of self when it comes to the Semiquincentennial.)
FIFA politics
President Donald Trump is awarded the FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Dec. 5, 2025. (Photo: White House)
The United States, along with Mexico and Canada will be holding the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup competition from June 11 to July 19. The United States will be hosting 11 of the 16 events in cities from Los Angeles to Miami.
While this is not necessarily a political event in the partisan sense of the term, it will be viewed globally as an example of American attitudes toward the rest of the world.
Trump expressed support for FIFA, calling it a “great event” and comparing it to “three Super Bowls a day for a month.” FIFA attempted to cement his support on Dec. 5 by awarding him a contrived FIFA “peace prize” to flatter his ego.
While soccer is ostensibly apolitical, Trump has threatened to politicize it domestically. He warned he would deploy the National Guard to ensure order in American cities with games or send scheduled games elsewhere if he considers them endangered, specifically naming Seattle.
As he said in the presence of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president: “If we think there is a problem in Seattle, where there is a liberal mayor… Gianni, can I say we will move the event to some place it will be appreciated and safe?”
Matches are scheduled in Democratic-leaning states like California and New York, so he is clearly thinking of the games in partisan terms, using them as a justification for military deployments or using them as political leverage and this could happen without warning or notice. Given the elaborate logistics and preparations for these games any sudden moves or changes in venue will be tremendously disruptive and potentially result in significant economic losses to the cities that lose their scheduled contests.
(When it comes to global sports events, there will also be a 2026 winter Olympics in February in Italy.)
The G20 Summit
Logo of the 2026 G20 Summit to be held in Miami, Fla.
Capping off the year in December, Trump is scheduled to host the G20 summit of the world’s leading economic powers. Usually these summits revolve around financial affairs, climate change challenges and sustainable development.
This will be an entirely Trump show. The summit is planned to be held in the United States at one of Trump’s properties, the Trump National Doral Miami resort and spa. It will be a major event for Florida (and no doubt a source of vast profit for Trump personally).
Trump has already put his stamp on the event. The US boycotted the previous G20 held in Johannesburg, South Africa, denouncing the country for propagating a “genocide” against white Afrikaners.
“…The South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” Trump raged in a Truth Social post on Nov. 26, 2025.
When it came time for the host head of state to hand over the gavel for the next summit to the next hosting head of state, the US sent an embassy staffer instead. The South Africans rejected this as an insult and breach of protocol.
That was all the excuse Trump needed to disinvite South Africa from the 2026 summit.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year. South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” he posted.
So Trump has already put his stamp on the G20 and if all goes as in the past he can be expected to lord his dominance over the other heads of state, insult and bully them and denigrate their countries and economies—if he deigns to attend in person at all.
But this will be taking place in December and by December, if the rest of the calendar proceeds as planned and Trump is still in office, he may find himself in a very different domestic position, one potentially far less dominant than he’d like to occupy.
The Midterms
A logo for the 2026 Midterm Elections. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
This year’s midterms should be viewed as a presidential election, not just elections for a third of the Senate, the entire House of Representatives and state and local offices.
In November 2025 Democrats won stunning victories in races for the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia and the mayoralty of New York City. At the town and county levels they swept other off-year elections across the country. Even in a Tennessee special election in the 7th Congressional District, a Republican victor had a much closer call than the Party would have preferred. Then, on Dec. 9, a Democrat won the mayoralty of Miami, Fla., the first woman in the city’s history and the first Democrat in nearly 30 years.
It all appeared to be an overwhelming, grassroots repudiation of Trump, Trumpism and the Republican Party and a harbinger of far greater losses to come in the 2026 midterms.
“Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year,” Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race told Politico, expressing a widely held perception.
Under “normal” circumstances that might be expected. Administrations have traditionally lost ground in their first midterm elections, so the momentum could be expected to continue. Polls appeared to overwhelmingly favor Democratic victories.
Trump argued he was not on the ballot in November and blamed the loss on the government shutdown and a lack of Republican fervor.
But if 2025 was a wake-up call for Democrats it was a five-alarm fire for Republicans.
No sooner were the results in than Trump had a very public feud with his formerly loud and fanatical supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14-Ga.). After agitating to publicly release the Epstein files, she turned on Trump, denounced him and then announced her resignation effective Jan. 5, 2026.
Other congressional Republicans, weary of Trump’s abuse and fearing voter sentiment followed suit. If enough of them resign this year and their districts are subject to special elections that Democrats win, the possibility exists that Trump could lose his Republican majority in Congress even before the midterm elections.
What is more, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base appears to be fracturing over the Epstein files and there is no telling what other fault lines are erupting within the regime. There is a strong possibility that in the new year Trump will purge members of his Cabinet or other members of the regime in an effort to scapegoat them for his failures and buy some public approval. As he has shown repeatedly, not even the most subservient subservience or the most extravagant flattery is enough to save anyone he feels like sacrificing.
If these trends simply played out uninterrupted then Democrats would likely sweep the midterm elections and a Democratic House and Senate would likely impeach and probably remove Trump as soon as it took office in 2027.
Midterm gerrymandering: The Big Rig
But as Trump has shown time and again he does not allow trends to play out when they’re unfavorable to him and he is unrestrained, extreme and unpredictable in his interventions.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and political strategist, intends to have “a fun next year,” she told the Moms for Liberty podcast, MomsView on Dec. 9. Wiles intends to deliberately make the midterms a presidential contest because, she said, “so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters” and Republicans lose when he’s not on the ballot.
“So, I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” she said. “So all these people he helps—he doesn’t help everybody but those he helps, he’s a difference-maker and a turnout machine, so the midterms will be very important to us, so we’ll work very hard to keep the majority.”
But while Wiles may intend to use Trump for conventional campaigning, Trump himself is leaving nothing to chance.
He has already blatantly tried to rig the results with an unprecedented and unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting, arguing that the 2020 census was “rigged.” At his direction Texas agreed to gerrymander its districts to pick up five Republican seats but then California did the same to pick up an equal number of Democratic seats.
As of this writing six states are creating new congressional maps: California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Utah. Virginia was beginning the process as was Maryland. It seems appropriate to call his effort “The Big Rig.” (Editor’s note: You read it here first!)
Florida is considering redrawing its maps and the legislature began its first committee hearings. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared himself in favor of redistricting and the Republican legislature is likely to comply, if past is any prologue.
The kind of pressure Trump would assert to get his way was publicly evident in Indiana, whose Hoosiers proved surprisingly stubborn in defending the Constitution.
Trump blasted anti-rig Hoosiers with insults like “RINO” and “WEAK and PATHETIC,” and threatened to run candidates against them in their primary elections.
Although Indianans agreed to consider redistricting, in the end the state Senate rejected it on Dec. 11.
“Misinformation, cruel social media posts, over-the-top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this,” said state Sen. Greg Goode (R-38-Terre Haute) in a speech on the floor before voting against the measure.
It seemed a small payback for Trump’s incitement to lynch his Vice President, Indianan Mike Pence, on Jan. 6, 2021.
But gerrymandering is not the only scenario in which Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections to go his way.
As he has in past elections, Trump is on a crusade against existing forms of voting. On Aug. 18 he went on a lengthy tirade vowing: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES…” and declaring “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”
But it’s not just restricting voting access through mail and machine counting that threatens the midterm ballot. Dominion Voting Systems, the company that made the voting machines Trump and his allied pundits attacked for the 2020 election results (and which successfully sued Fox News, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for defamation), was purchased in October by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official for St. Louis, Mo., and a company he created called Liberty Vote. Dominion (or now, Liberty) machines are used in 27 states.
While Liberty Vote is attempting to reassure customers that the ownership change won’t affect the integrity of the vote count, the fact that it is run by a Republican partisan who is likely to be susceptible to Trump pressure is a cause for concern and could affect the midterm outcome.
Another possibility is election tampering with results through digital or wireless means. Given that false bomb threats forced the evacuation of swing state polling places on Election Day 2024 there has been suspicion that results were altered or affected digitally in some way.
Beyond these measures, if Trump doesn’t like the outcome there are a variety of other actions he might take to illegally alter it.
Scary scenarios
Trump could send in the military to seize machines as was contemplated in 2020. (The full text of his draft order is available for viewing and download at the end of this essay.)
This is likely one reason he was so outraged by the video made by six members of Congress who had served in the military or intelligence services telling servicemembers not to obey illegal orders. If Trump orders military units to seize voting machines, stop voting or lethally attack American voters, he needs them to automatically and unthinkingly obey. But with a military that learned its lessons from the Nazi Holocaust and which swears an oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution, such orders would be illegal—but they are orders Trump and his regime members would likely attempt to execute.
Also, his deployment of military personnel and National Guard units to American cities to ostensibly fight crime could also be used to impose martial law in cities where protests might erupt if he attempts to cancel or pre-empt the elections.
If the military proves unreliable for his purposes he could also use paramilitary units of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. These are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and would be unlikely to defy any orders that would be illegal for the uniformed military.
Taking any of these courses of action risks civil disruption, mass protests, widespread litigation, military mutiny, and, most dangerous of all, civil violence—not to mention that they would simply be illegal. But Trump has legal immunity for official actions, he routinely ignores the law and he has proven himself heedless of consequences.
There will be carrots as well as sticks, of course. On Dec. 17, in his White House address Trump announced bonuses of $1,776 to members of the military to buy their loyalty, or at least silence. He has already proposed a $12 billion bailout to farmers hurt by his cutoff of their markets through punitive tariffs. There will no doubt be other inducements and likely outright bribes—something with which he is familiar—to voters.
But even if the election comes off as planned, the danger doesn’t end there. If Trump doesn’t like the results he could pull another big lie as he did in 2020, declaring that the results were rigged and deny the outcome. Then, 60 courts found his charges baseless. But he persisted nonetheless and even with evidence as compelling as a recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to “find” the votes to overturn the official results, he beat election interference charges. No doubt this will embolden him to do the same in the midterms.
A tsunami of lies, insults and threats, all of it fueled by a torrent of cash, both overt and dark, can be expected to flood America’s airwaves and media, social and otherwise, attacking the outcome if it’s unfavorable. As in 2020 Trump and his accomplices will do everything they possibly can to cast doubt on the count. They will no doubt launch a wave of baseless lawsuits to overturn unfavorable results in key races.
As on January 6, 2021, Trump may attempt to incite a physical prevention of a new Congress taking office, only this time he may try to use the military or ICE agents in place of a mob to overturn the legislative branch and physically prevent members of Congress from being sworn in and taking office. He might try to destroy the Capitol building—again.
In an AI-generated scenario illustration, on President Trump’s orders ICE agents cordon off the United States Capitol on Jan. 3, 2027 to prevent newly-elected members of Congress from convening and taking the oath of office. (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
If Republicans retain their congressional majority they will likely be the most battered, beaten and bullied victors in history. Trump will expect absolute, unthinking obedience. He will be unrestrained in his threats, even—or especially—to members of his own party. Anyone stepping even an inch out of line will be labeled a “traitor,” as was Greene. Violence and death threats will follow. At some point one or more of those threats will likely be executed and an errant member of Congress or other Republican will be killed, maimed or wounded.
If these scenarios seem extreme or unlikely, one has to reckon with the desperation of Trump and his regime to stay in power. If he loses office he and his accomplices will face a reimposition of real law enforcement. There can be little doubt that not only Trump but his family and his every appointee have crimes to cover up. His billionaire backers not only have tax cuts to protect but every grift, embezzlement and fraud they may have perpetrated under his watch as well.
Steve Bannon sees this clearly and he didn’t mince words: “And I will tell you right now, as God is my witness, if we lose the midterms, if we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison – myself included. They’re not gonna stop,” he told the Conservative Partnership Institute on Nov. 5. Bannon was referencing Democrats but what Trumpists will really face is the full, impartial machinery of the law, once that machinery is righted and set back in motion.
Steve Bannon addresses the Conservative Partnership Institute on Nov. 5. (Image: YouTube)
That is already fueling a lot of urgency and fear among Trump, the regime and MAGA. Bannon’s solution? “What do we have to counter it with? We have to counter it with more action, more intense action, more urgency. We’re burning daylight.”
If there was any doubt about the impact of the cascade of bad news on Trump himself, it was dispelled during his 20-minute White House address to the nation on Dec. 17. Numerous commentators saw its delivery as evidence of sheer panic. It was as though Trump thought that if he delivered the speech angrily enough, loudly enough and rapidly enough he could bend reality to his own vision where he was perfect, someone else was to blame and America was in a new golden age.
Trump and his accomplices literally cannot afford to lose the midterm elections. That makes them cornered, desperate and very, very dangerous—and the “intense action” Bannon mentioned includes all measures, legal, illegal and at this point, unimaginable.
A new Navalny?
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. (Photo: Office of Gov.)
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of California has emerged as the chief elected official directly opposing Trump, countering his gerrymandering efforts and pointedly mocking him on social media.
While Trump directs his special hatred against former President Joe Biden, it is Newsom who is leading the charge against him and at this point seems like a front-running Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.
It is three years until that election. That’s a long time away, especially in politics. Whether Trump will be a candidate for an unconstitutional third term or whether he will even be in a condition to run cannot be known at this writing.
However, as predicted by The Paradise Progressive, Trump, his regime and his followers are waging a war against Newsom and California.
Newsom’s relative youth, energy, intelligence and charisma recall another politician who fought for democracy in his native land: Alexei Navalny in Russia.
Alexei Navalny in 2006 (photo: Wikimedia Commons/Oleg Kozerev)
Navalny was a lawyer who emerged as an opponent of Vladimir Putin and whose political activism and determined commitment to democracy increasingly threatened Russia’s slide into autocracy. Accordingly, he faced the opposition of Putin and the regime, which first used blatantly false criminal charges and trials against him, then arrests, then an attempted poisoning, then imprisonment in a Siberian penal colony and finally outright murder to end his threat.
Given Trump’s slavish admiration for Putin as a mentor and teacher, Trump could imitate Putin’s methods against Newsom, whether with false charges and investigations or even physical threats like poisoning.
Indeed, Trump’s selective prosecutorial vengeance against his perceived enemies endangers all Democratic or anti-Trump candidates this year. The American public may be treated to the horrifying spectacle of mass prosecutions against legitimate, legally running candidates.
There’s no need to consign this to the realm of conspiracy theory given that Trump revealed his direct orders to prosecute those whom he wanted persecuted in an X-post to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Sept. 20, 2025, which may have been a personal communication that was inadvertently made public.
President Donald Trump’s Sept. 20, 2025 direct order to Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering the prosecution of his perceived enemies and the hiring of lawyer Lindsey Halligan. (Image: Truth Social)
Prosecution and persecution
Bondi, who appears to be the most cowardly, compliant, complicit, feckless, subservient and partisan attorney general in American history, obeyed Trump’s order at that time and will likely obey further orders to prosecute candidates on whatever pretext Trump chooses. Even if the cases are thrown out in court the way the cases against James Comey and Letitia James were, investigations, lawsuits and prosecutions eat up valuable time and money just when candidates need to be campaigning.
What is more, Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to pursue what she views as “extremist groups” that threaten violence. In a Dec. 4 memorandum to federal prosecutors she called for the investigation and pursuit of allegedly extremist groups opposing “law and immigration enforcement;” and expressing “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality; and an elevation of violence to achieve policy outcomes, such as political assassinations.”
It’s a broad brush that could be used to stain virtually any Trump opponent. (The full memo can be read and downloaded at the end of this article.)
All of this could have happened previously in American history but before the emergence of Donald Trump a sense of concern for the welfare of the nation and the integrity of the political process restrained such actions. Even if higher values didn’t prevent this kind of lawfare, the iron law of politics that “what goes around, comes around,” induced some caution in even the most vengeful politicians.
But Trump has shown time and again and particularly on January 6, 2021, he believes no laws apply to him, he has no sense of restraint or limit, and backed by a Supreme Court ruling of official immunity, these kinds of measures are real possibilities in the year ahead, especially if he seems to be losing in the conventional political arena.
Trouble and turbulence
All this will be playing out against a backdrop of rising protests, economic stress, likely increasing violations of basic rights, intensifying immigrant deportations and, as always, Trump’s relentless, unremitting drive for total domination and complete autocracy.
The raids, detentions and deportations are likely to intensify this year because ICE has already picked the low-hanging fruit, having seized the people who actually have criminal records, as was the ostensible purpose of the effort. From there, they next grabbed the people—including American citizens—who were easy to snatch and those trying to comply with legal asylum requirements and proceedings.
But now they still have to fulfill their arbitrary quotas, which Trump has made clear are based more on race than rationality. That means there will likely be deeper, more invasive raids, more street snatchings and more violations of what were once thought to be safe spaces like schools, churches and workplaces, as well as homes.
If the true purpose was to rid the United States of criminal aliens, the effort might ease off as the number of actual criminal aliens go down but that’s not the purpose—the true purpose of this effort is to drive out the foreign-born population of the United States using racial profiling and smearing all aliens, immigrants and migrants as threats, criminals and undesirables. As last year ground to an end the regime was less and less bashful about stating that outright.
Trump has likened immigration to “an invasion” and his enablers, notably Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, denounced what the regime characterized as a Democratic plot to flood the country with foreigners so they could get “hooked to welfare and be able to participate in American elections,” as Miller put it in a Nov. 30 interview with Sean Hannity.
But no one put it more bluntly than Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in an X-posting on Dec. 1 following a meeting with Trump: “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” she wrote.
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS.
“WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Given this blind, fanatical hatred of foreigners, immigrants and immigration, any slackening of the ICE onslaught is unlikely, even as legitimate targets become harder to find. Indeed, just as Adolf Hitler accelerated the roundup and murder of Jews as the Third Reich began to crumble, so Trump will likely accelerate seizures and detentions if he feels his grip on power—or life—weakening and there is not one of his appointees at any level who will stand up to him.
ICE agents on the ground will be tasked with filling those aircraft and warehouses.
America abroad
Also factoring into domestic politics will be a world increasingly in crisis as Trump threatens new wars and continuously moves to align the United States with Russian interests and Putin’s dictates at the expense of longstanding allies.
The United States of America no longer has a foreign policy. “Policy” is a rational set of directions and guidelines, rationally formulated, taking into account a wide variety of factors and influences. Indeed, so irrelevant is Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the process he was reduced to fiddling with fonts on State Department communications.
Today, America’s relations with the world are determined by one man’s whim and caprice based on his hatreds, rages and greed, without accountability or care for his impacts. Whereas the Constitution gives Congress warmaking powers, under Trump the United States can be committed to conflict based on his opinion or urges of the moment. It has become a country that can go to war on one man’s command, as Adolf Hitler did in Russia, Benito Mussolini did in Greece, Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait and Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine.
Further roiling the waters in addition to wars that might turn the rest of the Western Hemisphere against the United States and moves to detach America from its longstanding ties to Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, there will be the longer-term impacts of Trump’s isolationism, trade protectionism, unpredictable tariffs and hostility to foreigners of all sorts.
Poorer, sicker, weaker?
The United States might also be hurled into the abyss of sovereign default if it fails to pay its obligations—and Trump is notorious for welching on his obligations. It will certainly plunge deeper into debt. Americans may find themselves in the midst of an economic depression as great or greater than the one suffered in 1929, especially if Trump replaces Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell—whom Trump is threatening to sue—with one of his compliant, unqualified cronies as is expected when Powell’s term ends on May 15. His departure will be a major economic event in 2026.
All of this will impact everyday Americans at the bottom of Trump’s toilet with fewer goods at higher prices, fewer social services and protections, fewer public health protections and vastly more expensive healthcare, and far fewer freedoms and rights.
And Trump will not only simply not care, he will gloat.
As he has in the past, he will also try to shape perceptions to his fantasies—and believe his lies himself.
There is no good that can come from this dictatorship or the objects it pursues. It is irrational, delusional and even deranged. Its long term consequences are without a doubt catastrophic for the United States of America and are headed toward ending the great experiment in freedom that began exactly 250 years ago.
What can everyday Americans do about this?
They are not helpless.
That will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.
To read the full text of Donald Trump’s draft 2020 order seizing voting machines, click below. (Source: January 6 Committee)
Gazing into a crystal ball, not to look to the future but to understand the past. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Nov. 17, 2025 by David Silverberg
Sometimes clearly seeing the future brings no joy. There is such a thing as being too prophetic.
Since 2022, as each year has dawned, The Paradise Progressive has tried to look ahead at domestic political trends and likelihoods in the year to come, trying to objectively think through the direction events were taking. What would be the big stories that would bear watching in the coming days?
But it’s not enough to just make predictions; when the year ends, anyone peering ahead has an obligation to evaluate his or her accuracy and ability as a seer.
Accordingly, in 2023 The Paradise Progressive began grading its own predictions when the year ended, first on an A to F scale and then, last year, as simply “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
It is doing this again this year, if a bit early. There’s still a month and a half to go in 2025 and given this president and regime virtually anything may happen in the next 44 days.
But in a year of momentous events it makes sense to take a pause on the eve of Thanksgiving. People who are able to afford to sit down to a full table, free from fear of sudden seizure or detention, should truly give thanks for the abundance of their blessings.
It is sad and startling to report that the predictions made by The Paradise Progressive at the beginning of 2025, just before Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, were horrifyingly accurate and the darkest prospects and most extreme dangers came to pass.
This analysis only includes those firm predictions that can be judged in light of later events, not the many questions and uncertainties that were raised by Trump’s election and inauguration.
Together, these predictions provide a view of what historians will surely record as one of the most—if not the most—grievous years in American history.
What were they? Let us review them together, first the predictions in italics, then the results.
“Trump and his legions can be expected to hit hard and move fast. There will be sweeping disruptions, especially in the first 100 days of the regime, indeed probably even announced in the inaugural address on Jan. 20. Even on his first day, Trump has said he will be a dictator and issue an avalanche of executive orders to—at the very least—encourage fossil fuel exploration and usage, round up migrants and pardon January 6th insurrectionists. But numerous other orders are likely to go much further.”
Trump and his regime knew they needed to act before opposition could coalesce and their measures could be challenged through litigation or legislation. So, as predicted, they hit hard and moved fast.
Indeed, on his first day in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, covering everything from establishing the Department of Government Efficiency to withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. As of this writing, he has issued a total of 212 executive orders. Some have been challenged in court and remain unresolved. But they nonetheless upended the United States government and the lives of all Americans.
Of the three matters explicitly named, when it came to fossil fuel exploitation, Trump declared a national energy emergency and prioritized oil exploration on federal lands—including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When it came to rounding up migrants, the Trump regime initiated what has amounted to an ethnic and racial war against Hispanics and all immigrants, sweeping up US citizens of long duration in its dragnet. When it came to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, on his first day in office Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the insurrectionists—and he has issued over 1,600 pardons for all kinds of federal criminals and miscreants since.
“It will be a year when Donald Trump attempts to dominate all thought, action, law, media, policy, and government and where he fails to do this personally, his cultists, followers and enablers will work on his behalf and toward his ends.”
That certainly proved prophetic. The second Trump administration not only pursued total dominance in all areas of government, it initiated a cultural revolution that attempted—and continues to attempt—a brutish cultural assault, from bullying and extorting institutions of higher learning to stop free inquiry, to suppressing critical media through threats and litigation, to disparaging and canceling individual artists and performers.
If any one act expressed this cultural revolution more than any other, it was Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, having himself named chairman of its board and even floating the idea of re-naming it for himself or his wife, neither of whom had any connection to it, its culture or its mission.
“This regime will be characterized by pettiness, cruelty, hatred, prejudice, rage, disparagement, racism, misogyny, and criminality. It will rule through threats, intimidation and defamation. It will be corrupt to its very marrow.”
This prophecy was fulfilled in so many ways that listing them would be exhausting—and redundant. Any American can recite a litany of Trump regime outrages, offenses and crimes. All one has to do is look at Trump’s Truth Social postings to document this prediction. What is more, every day brings new and often bizarre examples.
Fear has now been institutionalized as a governing principle and the regime is at war with the people whom previous presidents once served.
“For everyday consumers, anti-immigration measures will mean higher prices and harsher inflation and with national anti-immigrant measures coming on top of the ones that Florida has already enacted, the price at checkout is likely to be steep—to say nothing of the human suffering that will underly it.”
Prices are rising steeply, as anyone can see from their grocery bills (the price of coffee was up 18.9 percent in September). But it’s not just anti-immigration measures that are causing this; a major driver is Trump’s tariffs (more about them below).
Government-issued statistics on matters like inflation can no longer be automatically considered reliable. In August, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics when he disliked a revised report on the unemployment rate. The prolonged government shutdown and purges of vital government officials severely weakened the federal government data-gathering abilities.
This affected even vital functions like setting the Federal Reserve’s prime interest rate. When Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference on Oct. 29, he acknowledged the lack of reliable data for Federal Reserve decisionmaking and likened it to driving in fog.
“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog?” he asked. “You slow down.” In this context he meant the Federal Reserve might not change interest rates at its next meeting.
However, a variety of sources, both government and non-government put the real current inflation rate at 3 percent.
When it came to immigration, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“…the Trump roundup can be expected to be spectacular, very public and as harsh as possible. It will likely be conducted as a television spectacle, a reality show intended to send a message of mercilessness to the world that discourages all immigration, legal and otherwise.”
This prediction is horrifically borne out daily as stories emerge of brutality by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In every corner of the United States, people suspected of illegal residence are being snatched off the streets and in courtroom corridors by anonymous men without warrants, in unmarked vehicles, with dubious justifications. Then they’re whisked away into a gulag of unaccountable and untraceable detention facilities and denied due process or the opportunity to prove their innocence—or citizenship, or legal resident status.
Lest residents of Southwest Florida believe that they are immune, their communities are in the crosshairs too, as ICE agents descend on the town of Immokalee, round up agricultural workers and simply stop vehicles on Southwest Florida roads with people they deem suspicious or who are simply the wrong color.
“For the first time there will be concentration camps on American soil and Americans will see them on their television screens.”
Of all the 2025 predictions, this one came most horrifyingly and surprisingly true. That there would be concentration camps for the regime’s undesirables was entirely predictable. But The Paradise Progressive did not foresee that the first of these camps, the archetype and model for an American gulag, would be established in its own back yard, in Collier County, Florida, in the heart of the Everglades and that it would be designated “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“These roundups and deportations will likely be fought in the courts but with its placement of obedient judges, the regime will probably plow through the court system the same way Trump plowed through his criminal cases. Those cases that reach the Supreme Court will be adjudicated by a Trump-appointed majority of justices—and he may gain more appointments as sitting justices retire.”
The US courts have proved an occasional impediment to Trump’s arbitrary actions but they also proved little more than speed bumps on the road to autocracy. Nonetheless, some of the most egregious actions were at least delayed or reconsidered as they were tried, appealed and judged.
The judiciary, established as a co-equal branch of government, was intended by the Founders as an important check and balance on the other two branches. It has not always gotten things right.
But, extraordinarily, the six-member majority of the current Supreme Court, three of whose justices were appointed by Trump and confirmed in his first administration, has not only aided, abetted and enabled dictatorship but specifically and actively sought to confirm and elevate a Trump dictatorship. They want him as king and they’ve done everything they can to ensure his unfettered rule—not governance, but rule.
Of all this Supreme Court’s decisions—and that includes its 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade—the most fundamentally damaging one came with its ruling in Trump v. United States in 2024 holding that presidents are immune from the law in their official actions. That ruling, which overturned the concept of equal justice under law, the bedrock of American legal principle, enabled the wild, unchecked dictatorial rampage that characterized 2025.
“If Trumpflag-waving Southwest Floridians think they will be spared crippling inflation and a scarcity of goods, they should think again. At the very least the prices for the Canadian-made replacement parts for their sticker-covered pickup trucks are going to rise to the point where they’ll have to jury-rig their swamp buggies like Cubans keeping their 1959 Chevvies on the road.”
This absolutely came true. Tariffs have placed an enormous non-tax burden on the American consumer, according to both government and non-government estimates.
The rise in prices of common food items in September 2025. (Chart: CNBC)
“The accession of Donald Trump to the presidency will mean the return of what has been called ‘Trumpality,’ the Trump worldview or mindset in which objective truth has little to no value.”
Further,
“But in a broader sense, the imposition of Trumpality in the coming year will be pervasive and likely crippling to a United States whose whole success has been built on determining and responding to reality.”
Also,
“That delusional thinking will not only likely be evident this year, it will be imposed from above. It will likely affect everything from public health to weather forecasting. It will pervade the media whether mainstream, social or ideological as they both report what he asserts no matter how false and acquiesce to his version of events to avoid retaliation or retribution.”
Donald Trump’s war on reality and the media was aided and abetted by his billionaire supporters, who snapped up media properties in order to impose the Trump agenda from corporate boardrooms.
The First Amendment was not violated because Congress made no law abridging freedom of the press but the entire business infrastructure undergirding independent America media was undermined and subverted. Trump-obedient billionaires traded media properties among themselves like Pokéman cards.
The fiercely independent Washington Post of Donald and Katherine Graham became the cringing organ of Jeff Bezos, blocking the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, cheering on Trump’s destruction of the White House East Wing, and banning alternative viewpoints from its opinion pages. The once-proud CBS television network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite became the Trump cheerleading squad headed by Bari Weiss, a partisan, far-right columnist with no broadcast experience. The New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wall Street Journal and over 20 media organizations were threatened by billion dollar lawsuits for reporting and broadcasting facts that Trump didn’t like. Social media platforms like Facebook ripped down their community standards to allow disinformation postings and Trump propaganda.
Many media controls had been imposed to protect the public against dangerous disinformation being spread during the COVID pandemic of 2020-2022. But that changed too, as The Paradise Progressive predicted.
“The opposition to vaccines and public health measures as evidenced by the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has the potential to wipe out a century of medical progress and scientific advancement in promoting public health and replace it with a brew of conspiracy theories, disbelief and even outright superstition.”
After a horrifically botched response to the COVID outbreak based on Trump’s delusional assertions that “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” and his insistence that it didn’t matter, national science and public health staged a comeback under President Joe Biden. But as predicted, the Trump regime did all it could to undermine and subvert that, cutting jobs, dismissing scientists and experts and altering findings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
“The war on equality in all forms is almost certain to take place on many fronts this year.”
As predicted, the war on basic equality as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in all forms—already well underway in Florida—erupted with new ferocity during the year, with it being used as a club against higher educational institutions and corporations alike who faced extortionate fines and penalties for supporting equality in hiring, teaching and thinking. It was extended to the military by Secretary of War Peter Hegseth, who dismissed high-ranking female officers and eradicated monuments to black service people and heroes both at home and abroad.
“The most obvious possible Democratic presidential candidate to challenge Trump in 2028 (if there’s an election and if Trump runs again) is Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.”
And,
“The world can expect a massive Trumpist war against Newsom and the state of California starting this year and every year that Trump is president.”
Sure enough, Trump, who persisted in calling Newsom “Newscum,” embarked on a campaign of vilification and disparagement. But he didn’t predict—and The Paradise Progressive didn’t foresee—that Newsom would hit back with a campaign of his own that turned Trump’s social media postings against him with humor and pointedly funny parodies.
With his outspokenness and determination, Newsom emerged as the leader of the resistance among elected officials. He called out Trump’s autocratic moves for what they were and took concrete steps to counter them. And what were those autocratic moves? The Paradise Progressive predicted them too.
“Indeed, throughout the country expect attacks aimed at denying Democrats any possibility of ever winning any election again at any level, whether through ballot access denial or election interference in Democratic districts and cities, especially, in response to opposition to anti-migrant roundups and deportations and possible ‘sanctuary’ cities.”
The most blatant and egregious election interference was Trump’s attempt to get states to gerrymander district lines in mid-decade in order to deny Democrats seats in Congress in the 2026 elections.
The Paradise Progressive foresaw the effort but not the specific means—the idea of a mid-decade redistricting was so bizarre and unconstitutional it was beyond imagining at the outset of the year. The state of Texas immediately redrew its lines and other Trumpist states are doing the same. In Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis (R) said he was open to the idea but concluded that Republicans wouldn’t gain that many seats. Still, as of this writing the notion hasn’t entirely been rejected.
Newsom understood the threat and launched a counterattack in California, pushing through a referendum on redistricting and proceeding to redistrict the state to counter Texas’ effort. Other Democratic states may follow.
However the Trumpist gerrymander turns out nationally, it was indicative of Trump’s determination to rig the 2026 election, stay in power no matter what, and deny Americans a genuine say in their government, as predicted at the outset of the year.
As the year began, The Paradise Progressive noted that a new triumvirate had emerged to dominate the world. In a subsequent post, it theorized about the possibility that Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping could conspire to divide the world between them and support each other’s expansionist goals and territorial ambitions. (Warning: A Trump-Putin-Xi conspiracy theory.)
But just as Rome’s triumvirate didn’t last, neither did today’s. The Paradise Progressive predicted that too.
“But also militating against the survival of this triumvirate is Trump’s inveterate lying and his lifetime record of welching on commitments and contracts. Just as a Mafia loan shark doesn’t take kindly to a deadbeat borrower, Putin and his mafia-like siloviki won’t take kindly to Trump reneging on whatever agreement they had that put him in office. The embers of this conflagration already seem to be sparking.”
What The Paradise Progressive did not foresee was the degree to which Trump used international trade tariffs as wildly and whimsically as he did, imposing and lifting them without notice or explanation. He tried to use them to punish Brazil for enforcing its laws against its own would-be dictator and Trump protégé, Jair Bolsonaro. He imposed them on Canada because the province of Ontario dared to run a television ad he didn’t like. He imposed them on China, then lifted them, then altered them, then reimposed them and then lifted them again after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. There’s no telling where they’ll stand tomorrow.
All these tariffs, which Trump regarded as a cost-free form of revenue, were in fact a form of consumer tax and drove up consumer prices, exactly as predicted.
“At least initially, this year, it’s likely to result in higher prices across the board and scarcity of goods as these men’s rivalries take the form of trade wars.”
Unforeseen was Trump’s war against Venezuela. At the beginning of the year it was Canada, Panama and Greenland that seemed to be in Trump’s crosshairs. But then American forces started destroying what were purported to be drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, a campaign that steadily escalated.
As this is written American forces are gathering in the Caribbean in what appears to be preparation for an assault on Venezuela. But history provides a note of caution. Like Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, or Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a unilateral, Trump-commanded American assault on Venezuela has within it the possibility of a regime-changing catastrophe—and that regime very well might be Donald Trump’s.
“As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.”
“In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.”
Further,
“An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.”
Indeed it was a major story but the outcome was different than anticipated. Oakes was never charged with any crime and the heavy hand of the law fell instead on Steven Veneziano Jr., an Oakes Farms vice president. Veneziano and six other defendants pleaded guilty to defrauding the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program by falsifying crop records.
“In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.”
“Hey Carmine, pay attention,” Romano stated in an October TikTok video directed to Marceno. “So, word on the street from your own people, a lot of your own people, is that [Anthony] Lomangino, [a major donor to both Trump and Marceno] and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, is gonna take all this, whatever’s happened, and put it on the shelf for you. Is that true? Answer me, answer the public. Is that true?”
Since The Florida Trident report, there have not been any publicly reported developments in the case. Marceno is reportedly thinking of running for Congress in Florida’s 19th Congressional District.
As with the Oakes affair, Marceno’s ultimate fate may be resolved in the year to come.
“The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.”
This too turned out to be prophetic. Despite some positions being floated, DeSantis received no offers (at least none publicly announced or acknowledged) from Donald Trump. Their animus seemed to recede when Trump came to open the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in July and joked that “We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long.” But there was never any evidence of a deeper thawing of relations or a place for DeSantis in the regime in the days that followed.
When it came to the people of Florida as a whole, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).”
As though destroying defenses against childhood diseases and epidemics was insufficient, in May the state of Florida decided to wage war against dental hygiene by banning the addition of decay-preventing fluoride in community water, a move that was preceded by the Board of Commissioners of Collier County in February 2024.
When it came to the state legislature,
“Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks.”
However,
“There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis ‘line,’ whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.”
That prediction plays out every day. But another prediction has already come true:
“Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and ‘far left Marxist radicals’ for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.”
Unexpected—and inspiring
The Paradise Progressive did not cover or make predictions in the off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia, New Jersey or the mayoral race in New York City. However, those elections proved to be stunning repudiations of Trump rule and the MAGA program even though he frantically denied that he was on the ballot and blamed the debacle on the government shutdown and lack of Republican fervor.
Nor did the repudiations occur only in those major races. Across the country, in towns, cities and counties that held elections there was a marked shift away from Trumpism and the Republican Party in what amounted to a blue wave.
The Paradise Progressive also did not anticipate the resistance to tyranny, the grassroots organizing and popular outrage that led to national “Hands Off” and “No Kings” protests that attracted progressively larger and larger crowds.
Just how impressive this development was could be seen in Naples, Fla., an otherwise deeply Trumpist town, where each event brought out more and more people in what amounted to a massive turnout for the area—and throughout Southwest Florida in places not otherwise known for their activism, like Port Charlotte and Sanibel.
But while enormous crowds turned out in major cities, perhaps the most impressive demonstration occurred in rural Okeechobee, Fla., far from large gatherings or other “No Kings” protests. There, Linda Winner, a grandmother who had never demonstrated in any protest throughout her 76 years took a stand.
“I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching all the protests, and so I said, if I’m ever going to do it, it better be now, I might not get another chance,” she told reporter Eileen Kelley of WGCU. So she stood alone on a street corner for three hours holding a “no kings” sign,
She explained her action to her son in North Carolina, who disagreed with her. “I called him to confirm that he knew that his mother loved America, to make sure that he understood that my protest today was not because I didn’t love America, but because I did,” she said.
Standing on her street corner she received a few fingers from passing motorists but also a lot of support and was treated to a free lunch at a nearby restaurant.
When the Linda Winners of the country take to the streets alone to fight dictatorship it shows that Americans still value democracy, freedom and are willing to resist—at all levels, in all places and at all ages. When they do that Americans might just all be winners.
What will this mean in the coming year?
That is something which it will take an entirely different essay to examine. But that the examination will be made at the beginning of 2026 is one prophecy almost certain to come true.
Linda Winner takes her lone stand for democracy in Okeechobee, Fla., on “No Kings” day, Oct 18, 2025. (Photo: WGCU/Eileen Kelley)
Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly addresses a town hall meeting in Naples’ South Regional Library on Oct. 13. (Photo: Author)
Oct. 19, 2025 by David Silverberg
Even in retirement-heavy Naples, Fla., it takes some kind of special magic to fill a large auditorium for a political speech on a Monday afternoon.
But David Jolly managed to do exactly that when he addressed a town hall meeting at the Collier County South Regional Library on Monday, Oct. 13.
Jolly is the Democratic candidate for governor—and if the turnout, interest and enthusiasm of the crowd was any indication, this campaign and election will certainly be intense. People are fired up—and worried.
But if Jolly is worried, he gives no indication of it.
“Believe. Believe,” he told the crowd. “My wife and I would not be in this race, I pledge to you, if we did not believe that in this moment we’ve got the best shot we’ve had in 30 years to change the direction of this state. When we change the direction of Florida, we impact national politics, we give people across the country the opportunity to look to something that’s different and better. Believe. We here believe.”
It seemed like he had the audience believing him.
It’s one thing to believe—it’s another thing to back up that belief with data, money and, ultimately, votes.
But Jolly thinks he’s got the goods.
Pure Florida
Jolly is probably as Florida as it’s possible to be for someone other than an indigenous native. He was born on Halloween, 1972, in Dunedin and grew up in Dade City.
His father was a Baptist preacher and he was raised on Baptism’s precepts, which he has made clear still affect him as “a person of deep faith.”
It was his higher education that took him out of state, to Emory University in Georgia and George Mason University in Virginia, where he graduated with a juris doctor degree cum laude.
A Republican, Jolly joined the staff of Republican Rep. Bill Young in 1994, who at the time was representing central Florida’s 10th congressional district. Jolly rose through the various staff ranks but left the office in 2007 to work as a consultant and lobbyist. When Young died in office in 2013 at the age of 82, Jolly ran in a special election in March 2014 to succeed him, and won a narrow, 2 percent victory. He then won the general election in his own right in November without either a Republican primary challenger or a Democratic opponent.
As a representative, Jolly trended what might be called center-right, favoring what was the standard Republican litany of positions. He had campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act and supported overturning Roe versus Wade. In office he was in favor of tighter border controls, more restrictive vetting of immigrants and worked to maintain the prison in Guantanamo Bay.
But he also veered more centrist on other issues, arguing that regulations were appropriate to keep guns away from criminals, despite his support for the Second Amendment. He also supported the legality of same-sex marriage as part of his belief in personal liberty and opposition to government interference. At the same time, he said his Christian faith made him a believer in traditional marriage.
More particularly for Florida, he supported a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and sought to extend the National Flood Insurance Program to cover businesses and second homes.
As the 2016 election approached, he considered a run for the US Senate seat held by Marco Rubio when Rubio was considering running for another office—but Rubio changed his mind, decided to stay in the Senate and Jolly ran again for the 13th.
This time he was opposed by former governor Charlie Crist, who had transitioned from Republican to independent to Democrat. Still a canny politician, Crist narrowly won the election by 51.9 percent to Jolly’s 48.1 percent.
Changing parties
David Jolly in repose. (Photo: Author)
There was never a single, revelatory moment when Jolly suddenly decided to switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic, he told The Paradise Progressive.
“It was more a journey. It really was,” he said. “I mean, I was a Bush 41 Republican who fought the Tea Party, right? I was an appropriator who voted to keep the government open when they wanted to shut it down. On constitutional issues like marriage equality and eventually on reproductive freedom, I was moving away. On guns, I was moving away.”
He smiles wryly: “I say Republicans didn’t want me and Democrats didn’t need me.”
And then there was the presence and over time Donald J. Trump’s domination of the Republican Party. Jolly was no Trumper. “I fought back and lost that,” he reflects.
“I knew the fight had been lost in my mind, that the party I once belonged to was never coming back and that certainly I was not a sufficient leader to try to bring it back. And I spent six years as an independent, which was the most informative part of my political life, to be untethered from a major party, major party dogma.”
It was at the time he and his second wife were expecting their first daughter that he considered leaving the Republican Party. When he did it, he did so in a very public way.
“I basically announced on Bill Maher that I was leaving,” he said of his Oct. 5, 2018 appearance on Maher’s program. “I said I wanted our kids to know, I wanted my daughter to know, that it’s important to fight for what you believe in. But there came a moment where I was accepting that I wanted her to also see sometimes there are fights you walk away from.”
Or as he put it then, “Somebody else can fight for the dignity of the Republican Party now—it’s not my fight anymore.”
Jolly went on to become a political independent and a commentator for MSNBC, where he was consistently critical of Trump.
Then, this year, after making campaign-like appearances around Florida, including an appearance and speech in Naples on May 17, Jolly announced on June 5 that he was running for governor as a Democrat.
Jolly is well aware that there are critics who question his commitment to the Democratic Party and its principles.
He himself said, “I’m in a very post-ideological space. I really am. I think the left-right spectrum confines us and restricts us.”
However, his time as an independent gave him perspective, “I just got to look at what are the big answers to our big problems?” he said.
What is more, as he said to the crowd at his town hall in Naples: “Is it okay to change your mind?” While the crowd applauded and cheered he concluded: “I actually think it is.”
David Jolly speaks outside the Collier County Courthouse on May 17 of this year. (Photo: Author)
A stark contrast
It’s hardly surprising that as a Democrat, Jolly’s positions are starkly opposite those of Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) or his leading likely opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.).
But more than partisan, his positions are aimed squarely at the concerns of everyday Floridians and away from broad, national ideological questions.
Overall affordability and the high cost of insurance are key problems to be tackled, in his view.
“The property insurance crisis is the primary reason so many people in Florida are struggling to afford a home,” notes his platform. “From renters to retirees to homeowners, the burden of property insurance continues to make housing costs in Florida unaffordable for many.” He is pledging to make alleviating that problem a key focus of his governorship.
Notably, he is pro-choice. “Reproductive healthcare decisions should be made between women and their doctors, not politicians,” states his platform. He wants Florida to codify the same rules that held during the Roe v. Wade era.
He also recognizes the reality of climate change. “Florida should accept the science of climate change, protect our beaches and state parks, and invest in resiliency throughout the state,” according to his platform.
While supporting the Second Amendment, he thinks that Floridians have suffered enough from gun violence and lax gun laws. As his platform states: “Florida should ban the sale of assault weapons, require universal and comprehensive background checks, explore licensing, and preserve and expand the red flag laws enacted following the tragedy at Parkland.”
The litany goes down the line. But most of all, he emphasizes, he’s running on a platform that transcends party dogma.
And perhaps one of his most compelling positions is his call to treat everyone with “kindness, dignity and respect.”
“Culture wars divide and demonize,” states his campaign platform. “Florida should reject the politics of division and hate, and instead create a home where everyone is valued, respected, and welcomed. We should become a place where everyone is given dignity and equity, regardless of race, creed, or color, and regardless of who you love or the God you worship. Florida should embrace our immigrant community and celebrate their contributions to our state’s culture and economy. It’s time to create a Florida for all people.”
And there’s another promise he makes when it comes to culture, as he confided to his Naples audience.
“I’ll also tell you, one of the things I want to do when we get elected governor is bring back art to the state of Florida,” he said to enthusiastic cheers. “I want to open the governor’s mansion through loan agreements with major art installations. Bring back the art that lets us see who we are, who we could be, who we’ve been. Test the boundaries, bring back culture and theater, and open it up to the people of Florida. Open it up to school kids and everyone else. Otherwise, who else wants to go to Tallahassee?”
But can he win?
Jolly is running in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 1.4 million, where the Republican governor won by 22 points in 2022, where his likely opponent is endorsed by Trump and has $31.5 million in campaign funds.
And yet Jolly is not only confident he can win, he radiates that confidence and can convey it to a crowd.
“We’re seeing it on the ground,” he said in response to a question about his path to victory. What’s more, “we’re also seeing it in the data.” Polling backs this up, he insisted. “I feel very comfortable saying we’re in the margin of error. We have a poll that has us leading by one [percentage point]. Donalds’ [poll] has him leading by four.”
But it’s the overall political environment that fuels his certainty. “So very critically, the environment and the cycle is one of dramatic change,” he said.
Why? “It’s because people are angry, they’re worried about their economy, and they don’t trust incumbent politicians right now. And so, yes, for us, that made the decision to get in this race. I really mean this, having been involved in probably 30 races—as a candidate in only three or four—I have zero interest in chasing a generic ballot, as I say. I know there’s an opportunity for change in Florida.
“And layer into that, we have a generational affordability crisis that truly is hitting Republicans as much as it’s hitting Democrats. And so that contributes to this environment.”
He pointed out that recent special elections in Florida have swung Democratic by 15 and 16 points. It has led DeSantis to avoid special elections, for example for his appointed lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, or in counties like Palm Beach. It’s also a trend throughout the country.
“This is a race that allows an Andy Beshear to get elected in Kentucky, a race that allows Steve Bullock to get elected in Montana, and a race that allows David Jolly to get elected in the state of Florida,” he told the crowd in Naples.
But he also acknowledged that the odds present a direct challenge to him: “I have to build a campaign that can win in this moment and win in this cycle.”
That also means closing the money gap. Donalds is reporting $31.5 million in the bank. Jolly has raised $2 million.
But Jolly sees an upward trend and points out that it’s still early in the race.
“We have small dollar donors from all 50 states,” he said in our interview. “Some of the largest investors in American politics have agreed to support us. But others are just ‘wait and see,’ right? There’s no reason for them to spend money in October of ‘25.”
What’s more, the Republican fundraising advantage may not endure.
“I would also say Republicans are very likely about to have a bloodbath of a primary and spend all their money against each other. And what I’m begging Democrats is—and that’s why I said it over and over today—if I’m insufficient, make me stronger.” In other words, he wants to have the dialogue that will enable him to learn and become more effective.
He also dismisses the impact of Trump’s endorsement of Donalds in the general election.
“With a state exhausted by MAGA, it hurts more than it helps,” he observed.
He continued: “The way I look at this race is that 33 percent of the state is probably unavailable to us. I’ll make my case as hard as I can. But if 39 percent of voters are registered as Republicans, I believe we will get 15 percent [of that].” If he can win over that percentage of Republican voters he can negate six points of likely Donalds supporters.
“So I do believe 33 percent of the state is loyally behind Donalds and Donald Trump. But in the midst of a dramatic change environment, to be able to have 67 percent of the state available to us, I feel very, very good about that.”
The possibility still exists that Jolly could face another Democratic challenger for governor. Right now he’s the only Democratic candidate and both in his speech and interview he called on his fellow Democrats not to be part of what has traditionally been called “the circular firing squad”
“Be a part of how we win,” he urged. “Don’t be a part of how you tear us down. Whether that means we have a primary or not, we’ll see. Family conversations aren’t all bad. They can be good. But we just have to remember that this is about Democrats leading a new coalition in American politics. And the only way we do that is if people look at the Democratic Party and see something they want to be a part of. If we fight each other for the next year, nobody’s going to be interested in that.”
Meanwhile, Jolly is taking a leaf from another former Democratic Florida candidate. He said his strategy is to go into communities across the state no matter their apparent ideological tendencies.
“I’m going to do what Lawton Chiles did in 1970. We’re going to go everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Deep red communities, frankly like Naples.” In 1970 Lawton Chiles, campaigning for the US Senate, did a 1,000 mile trek across Florida, visiting every community en route and talking to people along the way. He won the Senate seat and then went on to be elected governor in 1991, passing away in 1998.
Similarly, Jolly intends to visit as many communities as possible and once in those communities he intends to challenge Republicans to reveal their proposed solutions.
“Republican, what are you willing to do?’ he said. “I think we need a safe cap for insurance [i.e., ensuring that insurance can cover all contingencies]. Republicans will call it socialism. So what’s your plan? Can you convince enough people in Naples that you’re going to reduce their homeowner’s insurance, Byron? I don’t think you can. Can you convince enough people that they’re safe from school shootings? I don’t think you can, Byron. So we have to be willing to go into conservative media environments, into conservative communities and have conversations that not only express our values but ask the other side to be held accountable for their view and for their vision.”
A movement within a movement?
A demonstrator at the “No Kings” protest in Naples, Fla., on Saturday, Oct. 18, shows her support for David Jolly amidst the signs opposing Donald Trump. (Photo: Author)
There’s no doubt that Jolly projects a confidence that has been sorely lacking among Florida Democrats ever since Trump won the state in 2016 and DeSantis took the governorship in 2018. It’s a tonic for the crowds that come to hear him and it has electrified audiences, particularly in Naples.
Jolly has the experience, the objectivity and the analytical capabilities to be fully aware of the obstacles he faces, particularly in a state and a country being battered by rising authoritarianism, repression and anti-democratic tricks.
Asked if he worries about threats to the upcoming elections he acknowledges the dangers but is determined to press on.
“I still have faith, but I worry about it,” he admits. “And I worry about other areas of interference shy of Election Day.
“I worry, for instance, as a candidate, that the Trump administration is going to investigate major Democratic candidates across the country. And I worry about that on a personal level. I know there’s nothing [I’ve done] that merits an investigation. But it’s easy for what I believe is the current posture of the president to launch an investigation.”
He also worries that Trump could declare a national emergency on some pretext shortly before the election and somehow try to stop it. But he continues to campaign on the presumption that the election will be free, fair and honest.E
He is also fully aware of the physical danger to candidates and public figures in the current atmosphere. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Jolly said that he sat down with his wife and his team and had a conversation about whether to stay in the race. But he—and they—decided the stakes were too big and the outcome too important not to keep campaigning.
He also wanted to send a message to his children. “I guess with our kids, I wanted them to know that the story I’m telling is true. I want them to know we’re trying to change the world. And that, win or lose, it’s a gift.”
Jolly has set an arduous task for himself. His is a campaign that is truly grassroots, he will be campaigning everywhere in a big state; his Naples town hall was already his 81st campaign event and the campaign is still in its early stages. He knows how intense it’s going to get as time goes on and especially in a year’s time when the race has tightened and is nearing the finish line.
But if Jolly is fazed by the prospect, he doesn’t show it. If anything it fuels his resolve.
“I know what is within our power, which is to build a coalition strong enough to win overwhelmingly,” he said emphatically. “And I know that sounds like a wild aspiration in Florida, but it’s why we’re in it. It’s why we’re in this, because if we can build a big enough coalition in Florida to overcome that, then I think that people have spoken.”
He also knows the part he must play to win and that it’s long, exhausting and potentially dangerous. “But,” he continues, “if we win, it’s because Florida’s voters have decided enough is enough—and we’re going to overwhelmingly take back the state.”
A Republican seaside stampede in Florida’s 19th Congressional District. (Illustration: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
October 7, 2025 by David Silverberg
Correction: The correct name of the company owned by Jim Schwartzel is Sun Broadcasting, which has no ownership stake in WINK TV.
What was promising to be a messy but obscure congressional race for Florida’s 19th Congressional District was suddenly catapulted into national prominence on Tuesday, Oct. 1, when Madison Cawthorn, a 30-year-old former North Carolina congressman and media bad boy announced that he would be running.
Because of his past behavior and erratic record, national and local media suddenly focused on him and the district. But in fact he’s an unlikely candidate with long odds in a crowded field.
The real focus of all this attention is the seat being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who is seeking the governorship.
As of right now there are nine declared Republican aspirants to the congressional seat and a single Democrat.
It’s very reminiscent of the 2020 congressional election when at one point there were 12 Republican candidates scrambling for the seat of retiring Republican Francis Rooney. He stepped down after two terms and the unpardonable sin of saying that the evidence should be considered in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
From that scrimmage (which ultimately narrowed to nine candidates) Donalds emerged the victor. Now the seat’s up for grabs again, with a whole new cast of characters—and with a little less than a year until the Republican primary election on Aug. 18, 2026, there may be new entrants.
It needs to be emphasized that it is still very early in the election cycle. Some candidates have not yet posted websites explaining their proposals and positions. They have not yet filed Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports. Nor have they all registered with the Florida Department of State. Candidates have until noon on Friday, April 24 of next year to qualify and more may appear.
This article will survey just the Republican candidates, their backgrounds and platforms. A separate article will evaluate and analyze the race. A third article will profile Democrat Howard Sapp.
But first, a look at the district.
The 19th Congressional District
A map of Florida’s 19th Congressional District. (Map: Ballotpedia)
The District is older, whiter and slightly richer than the rest of the country.
It has a population of 809,197 people according to one estimate based on Census data. That population is 67 percent White, 21 percent Hispanic and 7 percent Black. The median age is 53 years, which is 25 percent higher than in the rest of Florida and 1.4 times higher than in the entire United States. Women represent about 51 percent of its population.
At $52,402 per year it has a higher per capita income than both Florida and the United States and at $76,248 its median income is about the same as the rest of the country but a little higher than the rest of Florida. Even so, it has about a 12 percent poverty rate.
The Cook Political Report, the authoritative survey of congressional districts, rates it solidly Republican. For the 2026 election the Cook Partisan Voter Index is rating it R+14, meaning that in the past two presidential elections, the district’s results were 14 percentage points more Republican than the national average, making it the 88th most Republican district nationally.
The district encompasses two counties, Lee and Collier, both of which are majority Republican in registered voters. In Lee County, of 508,919 registered voters, 48 percent are Republican, 21.9 percent are Democratic, and 29.9 percent are registered as “other,” according to figures from the Lee County Election Supervisor. In Collier County, of 259,982 registered voters, 55.2 percent are Republican, 19.3 percent are Democratic, 22.4 percent have no party affiliation and 2.9 percent are registered to other parties, according to figures from the Collier County Supervisor of Elections.
This is the district that the following candidates are vying to represent in the US House of Representatives.
They are listed in alphabetical order, according to last name.
Madison Cawthorn
A state trooper confronts Madison Cawthorn at the scene of his most recent car crash on April 14, 2025. (Image: TikTok)
The instant he announced that he was running for Congress on Oct. 1, Cawthorn stole the media spotlight in Southwest Florida politics.
The reason is that he previously held the seat for North Carolina’s 11th District from 2021 to 2023. Currently separated from Christina Bayardelle, his wife of one year (from 2020 to 2021), the 30-year old Cawthorn made headlines and raised eyebrows during his brief congressional tenure.
In that time he carved out a role for himself as an extreme, vocal Trumpist and conspiracy theorist who made unsubstantiated assertions and hurled insults at opponents, journalists and fellow Republicans.
He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and addressed the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse that led to the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Then-Rep. Madison Cawthorn addresses the Stop the Steal rally on the Ellipse in Washington, DC on Jan. 6, 2021. (Image: Madison Cawthorn on X)
His most infamous statement was his assertion in a March 2022 interview that he had been invited to an orgy by a fellow Republican lawmaker (unnamed at the time and ever since) and that he had seen prominent politicians using cocaine in front of him.
He was denounced by fellow Republicans, was the subject of numerous calls for ethics investigations and was the focus of multiple allegations of financial improprieties, favoritism, and House rules violations.
Cawthorn was defeated in a North Carolina Republican primary in 2022, after which he announced that “It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command,” with “Dark MAGA” generally understood to represent vengeful Trumpism.
It was after this loss that Cawthorn purchased a $1.1 million home in Cape Coral and moved there, registering as a Florida voter in 2023.
As he states on his campaign website, “Florida gave me a second chance, and now I’m running for Congress to fight for faith, family, freedom, and the America First values we believe in. Washington is full of snakes, but I’m ready to drain the swamp and defend Florida.” He calls himself “an unapologetic conservative and one of President Trump’s strongest allies.”
As of this writing, Cawthorn was not yet registered with the Florida Department of State as a candidate.
He has, however, considerable familiarity with Florida—and Florida law enforcement.
It was near Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2014 during a Spring Break trip that he lost the use of his legs in a car accident. He was a passenger and the injury left him dependent on a wheelchair. More recently, on April 14, 2025 Cawthorn was the driver when his 2021 Mercedes rear-ended a Florida Highway Patrol car on Interstate 75 in Collier County. He was cited for driving without a license on Aug.19, 2025 and then arrested on Sept. 10 when he failed to appear for his court date.
Madison Cawthorn following his Sept. 10, 2025 arrest. (Photo:LCSO)
Chris Collins
Chris Collins (center) leaves a New York courthouse following his conviction for insider trading in 2019. (Image: ABC7 News)
Like Cawthorn, Christopher Carl “Chris” Collins is another former Republican congressman with a criminal record.
Collins, 75, represented New York’s 27th Congressional District, the area around Buffalo, NY from 2013 to 2019. He was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president in 2016.
In August 2018 Collins and his son were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for insider trading and making false statements.
The charges related to a company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, where Collins recruited investors while in office. In 2017, when he received news that the company’s medication to treat multiple sclerosis had failed its tests, Collins called his son from a lawn party at the Trump White House and told him to sell the stock before the news was made public. By doing this his son and another close relative avoided nearly $800,000 in losses when the stock’s price plummeted 92 percent the next day.
Collins was charged while he was in the midst of a re-election campaign. He suspended the campaign, then restarted it, then went on to a very narrow victory in the November 2018 election and took office in January 2019.
However, Collins didn’t last long in his seat. On Sept. 30, 2019 he announced his resignation to take effect the next day and that same day pleaded guilty to the charges against him.
“By virtue of his position, Collins helped write the laws of this country and acted as if the law didn’t apply to him,” said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, after Collins pleaded guilty.
Collins was barred by the Security and Exchange Commission from serving as an officer or director of any public company. In October 2020 he began serving a 26-month prison sentence. But that didn’t last long either—he was pardoned by Trump on Dec. 22, 2020.
Collins purchased a home on Marco Island and told a judge in 2019: “I’m now a Florida resident and will be FL for a while as the press settles down and moves on.” He served his prison time in a federal prison in Pensacola.
In June, Collins was one of the first candidates to announce his run for the 19th District shortly after Donalds launched his bid for governor. He is listed as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
As of this writing Collins did not have a campaign website, nor had he posted any policy positions related to Congressional District 19.
John Fratto
John Fratto as he appeared in his 2024 campaign rap video. (Image: Campaign)
John “Johnny” Fratto, 46, is switching his sights to the 19th Congressional District from the 26th, where he ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2024.
Fratto’s chief claim to fame in that race was a campaign rap video extolling Fratto’s Trumpist virtues that was filmed at Oakes’ Seed to Table market and was meant to appeal to the district’s Hispanic voters.
“America’s first bloodline mafia congressman versus deep state communist,” said the opening lines of the rap, which continued with a chorus that sounded like: “The man knows, voting Johnny Fratto.”
It didn’t work. Fratto was crushed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), who won by a lopsided 73.2 percent in the Republican primary to Fratto’s anemic 16.5 percent, despite Fratto’s endorsement by local farmer, grocer and political kingpin Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III and Republican political operative Roger Stone.
In 2024, responding to questions from the website Ballotpedia, Fratto stated that he was born in Des Moines, Iowa but then seems to contradict himself with the statement: “Originally from Southern California, I moved my family to Southern Florida to be close to my wife’s family, and to raise my kids in a state that will help them become hard working, honest adults.”
He listed his career experience as “working as an entrepreneur.” He has also claimed to have been an executive producer for TV and movies.
As of this writing, Fratto did not have a campaign website for his District 19 run but he had announced his candidacy on Facebook. He did not post any specific policies or proposals but he has made clear his support for Trump and his agenda in the past. He says he wants to restore the country to “its traditional values.”
Fratto is registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
John Fratto (left) is endorsed by Alfie Oakes (right) in the 2024 campaign rap video. (Image: Campaign)
Ola Nesheiwat Hawatmeh is a registered candidate with the Florida Department of State.
Hawatmeh does not have a campaign website.
A LinkedIn profile states that she is a senior policy advisor, chief executive officer and founder of Mom Me Makeover and OLA Style, apparently a sole proprietorship. She is also listed as a senior policy advisor to Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-5-Ind.) as of December 2024.
The only policy statement attributable to Hawatmeh is an undated Instagram video post, made from an unidentified airport when Hawatmeh was on her way to a week of lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the non-profit Moms for America, a national, conservative education advocacy group.
In that post Hawatmeh earnestly says: “Today, reading about 20,000 migrants in Springfield, Ohio, killing dogs, killing cats, ducks in our parks, no accountability. It is our country. Illegals are being placed before American citizens. No accountability for them, but we have to be held accountable if we don’t pay our taxes, if we don’t pay our bills. We have no say as to who our neighbors are now? You want to place illegals in our neighborhood. We have to have a say. Never give up, never give in. Speak up. It’s our America, it’s our country.”
Hawatmeh’s connection to the 19th Congressional District is unclear from any online sources or statements. Nor does she make clear that she resides in the district or the state.
Catalina Lauf
Catalina Lauf in 2023 at a natural products exposition. (Photo: Campaign)
In 2022 Lauf ran for Congress in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District but lost to Democrat Bill Foster with a total of 43.5 percent to Foster’s 56.5 percent.
In 2020 she lost the Republican congressional primary in a field of seven candidates in District 14 to Jim Oberweis who garnered 25.6 percent of the vote to Lauf’s 20.1 percent. (More about Oberweis below.)
Lauf issued a statement to Florida Politics when she announced her Florida run on Oct. 2, the day after Cawthorn made his announcement.
“Southwest Florida deserves bold, principled leadership — leaders in the mold of Byron Donalds, who stand up fearlessly for our values, and who are champions of President Trump’s America First agenda. I was proud to work for President Trump’s administration and now I’m running to continue that tradition of strength, courage, and service for the people of FL-19.”
As of this writing Lauf was not yet registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State. She had posted a campaign Facebook page but did not yet have a dedicated campaign website.
On the Facebook page she stated that “Like many Americans, Catalina is concerned with the young socialist progressive wing in Congress.”
Dylan Modarelli
Dylan Modarelli (Photo: Campaign)
According to his LinkedIn profile, Dylan Modarelli is chief executive officer of Empire Gems in Fort Myers. He lives in Cape Coral and is in his mid-30s. He’s married with one child.
He is originally from North Bergan, New Jersey but does not state on his professional campaign website how long he has lived in Florida. Nor does he mention any prior political or government experience.
Modarelli’s candidacy is registered with the Florida Department of State.
“I come from hardship, raised in a home where giving up was never an option,” he writes. “When I was just five years old, I lost my father to a heroin overdose, leaving my mother to raise me alone while relying on family donations to survive. Those early struggles taught me resilience, empathy, and the belief that our circumstances do not define our future.”
Without providing dates, he states that he served as a police officer (no mention of where), then entered the emerald trade, building a business.
He’s taking a Trumpist/populist approach. As he says on his Facebook campaign page, he’s “pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-guns.”
“I’m ready to fight. I’m tired of the grifters, the career politicians, and the power hungry elites who have forgotten the people they swore to serve,” he says in a video. “Washington has turned into a playground for the connected and the corrupt, while hardworking Americans are left behind. I’m not here to play their games. I’m here to break them. I’m here to stand up for the working man, the struggling families, the seniors, the veterans, and the forgotten communities. We’ve been ignored for too long, and I refuse to sit quietly while they sell out our future. It’s time to send a fighter to Congress who answers to the people, not the lobbyists. This is our fight and I’m just getting started.”
Unlike most of the other candidates, Modarelli has a platform with defined positions on a variety of issues.
Asked in a Ballotpedia questionnaire what areas of public policy he was most passionate about, Modarelli responded, “I’m passionate about protecting animals. I believe no animal should be killed just because it’s unwanted. I stand firmly against euthanizing healthy animals in shelters.” Indeed, on his campaign website he lists ending “kill shelters” as his third most important issue after promoting affordable housing and declaring war on fentanyl.
One particularly noteworthy issue that Modarelli lists is ending private, for-profit prisons. Florida currently operates 12 for-profit prisons and two concentration camps.
As Modarelli states: “The prison system should focus on justice and rehabilitation not corporate profit. I will fight to end for-profit prisons that prioritize filling beds over public safety, turning incarceration into a money-making scheme.” He adds: “It’s time to bring prisons under public control and ensure they serve the people, not shareholders.”
Jim Oberweis
Jim Oberweis during a lobbying trip to Washington in June 2025. (Image: Fox4News)
Jim Oberweis, 79, is a veteran politician, with a mixed record of wins and losses in his native Aurora, Illinois.
Prior to politics he worked as a teacher and a financial services advisor before buying and running his family’s dairy, which had a product line of what Oberweis calls “the richest ice cream in the world.”
Oberweis began his political career in 2004 when he ran for the Republican nomination for US Senate but lost. In 2012 when he ran for the Illinois state Senate and won in District 25. He made another bid for the US Senate in 2014 but lost to Democrat Dick Durbin. He returned to the state Senate in 2012, was reelected in 2016 and rose to the position of Minority Whip.
In 2020, Oberweis ran for the Republican nomination in the Illinois 14th Congressional District, the area of Chicago’s western suburbs, centered around Aurora.
In that election he faced Catalina Lauf, who is running in the current District 19 election (see above). In a field of seven candidates, Oberweis beat Lauf, who came in third, with only 20.1 percent of the vote to Oberweis’ 25.6 percent.
However, Oberweis lost in the general election to Democrat Lauren Underwood, whom Oberweis claims stole the election.
“As of election night he had won against his Democrat incumbent opponent and was sent to Washington for New Member Orientation where he met Byron Donalds, also a newly elected Congressman,” states Oberweis’ third-person account of the election on his campaign website. “But when 20,000 previously uncounted mail-in ballots were counted, he had lost. The uncounted ballots were never initialed by an election judge as required under Illinois law but were counted anyway. After 3 days of new member orientation Jim was told he might as well go home because things did not look good.”
Oberweis thought he was permanently done with politics and, as the website puts it: “Jim went home, packed his bags and moved permanently to Bonita Springs where he and wife have owned a condominium for 16 years, and became a full-time Florida resident.”
However, with Donalds’ quest for the governorship, Oberweis decided to try again.
Oberweis is a conservative, Trumpist Republican so most of his positions reflect orthodox Trumpism. However, he does weigh in on the local environment by calling for protection of the Everglades. He says more needs to be done to protect against the polluting runoff from cane sugar processing.
“We need to return the natural southerly flow of water through the Everglades which can help reduce the threat of red tide and provide more fresh drinking water,” he states on his website. “Mother Nature is nonpartisan. Hurricanes bearing down on your home don’t care about your political beliefs. We need to do what we can to mitigate damage from future hurricanes.”
As of publication time, Oberweis had not yet responded to a question about his position on Alligator Alcatraz, which opponents say injures the Everglades’ natural environment. He is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
Oberweis has also made a major commitment to his campaign with $2 million in personal loans and outside donations that raise his total to $2.12 million.
Mike Pedersen
Mike Pedersen takes his leap into politics. (Photo: Campaign via Gulf Coast News)
When most aspirants “jump into the race” it means they’re just announcing that they’re running for office. In May, Mike Pedersen literally jumped out of an airplane and parachuted to earth to make his mark.
Pedersen is a retired US Marine with a 20-year record of active service including 66 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm and deployments all over the world.
Mike Pedersen. (Image: Gulf Coast News)
He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1979, which would put his age in the 60s, although this is not confirmed on his website or in answers to questions sent to him by The Paradise Progressive. His wife was born in the Philippines, he has three children and eight grandchildren.
He has lived in Cape Coral for 26 years and worked as a pharmaceutical salesman after his active duty, focusing, he states, “on women’s healthcare across Southwest Florida”—although he doesn’t state among his positions whether he supports women’s right to choose abortion.
His positions are, otherwise, conventionally Trumpist: America first, an unmatched military, tightly restricted elections, protection of the Second Amendment, debt reduction, tight borders, a promise to “fight to protect our kids from radical agendas in the classroom and in sports” and “Continue the DOGE Mission” to achieve government efficiency. He does not list any local issues among his concerns on his website.
Jim Schwartzel
Jim Schwartzel attending the Press Club of Southwest Florida. (Photo: Author)
There is no other Republican candidate that is as purely Southwest Florida-born, bred and raised as Jim Schwartzel. A native of the area, he attended Bishop Verot Catholic High School in Fort Myers and Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.
Schwartzel, 49, is a media entrepreneur whom some media outlets refer to as a “mogul.” He announced his candidacy in April and is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
He’s president of Sun Broadcasting based in Fort Myers, which owns five local radio stations and four television stations. He also owns Gulfshore Life Media, which publishes the magazines Gulfshore Life, Gulfshore Business and The Naples Press. The financial data website Quiver Quantitative puts his net worth at $15.94 million. (Full disclosure: This author writes a monthly, non-political column for The Naples Press.)
Schwartzel is very conservative and does all he can to let the world know it.
This is reflected in his media holdings, which include radio station 92.5 FM Fox News, an all-talk conservative radio station based in Fort Myers.
Another expression of this is the country-western music radio station 93.7 FM, branded as “Trump Country,” whose history provides an interesting snapshot of the Southwest Florida political climate.
On Sept. 16, 2020 the station flipped from a rock and roll format to country-western and renamed itself “Trump Country.” The format lasted only three months. After Trump lost the election, it switched to country-western “Hell Yeah 93.7” under the call letters WHEL. The station went off the air during Hurricane Ian in 2022 and when it returned it was in a Latino current hit format. It then resumed as “Hell Yeah” on October 21, playing contemporary hits. On Inauguration Day 2025 at noon it switched back to calling itself “Trump Country.”
Given his conservative history, it’s no surprise that Schwartzel’s platform is all-out Trumpist. He states that he’s running for Congress “to give President Donald J. Trump the support he needs and to fight for the conservative values that make Southwest Florida strong.” He claims to be anti-career politician and “a straight-talking outsider” who will fight the standard array of MAGA-perceived threats that include “the ruling class of career politicians,” “socialist policies” and “outside political interest groups.”
When it comes to local issues, Schwartzel lists two: water and infrastructure.
On water, he states that he’ll “support common-sense water management policies” but “not the agendas of environmental extremists or special interest groups.”
On roads, he pledges to “push for funding to complete the projects necessary to reduce traffic congestion and enhance safety… .”
Schwartzel has loaned his campaign $1 million, bringing its total to $1.2 million. But while that still trails Oberweis’ total, he expects to surpass it by the end of the year.
To come:
Analyzing where it all stands, what it all means and where it’s all going
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, speaks with Mayor Teresa Heitmann of Naples, Florida, and City Manager Gary Young on the city’s damaged historic pier on Aug. 29. (Photo:DHS/Tia Dufour)
Sept. 29, 2025 by David Silverberg
Who would have thought that sleepy, obscure Southwest Florida, including Collier County and the City of Naples, would move to the forefront of national attention under the second administration of President Donald Trump?
First, there was the establishment of the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in far eastern Collier County. Implemented by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Alligator Alcatraz has drawn national scrutiny, condemnation, lawsuits and opposition. As intended, it has been a model for a whole gulag archipelago of anti-migrant concentration camps rising throughout the nation. Its fate is uncertain.
But now there’s a new focus: the City of Naples pier, which was destroyed in 2022’s Hurricane Ian.
New developments in the restoration of the Naples pier also serve to highlight the story of the Fort Myers Beach pier—and how each one is being treated illuminates larger trends in America today and the way government now operates.
Kristi Noem and the Naples pier
The current state of the Naples pier, seen over the shoulder of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during her visit to Naples on Aug. 29. (Photo: Kristi Noem/Instagram)
For those unfamiliar with it, the City of Naples is an incorporated municipality of roughly 20,000 people. It sits on the Gulf of Mexico at the southwestern tip of Florida and is primarily a tourist and leisure destination. Always a winter haven for the wealthy, its attractiveness to the millionaire—and billionaire—class has grown in recent years.
Among its attractions, Naples has an iconic pier that extends into the Gulf. Originally used for the offloading of supplies when Naples was founded and developed starting in the 1880s, it subsequently became a tourist attraction, a place above the beach to stroll and fish.
The Naples pier in 2020. (Photo: Author)
The pier has been destroyed by hurricanes several times, most recently by Hurricane Ian in 2022.
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Naples on Aug. 29, she immediately ordered $12 million in federal funds for its rebuilding, granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that she heads.
It emerges that the grant was the result of city lobbying and the intervention of a major Naples-based Noem donor.
The article was published last Friday, Sept. 26, by the non-profit investigative journalism newsroom, ProPublica, which, as it states, “investigates abuses of power.” ProPublica is known for its meticulous journalism. The article is based on emails and records obtained through public records requests, as well as interviews by its three authors: Pulitzer Prize winner Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski.
The article details how Naples Mayor Theresa Heitmann, frustrated by delays in getting the pier addressed, contacted Naples cardiologist Dr. Sinan Gursoy, who had been a $25,000 donor to Noem when she was governor of South Dakota.
At Gursoy’s urging, “Noem flew to Naples on a government plane to tour the pier herself. She then stayed for the weekend and got dinner with the donor, local cardiologist Sinan Gursoy, at the French restaurant Bleu Provence,” according to the article. Noem stayed the weekend at the Naples Bay Resort & Marina.
She toured the wrecked pier with Heitmann and City Manager Gary Young.
Afterwards she posted on Instagram: “The iconic Naples Pier was destroyed in 2022, and the city is still waiting on answers from FEMA. They couldn’t even get permission to remove the old pier. I saw this failure first-hand today with Mayor Heitmann and Gary Young, and now the project is back on track.
“Americans deserve better than years of red tape and failed disaster responses. Under @POTUS Trump, this incompetency ends.”
It is important to note that the article does not allege any illegalities or criminal activity by any party.
However, it states: “Noem’s actions in Naples suggest the injection of political favoritism into an agency tasked with saving lives and rebuilding communities wiped out by disaster. It also heightens concerns about the discretion Noem has given herself by personally handling all six-figure expenses at the agency, consolidating her power over who wins and loses in the pursuit of federal relief dollars, experts said.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told ProPublica that the pier decision “has nothing to do with politics,” since Noem has visited the sites of other disasters. “Your criticizing the Secretary’s visit to the Pier is bizarre as she works to fix this issue for more than 1 million visitors that used to visit the pier,” she said.
A visualization of the restored Naples pier. (Rendering: City of Naples)
The Fort Myers Beach pier
The Fort Myers Beach pier before and after Hurricane Ian. (Photos: WINK News/Matt Devitt)
Noem’s treatment of Naples can be contrasted with the experience of Fort Myers Beach, just 20 miles northward, whose tourist pier was also wrecked in Hurricane Ian.
Fort Myers Beach, like Naples, is a tourist-oriented, incorporated town on the Gulf of Mexico, although appealing to much smaller and less wealthy population than Naples, both in permanent residents and visitors. Its population is about 5,300 people.
This is the town where Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane and it did horrendous damage, virtually scraping buildings from their foundations all along the sea front and well inland.
The damage included its tourist pier. (Most towns along this stretch of coastline have piers because in their early days they were supplied entirely by boat.)
Like Naples, Fort Myers Beach officials are also trying to rebuild their pier.
Also, like Naples, Fort Myers Beach officials applied for FEMA funding. They were granted funding but only for the pier’s original structure. However, the city wants to expand and lengthen the pier, adding 415 feet so that it extends 1,000 feet into the water. They also want to widen it by four feet so it spans 12 feet.
This is expected to cost the city $17.1 million and the new parts won’t be covered by FEMA. To make up the shortfall, on Sept. 16, the Lee County Commissioners voted to seek $7 million from the Gulf Consortium, which manages compensation for the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. That money is provided under the RESTORE (Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies) Act of 2012, administered under Florida’s State Expenditure Plan.
“The project is proceeding as planned and designed,” Lee County spokesperson Betsy Clayton told the Fort Myers Beach Observer and Bulletin. “The plan all along was to use FEMA and Tourist Development Tax [funds].”
However, if BP funds are approved, “this would reduce the need for Tourist Development Taxes,” Clayton told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Fort Myers Beach and Lee County officials can only sit and wait to hear.
The restored Fort Myers Beach pier as conceived.(Rendering: Fort Myers Beach)
Commentary: Winners and losers
While Fort Myers Beach officials can lobby for their hoped-for BP funds to move the application process along, it seems doubtful that they can arrange a lunch with Kristi Noem and get the full funding over a weekend, as the far richer City of Naples did.
The incident also highlights why allegations of favoritism and political interference are—or should be—a sensitive issue and why inequitable distribution of government funding can be so disruptive.
What is more, both piers are very small disasters for FEMA and Noem amidst a very large array of natural events. As of Saturday, Sept. 27, FEMA was handling 58 major disasters and seven emergency declarations all around the United States and territories.
Complaints about slow responses and bureaucracy have always plagued FEMA.
However, this is nothing new. After every disaster people demand that aid arrive instantly, which, other than help from immediate neighbors, it never does. Government at all levels takes time to work, even when a response is urgent. As for its bureaucratic and procedural slowness, FEMA is bound by laws and regulations and has always had to ensure that money is properly accounted for, monitored and distributed.
But there are new reasons for FEMA delays and bottlenecks, chiefly the result of Trump and Noem’s own actions. FEMA has been battered by layoffs and staff dismissals, cuts to funding and Trump’s repeated attacks on it to the point of calling for its disestablishment.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA was reformed and streamlined, with two Floridians taking a leading role: R. David Paulison, a former Miami fire chief, and Craig Fugate, who had been Florida’s chief emergency manager. Under their administration and that of other DHS secretaries, FEMA was reworked to provide more timely responses and be completely evenhanded and apolitical in its actions and funding. It also made a major effort to prevent future disasters through preparedness, mitigation and increased resilience.
In the first Trump administration there were fears that Trump was politicizing responses, withholding aid to Democratic states like California and reducing preventive measures that responded to climate change challenges. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a future administration, proposed that much more of the fiscal burden for disaster recovery fall on the states. (See “Project 2025 remake of FEMA would hit communities hard after disasters.”)
Once in office Trump has maintained the drumbeat of criticism and repeatedly threatened to eliminate FEMA as an agency. The agency’s layoffs and dismissals have hampered its functioning and ability to respond to disasters.
Noem from the beginning has been an aggressive operative for the Trump agenda, implementing cuts to the FEMA workforce, verbally attacking the agency, as in her Instagram post, and echoing Trump’s lies.
As the ProPublica article pointed out, she has also insisted on personally approving all FEMA expenditures over $100,000, making her personally responsible for them—and since $100,000 is a very small expenditure in government operations, it means she has to be personally involved in every small and petty purchase.
This requirement vastly slows down the process of approving any sort of aid or expenditures—unless a community can short-circuit the entire system by going straight to the Secretary as Naples did. Other communities awaiting assistance and with far greater damage have been left hanging, also hoping for the kind of aid that was previously processed through established, rationally conceived procedures.
It needs to be emphasized, as previously, that there are no allegations of illegality or criminality here and certainly not on the part of Naples City officials. They were confronted with frustrating delays and a lack of response from FEMA. They chose to take action, as should be expected of city officials.
According to the ProPublica article, Mayor Heitmann tried a variety of different avenues to address the issue. The City already employed some expensive Washington consultants to guide the process but this was unproductive. She wrote directly to FEMA, attempted to enlist Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Naples resident, and finally decided to go directly to Noem through Gursoy, who had introduced Heitmann to Noem at a private party when Noem was governor.
When she contacted Gursoy, he agreed to “get on it.”
It has to be said: It was a good idea that produced results.
Interestingly, nowhere did Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) appear to play a role in any of this even though his district encompasses both towns with their piers and he would logically be the first official to contact in pursuing the city’s interests in Washington.
If there is fault to be had it lies with Noem. In pre-Trump days, a secretary of Homeland Security when faced with this kind of request would have declined it. Perhaps he or she would have responded: “Thank you for this kind invitation. Due to the many requests and needs from deserving communities across the country, I have to respectfully decline. However, I will forward your request to the proper offices in FEMA.”
But that kind of rectitude and propriety is a thing of the past.
The bigger issues
Beyond problems created for FEMA aid and distribution caused by Trump, Noem and the Department of Government Efficiency when it was operating, Noem’s personal intervention in the Naples pier project illustrates much broader issues of governance, personalization and inequality among communities.
The United States has been unique in creating “a nation of laws, not men,” as President John Adams put it. Constitutionally, its institutions are intended to function according to law and objective facts, not the personal preferences of any one person.
That is not the case with Donald Trump who is openly and blatantly making governance about himself, whether that applies to prosecuting his perceived enemies, or levying tariffs, or silencing those who satirize him.
As Trump has driven toward a more authoritarian, dictatorial form of government that centers entirely on his personal decisions and predilections, his personalization of government operations is leaching down into lower levels of decisionmaking.
This is glaringly evident in the case of the Naples pier. Noem may say that she’s heroically cutting red tape and taking action—and she may actually think it—but it also sends a signal to all other distressed communities around the country that the way to get disaster aid is not to follow the law and procedure but to somehow reach her personally, with paid travel and a nice dinner (at the least). It announces that emergency management decisionmaking now officially depends on her whims and personal preferences. It also announces that the American people and their communities cannot depend on a government that previously responded to their distress as one of its primary duties.
There has always been an element of personality and lobbying in government operations, whether in the legislative or executive branches. It’s what created the vast lobbying industry that exists today at all levels of government. But lobbying and advocacy was always peripheral to the government’s essential decisionmaking. Now, with Trump’s personalization and weaponization of government, it’s central to it.
In 1655 King Louis XIV of France is reputed to have said, “L’État, c’est moi!”—“I am the state.” It has gone down in history as the ultimate expression of personal power. The American revolution was an explicit rebellion against that philosophy. The state was the Constitution, an expression of “We the people”—all Americans.
As Trump drives toward becoming the embodiment of the American state, situations like Noem’s favoring Naples, or for that matter Tom Homan, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) taking cash for favors and then escaping any kind of law enforcement, are becoming more common.
The Naples pier is just one small example of the increasing personalization of government in America today. It’s also the embodiment of increasing stratification between affluent, well-connected communities and more obscure, modest and poorer communities in getting attention paid to their needs by a government originally formed to be of them, by them and for them.
So, while the focus in this instance may be on two closely-placed towns and their structures of planks and concrete jutting out into the waters of Florida, the gulf between them is actually broader, vaster, more profound—and, unfortunately, growing.
Your morning coffee and your orange juice are the weapons.
Taste them, savor them, pay attention to their flavors and subtleties and enjoy them to the fullest because they’re going to be taxed, perhaps beyond what you’re willing to pay for them in the future. What was once ordinary and routine is about to become rare and precious.
And all this is because President Donald Trump is trying to reverse a just judgment against a coup plotter, insurrectionist and would-be dictator in a land far away.
Last Thursday, Sept. 11, while Americans memorialized the terrorist attacks of 24 years ago, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court found Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, guilty of plotting a military coup to overthrow Brazil’s democratic government.
He was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison. The likelihood is that Bolsonaro will have to serve his time—the Brazilians aren’t kidding around.
Their judgment is informed by a 21-year experience of military dictatorship. They know what it means to be governed autocratically and to lose their freedoms. So when a politician plots to overthrow a democratically-elected government and sends a mob to destroy the legislative branch of government, they know that they have to respond firmly and decisively. The guilty party has to be punished fully because nothing else will preserve the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy.
Bolsonaro closely imitated Donald Trump in numerous ways.
His fate holds important lessons for the United States and for democracies that seek to defend themselves from demagogic authoritarianism. In this affair there are warnings—and especially lessons—for Americans.
As important, all Americans, including those living in Southwest Florida, are going to feel the effects of this battle.
The ‘Tropical Trump’
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and US President Donald Trump share a moment in the White House during a meeting on March 19, 2019. (Photo: Isac Nóbrega, Wikimedia Commons)
Bolsonaro was dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” a politician who took his cues from Donald Trump in both his election campaigns and governing. He was a demagogic, extremist populist campaigner and president who used insults and personal attacks both on the stump and through social media. He dismissed critical press coverage as “fake news.” He promised to “drain the swamp” of Brazilian politics.
Bolsonaro served as president from 2019 to 2023. In contrast to Trump he’d had a lengthy career in electoral politics before assuming the presidency. In 1990 after serving in the military he was elected to the city council of Rio de Janeiro and then to the Chamber of Deputies, the Brazilian House of Representatives. He served there for 27 years and became known for his conservatism. In 2018 he ran for president on a very Trump-like platform and won.
When he took office, Bolsonaro had to immediately deal with an economic crisis, which he did by favoring laissez fare economic solutions. He also rolled back protections for indigenous people and their lands and most notoriously stripped environmental protections from the Amazon rainforest in favor of agribusinesses.
He also advocated removing police restrictions to fight the country’s high crime rate. “A policeman who doesn’t kill isn’t a policeman,” he said while campaigning. In a country that had one of the highest rates of police killings in the world, he wanted greater lethality and defended the use of torture.
Once elected, Brazilian crime rates fell and the economy slowly recovered. But then, like Trump, Bolsonaro was hit with a curve ball: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like Trump, Bolsonaro initially dismissed the disease, calling it “a little flu” and belittling media warnings as “hysteria.”
But as in the United States, COVID struck hard in Brazil. As in the United States voters didn’t forget. And like Trump, Bolsonaro paid the price when those voters went to the polls.
In the United States, Trump lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Unwilling to accept the results, on Jan. 6, 2021Trump incited his followers to attack the United States Capitol, overturn the election and lynch Vice President Mike Pence, when he wouldn’t de-certify the results as Trump wanted. After several hours of inaction by Trump, the insurrection was suppressed by police and National Guard troops.
Rioters storm the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to the progressive, trade-unionist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, universally known as Lula. Like Trump, Bolsonaro refused to accept the results and on Jan. 8, 2023 a pro-Bolsonaro mob stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasilia, demanding that Lula be deposed and a military coup be staged. Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro wasn’t in the capital—he was in Orlando, Florida, where he’d gone to avoid Lula’s inauguration.
Rioters storm government buildings in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. (Photo: TVBrasilGov)
In the United States Trump faced condemnation and impeachment but was not removed from office and did not face any criminal charges or punishment for his role despite a detailed congressional investigation.
In Brazil, however, Bolsonaro was investigated and in November 2024 was indicted for attempting to mount a coup. He was charged in February 2025, placed under house arrest in August for violating court rules and tried in the Supreme Federal Court beginning on Sept. 2.
Last Thursday, Sept. 11, he was found guilty and sentenced to 27 years and 3 months (327 months) in prison.
Protecting the protégé
Having retaken the US presidency, Trump is actively trying to protect his Brazilian protégé using the full resources of the United States.
On July 31, Trump signed an executive order imposing 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods and declaring a national emergency regarding the country.
“The Order finds that the Government of Brazil’s politically motivated persecution, intimidation, harassment, censorship, and prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and thousands of his supporters are serious human rights abuses that have undermined the rule of law in Brazil,” it stated.
“By imposing these tariffs to address the Government of Brazil’s reckless actions, President Trump is protecting the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States from a foreign threat,” it stated.
The order declared that Brazilian court orders were tyrannical and arbitrary and charged that Brazil had tried to extort and coerce US companies into censoring free speech. It ordered revocation of the Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Morae’s visa to the United States and any issued to his family.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio added his own imprecations on the day Bolsonaro was found guilty.
“The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Rubio stated on X. “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”
Of course, Trump is willing to go further. On Wednesday, Sept. 10, the day before Bolsonaro’s verdict and sentencing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that “I can tell you this is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world.” The comments were taken as a possible military threat against Brazil.
Defiance and costs
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and First Lady Rosângela Lula da Silva arrive in Brasilia for his 2023 presidential inauguration. (Photo: Gov. of Brazil)
Brazilian authorities are defiant in the face of Trump’s threats.
“A president of one country cannot interfere in the sovereign decisions of another country. If he chooses to take further action, that’s his problem. We will respond as measures are taken,” Lula told a local television station.
“Threats like the one made today by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement that attacks Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and compelling evidence in the case files, will not intimidate our democracy,” Brazil’s foreign office said on X.
The potential impact of the dispute on US-Brazilian trade could be considerable. Last year trade between the two countries was worth an estimated $127.6 billion, according to the US Trade Representative. What is more, the US runs a surplus, with exports worth $49 billion and imports worth $42.3 billion and until now that surplus was growing. The US exports aircraft parts, refined oil, and gas turbines to Brazil and Brazil exports crude oil, coffee, unfinished iron and beef to the United States.
The Brazilian government’s stance against Bolsonaro’s attempted insurrection and coup is informed by some harsh history in the tropical nation.
On April 1, 1964, Brazil’s top military commanders launched a coup against Brazilian President João Goulart and the parliamentary republic he headed, which they alleged was heading in a communistic direction. They established a military dictatorship that engaged in all the abuses for which dictatorships are known: extrajudicial disappearances, use of torture, media censorship and suspension of due process, among other crimes.
At first tentative, as the years went on the dictatorship became harder, deeper and more intrusive. The Constitution was suspended, Congress and state legislatures were dissolved and the civilian justice system was replaced with a military one that was more repressive, arbitrary and merciless. The dictatorship reached down into everyday life, into the school system, the humanities and the arts.
Brazil’s dictatorship lasted 21 years, until 1985. Despite its early fiscal successes and an economic “Brazilian miracle,” it ultimately collapsed amidst economic stress, inflation and popular demand for a return to democracy. In 1985 an election was held to select a new president. A new, democratic Constitution was approved in 1988.
It is this dictatorship that Brazilians remember as they protect their democratic government and Constitution. They know what dictatorship means in a way that Americans, who have never experienced one, do not. It gives an urgency and determination to their administration of justice and prosecution of Bolsonaro. It also makes it likely that he will actually have to pay the penalty for his duly established crimes.
By contrast, in the United States, Trump was impeached for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection but never removed or criminally prosecuted. Without a historical memory of loss of democracy and freedom, American politicians presumed that after 2021 Trump was neutralized and no further effort was required to defend democracy. Clearly they were wrong.
Now, in addition to assaulting democracy, due process, civilian control and the Constitution, Trump is attempting to undermine democracy in a democratic Brazil and defend a rogue president who assaulted the nation’s fundamental institutions in the same way he himself did in the United States.
The United States has played an intrusive and sometimes contradictory role in Brazil. It supported the coup and its plotters in 1964. Brazilians fought back and at one point the US ambassador was kidnapped by resistance fighters but released unharmed. Then, in the mid-1970s the United States, under President Jimmy Carter, condemned human rights abuses and suspended military aid.
The current situation harkens back to the bad old Cold War days of covert American interference in the sovereign, independent processes of otherwise democratic states. Only now, instead of defending American democracy against communism, Trump’s regime is overtly and blatantly trying to protect a convicted criminal, would-be dictator and, arguably a traitor against the application of justice in his own country—and Trump is no doubt fearful of a similar fate in his own case.
Commentary: The breakfast battle
So why should Americans—and specifically Floridians—care what happens in a land far away?
Actually, everyday Americans will feel the pain of this trade war and pay its price—and they’ll feel it every single morning.
That’s because when it comes to coffee, the United States gets 35 percent of its coffee from Brazil, the largest portion of all the coffee that comes in from Latin America. (Colombia comes in second, with about 27 percent of US coffee imports.)
From the moment that Trump first announced tariffs on coffee in April, exporters and people knew that the cost of coffee was going to rise precipitously.
“If Brazilian coffee suddenly becomes 50% more expensive in the US, roasters will have little choice but to look elsewhere. But none have the scale, pricing consistency, or logistical muscle of Brazil. This could lead to shortages and price hikes, not just in the US, but globally,” warned Sarah Charles, writing for the trade website Coffee Intelligence.
But the impact on coffee is as nothing compared to the impact of Trump’s tariffs on orange juice—because Brazil provides over half of US orange juice.
Trump’s tariff is likely to drive the price of retail orange juice up by double digits. Ironically, this is likely to badly affect the Florida citrus industry, already declining because of citrus greening, migrant worker crackdowns and hurricane damage. Indeed, as Florida production has declined, the middle processing and distribution companies have become more dependent on Brazilian imports.
With all orange juice prices set to rise because of the tariffs and a likely decline in demand as a result, purchase of Florida’s orange products will also fall. The new punitive tariffs will also decrease processing companies’ profits and disrupt the supply chain.
When Trump first announced tariffs in April, Brazilian orange juice was exempted. However, now that he’s specifically targeting Brazil for political reasons, those exemptions are off the table, unless he changes his mind again.
There is a real possibility that the addition of Trump’s trade war on Brazil, coming on top of all its other woes, will bring Florida’s citrus industry to an end.
But for the everyday American, it’s in the two most common breakfast staples that Americans will feel the most immediate pain of Trump’s Brazilian tariff tantrum. After a century of promoting orange juice as a refreshing and healthful way to start the morning, orange juice may be priced out of reach. Those office coffee breaks that everyone took for granted may be a thing of the past, along with the stereotypical office coffee pot sitting on the burner all day reducing the liquid inside to a caffeinated sludge.
Coffee has been a politically-charged beverage throughout American history. In 1773 following the Boston Tea Party and protests against an English tea tax (which was a tariff), Americans switched to coffee in a show of patriotic protest. The change held and Americans have been coffee drinkers ever since.
Now a domineering president has unilaterally put a new tariff on coffee as well as other vital imports in an effort to protect and defend a fellow insurrectionist and would-be dictator against his own people’s justice and democracy.
One of the key complaints against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was that he was “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world” and imposing taxes without the peoples’ consent.
Perhaps it’s time for another protest against an unfair, unrepresentative and damaging tariff imposed by fiat, for, as the Declaration of Independence put it: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Just remember that as you drink your next morning orange juice and down your breakfast cup of coffee.
On a personal note: Doing business with dictators
I first became aware of Brazilian trade issues when I worked as the international trade reporter for the newspaper Defense News.
In that capacity I made the acquaintance of José Luis Whitaker Ribeiro at a trade conference.
Ribiero was chief executive officer of the giant Brazilian firm, Engesa. In the days before e-mail, we would communicate by fax. He was always prompt in responding, was always on the record, never held back, and provided a revealing and often humorously sarcastic insight into his business and his competitors. In other words, a perfect source.
An engineer, he and colleagues had founded Engesa to manufacture oil equipment in 1958. When the United States embargoed military supplies to the Brazilian dictatorship under President Jimmy Carter, Engesa began producing equipment for the Brazilian military.
But Engesa’s biggest boost came in 1979 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. Engesa became a major supplier to the Iraqi military and its business boomed as it churned out tough, reliable, easily operated military vehicles. It even began developing its own main battle tank, which required a major investment.
The Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988 and Engesa presented Hussein with the bill, which was considerable.
And, as Ribeiro told me, Hussein simply decided not to pay. He just didn’t feel like it. He casually refused to do it. There was no collection agency in the world that could make him.
Engesa’s business collapsed. It would never recoup its investments. It wouldn’t be paid the billions it was owed. In 1993 it declared bankruptcy.
That experience provides yet another insight into the nature of dictatorships, wherever they’re located. No matter how much contractors, corporations and related parasites may believe they’re going to profit from a dictatorship, there’s a lesson to be learned.
Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announces that Florida will be the first state in the nation to abolish all vaccine mandates. (Image: YouTube/News4JAX)
Sept. 8, 2025 by David Silverberg
Updated 10:30 am with Joseph Ladapo comments to CNN and David Jolly statement.
The decision announced on Wednesday, Sept. 3, by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to end all vaccination mandates in Florida hands Democratic candidates an enormous opportunity in next year’s elections.
It’s a classic wedge issue, one liable to split the opposition party.
While memories of dangers and uncertainty from a deadly pandemic are still fresh, DeSantis and Ladapo deliberately introduced a new vulnerability that hits every single Florida home.
By banning all vaccination mandates they’re threatening every child going to school in the state—every single one. They’re alarming parents. They’re menacing seniors. They’re defying science. They’re outraging doctors. They’re hurting the economy. They’re also risking Florida’s tourism and hospitality industry, which is already reeling from President Donald Trump’s international bullying, insults and tariffs.
It’s a situation that’s damaging, unsustainable and needs to be corrected at the polls—but they’ve provided the means to do that.
The announcement
The announcement was delivered by Ladapo at Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida near Brandon, before an enthusiastically supportive audience. Also speaking at the event were DeSantis, first lady Casey DeSantis, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas.
Ladapo was impassioned, insistent and fervent in his six-minute address. He built his case against vaccine mandates on moral and ethical grounds.
He was emphatic that the decision applied to every mandate, every requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated, and repeated the phrase “all of them” four times and “every last one of them” three times.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and, and, slavery, okay?” he said, emotionally. “Who am I as a government or anyone else? Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?”
He continued: “I don’t have that right. Your body, your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body, what you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.”
While states had convinced people that they had the right to mandate vaccines, they do not, he said. “They do not have the right. Do not give it to them. Take it away from them. And we’re going to be starting that here in Florida.”
People should make their own decisions, he argued. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you and I hope you make an informed decision. And that’s how it should be. That is, that is a moral ethical universe, not this nonsense where people who don’t know you are telling you what to put in your temple, the temple of your body. That is a gift from God. They don’t have that right.”
He thanked Florida lawmakers for supporting this position. He also noted that people regretted having taken the COVID-19 vaccine and wished they could undo it. Moreover, “…if we want to move toward a perfect world, a better world, you can’t do it by enslaving people in terrible philosophies and taking away people’s freedoms.”
Then he reiterated that all vaccine mandates in Florida “are going to be gone for sure” and said that DeSantis and the legislature would “get rid of the rest of it.”
“We need to end it,” he stated emphatically. “It’s the right thing to do and it’ll be wonderful for Florida to be the first state to do it.”
(A link to the full video is at the end of this article.)
In a CNN interview on Sunday morning, Sept. 7, Ladapo admitted that there had been no data review or research prior to his call for ending mandates.
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo told Jake Tapper, when asked if there had been any research done. “ … There’s this conflation of the science and, sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do.”
He continued: “This is an issue, very clearly, of parents’ rights. So, do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what’s appropriate to go into their child’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that,” Ladapo said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis takes the stage after Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to address the crowd at Grace Christian School.(Image: YouTube/News4JAX)
The political reaction
Republican politicians were split. Those who didn’t enthusiastically endorse the ban expressed their reservations with faint praise and a lack of enthusiasm, although none condemned it outright.
On the non-committal side, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), long an antagonist of DeSantis, told Marc Caputo of the news site Axios that “Florida already has a good system that allows families to opt out based on religious and personal beliefs, which balances our children’s health and parents’ rights.”
Another Republican, state Sen. Don Gaetz (R-1-Pensacola) was tepid: “If the surgeon general has valid and reliable evidence challenging the efficacy of certain vaccinations then of course I am open to his proposal,” Gaetz said in a statement to the Florida Phoenix. “As a layman, I also hope to hear from medical authorities.”
In contrast, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), was enthusiastic, telling the conservative cable channel Newsmax: “They don’t call us the free state of Florida for nothing. One of the things I think stood out about our state during the last years, especially when we were dealing with [COVID-19], was that we pushed back and made sure that we were giving reasoned analysis throughout that time period and making sure that people knew we as state leaders understood our limits, that we respected individuals’ rights,” she said.
“I believe parents should be empowered to make vaccination decisions for their children,” he posted on X, immediately after the announcement. Of course, he effusively praised Trump: “President Trump has done a great job bringing the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] conversation forward.”
He also made sure to praise Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prior to his Senate testimony: “[Secretary Kennedy] is doing a great job. He is dismantling bureaucracy. He is eliminating corruption. He is Making America Healthy Again. We are undergoing a health revolution thanks to his leadership & I wish him all the best tomorrow in [the Senate Finance Committee].”
His primary opponent for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Paul Renner, former Speaker of the Florida House, fell into the non-committal category: “As Speaker, I opposed mandatory COVID vaccines and supported strong parental rights legislation. Parents should not be forced to have their children take a vaccine that they think is unsafe. However, we should have safe and effective vaccines that save lives.”
In stark contrast to the Republicans, Democrats were immediate and outspoken in their condemnation of banning mandates.
“The DeSantis Administration’s decision to end vaccine requirements will result in the deaths of thousands of Floridians,” Democratic Party Chair Nichole (Nikki) Fried declared in a statement. “Today’s announcement is yet another morally bankrupt play that will make our communities less safe, all while Republicans are kicking 2 million Floridians off their healthcare.”
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-24-Fla.) called for Ladapo’s firing: “Are we losing our minds? This is getting ridiculous and pathetic. Are we trying to kill millions of innocent children? Childhood vaccines save lives. Abolishing them is insanity.”
Sen. Lori Berman (D-26-Boynton Beach), the Democratic Senate leader, call the ban “ridiculous” and “dangerous, anti-science, and anti-child,” adding, “Nobody wants to go back to the days of iron lungs.”
Sen. Tina Polsky (D-30-Boca Raton) noted her 2023 opposition to confirming Ladapo and said “He remains determined to prioritize political dogma over smart health decisions.”
Sen. Shevrin Jones (D-34-Miami Gardens) called the move “reckless” and accused the DeSantis administration of “actively undermining public health.”
David Jolly, the Democratic candidate for governor, called for Ladapo’s firing.
“Our surgeon general should be fired—today,” Jolly said in a 1-minute, 21-second video posted on X. “The good news is that Florida’s next governor gets to do that and I will do that on my very first day in office.” He called on the governor and legislature to stop the plan to lift the mandates and on his Republican opponents to condemn it as well and support vaccines.
He warned that parents are thinking of keeping their children home from school for fear of infection.
He also warned that “we have a raw ignorance infecting our politics today. It is time to embrace science and health and yes, vaccines.”
Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly. (Image: Campaign)
Analysis: Wielding the wedge
The big bet that DeSantis and Ladapo have made is that more Floridians will favor lifting mandates than maintaining them.
In this they listened to the extreme anti-vaxxers in Florida and in the Trump regime, most notably Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Both DeSantis and Ladapo have long been anti-vaxxers, as evidenced during the COVID pandemic. They opposed public health measures at the time and moved to abolish other health mandates. (It merits noting that DeSantis privately received the vaccine and disappeared from the public for two weeks in 2022 when he was rumored to have caught COVID.)
Given Kennedy’s all-out assault on vaccines and the scientific institutions that evaluate and administer them, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, DeSantis and Ladapo no doubt believed they were currying favor with Trump himself.
Moreover, they were carrying forward the COVID-era anti-vaccine movement. Certainly that anti-scientific sentiment was in evidence from their immediate audience at the Grace Christian School, which cheered and applauded. In their bubble they no doubt expect overwhelming support and agreement and they may think that this base can swing the 2026 election in their preferred direction.
But just as the medical data doesn’t support the assault on vaccines, so the polling data doesn’t support the opposition to them.
In a bit of remarkable timing, the KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) and the Washington Post newspaper conducted a survey of Floridians’ attitudes toward vaccines in July and August.
The survey found that 82 percent of the Floridians in the sample (of 2,716 people nationwide) favored requiring vaccines for measles and polio (while allowing some health and religious exemptions), with only 17 percent of respondents opposing them.
This tracked with the national results, which found that 81 percent of all respondents favored school vaccine mandates and only 18 percent opposed them. (One percent of the respondents skipped the question.)
Results of a KFF-Washington Post poll on attitudes toward vaccine mandates. (Chart: KFF, Washington Post)
These results indicate that Floridians as a whole are unlikely to favor the DeSantis/Ladapo vaccine mandate ban as its full consequences sink in.
In fact, it appears that DeSantis and Ladapo have handed the Democrats a precious wedge issue, one so emotionally fraught and divisive that it could split Republican voters to break for sensible, science-based Democratic candidates who care about their survival and that of their children. After all, this is a matter of life and death—and Florida has been through it before.
Democratic messaging should emphasize the threat that DeSantis and Ladapo have posed to Floridians’ kids, themselves and the state and it should be pounded home again and again and again, in every speech, statement and advertisement.
It’s as though DeSantis and Ladapo have put an iron wedge in an otherwise seemingly solid log and handed Democrats a sledgehammer to hit it.
It should be pounded hard, loud and continuously until that log splits.
Then Democrats should light a fire with the kindling—and make sure it burns hot.
The Paradise Progressive 