President Donald Trump signs an executive order yesterday following his taking the oath of office. (Photo: AP /Matt Rourke)
Jan. 21, 2025 by David Silverberg
The Donald Trump revolution has begun with 46 executive orders, issued immediately after his taking the oath of office, yesterday, Jan. 20.
They are sweeping, diverse in the areas they address and radical in their actions. There is also considerably redundancy, with different orders repeatedly directing the same actions.
In this analysis, ten orders appear to particularly affect Southwest Florida and its residents given their focus on immigration, border enforcement, energy exploitation as well as renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
The following is a list of the regionally relevant orders with brief analyses of their impacts. They are in the order they are listed on the official White House website, beginning with their official titles.
(A note on terminology: While this is not the usage in these orders, it is the usage of The Paradise Progressive that when it comes to immigration, an “immigrant” is someone who has legally been admitted into a country and all “immigrants” are ipso facto legal. A “migrant” is someone who has or is moving. (A useful mnemonic device is to remember that all immigrants are “in,” while all migrants are “moving.”) An “undocumented migrant” is someone who does not have the legal permissions to be resident in a country. An “alien” is any foreigner.)
This is a proclamation that declares an invasion on the southern border and closes the border by declaring that “entry into the United States of such [unauthorized] aliens be suspended until I issue a finding that the invasion at the southern border has ceased.”
While Florida does not share a land border with any country, it has been a destination for many migrants in the past. To the degree that this directive stops all in-migration to the United States, it will cut down the flow of migrants into Florida.
This order re-names Mount Denali in Alaska to its previous designation, Mount McKinley, and changes the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
When it comes to the Gulf, it directs the Secretary of the Interior to alter the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to expunge references to the Gulf of Mexico and “update the GNIS to reflect the renaming of the Gulf and remove all references to the Gulf of Mexico from the GNIS, consistent with applicable law.” All “agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming.”
Like the order “protecting” the states, this order restricts immigration into the United States and declares that it is US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens” and “to achieve the total and efficient enforcement of those laws… .” Like the other order, it will cut down on in-migration to Florida.
This order directs the relevant officials not to permit wind energy leasing in the outer continental shelf. While Florida does not have any offshore wind farms, this order prohibits any in the future.
This is one of two “drill-baby-drill” orders. It declares that the United States is in an energy crisis and directs the relevant officials to “to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
For Florida, this means that its shores will be open to oil exploration and exploitation.
This order repeats the orders contained in others that seek to close the border, with the addition of building walls and barriers and other measures more relevant to the Southwestern land border, like stopping use of the “CBP One” mobile application for entry into the United States.
This order attempts to nullify the Fourteenth Amendment granting birthright citizenship.
It orders officials not to issue or recognize documents recognizing US citizenship to people with parents who are not in the United States legally. It would appear to negate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), while not mentioning that program specifically.
This order cuts down on the number of refugees and asylum seekers admitted to the United States “to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.”
Florida is home to numerous refugees and asylum-seekers from countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti.
This order repeats the earlier order allowing energy exploration and exploitation on federal lands, whether territorial or maritime, including the Outer Continental Shelf. There is no exception for Florida waters.
This vaguely worded order directs officials to “deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.”
While directing the officials to cut down costs, eliminate unnecessary expenses, create jobs and “eliminate harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies that increase the costs of food and fuel,” it provides no further specific actions.
Presumably, this will affect Southwest Floridians in the same way it affects all US citizens.
Victims of disasters like the California wildfires, with damage shown here, will receive tax breaks thanks to a bill introduced by Rep. Greg Steube and signed into law by President Joe Biden. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Jan. 15, 2025 by David Silverberg
In an unprecedented feat for Southwest Florida members of Congress, two representatives succeeded in getting laws passed in the last session, a remarkable achievement.
Both pieces of legislation were propelled by the devastation of Hurricane Ian in 2022 and will benefit disaster victims in the future.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.) introduced and then shepherded to passage his Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023 (House Resolution (HR) 5683).
For the first time Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) moved a legislative proposal all the way to enactment with the FISHES Act (Fishery Improvement to Streamline untimely regulatory Hurdles post Emergency Situation) (HR 5103).
Both bills were passed by the House and Senate and were signed into law; HR 5683 on Dec. 12 and HR 5103 on Jan. 4.
Ironically, both bills were enacted by President Joe Biden, whom both Steube and Donalds repeatedly attacked, denigrated and insulted during the preceding two years.
The Tax Relief Act
Of the two laws, Steube’s has the wider national impact. In the most current disaster situation, it will help victims of the California wildfires.
The bill provides tax relief for victims of disasters. Taxpayers can exclude compensation they receive for disaster losses from their income taxes and specifically losses caused by wildfires. It also extends tax relief to the victims of the East Palestine, Ohio train wreck in 2023.
Steube introduced the bill in October 2023, almost exactly a year after Hurricane Ian. It went through the committee process but after being reported out by the Committee on Ways and Means, which oversees tax measures, it got stuck when Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-4-La.) didn’t advance it to the floor.
To overcome this roadblock, Steube relied on a rarely used procedure called a “discharge petition.” It provides that if a majority of members want legislation advanced it must go forward.
Steube and his staff began the laborious work of rounding up 218 member signatures, a notoriously difficult task in a fractious and partisan House of Representatives. However, the Democratic leadership chose to support it and by May, 189 Democrats and 29 Republicans signed the petition.
“I am grateful for the motivation and support of 217 of my bipartisan colleagues as we join forces to deliver tax relief for Americans all across the country,” Steube stated at the time. “That’s a testament to how important this issue is for ALL of our constituents.”
When the vote was taken on the floor the bill passed overwhelmingly, with a vote of 382 to 7. All seven nay votes were Republican. (Donalds didn’t vote on the measure.)
Following this the Senate took it up and passed it on a voice vote on Dec. 4.
It then went to President Biden, who signed it on Dec. 12.
The FISHES Act
In the 118th Congress Donalds was a prolific introducer of legislation; according to the official record of Congress, he introduced 61 bills, very few of which related to his district, which runs along the coast from Cape Coral to Marco Island.
Of all the bills, only four passed the House, one was voted down and the rest languished in committee, never advancing past their introduction.
However, the FISHES Act made it all the way through the House, Senate and onto the President’s desk.
Another product of Hurricane Ian, the bill is aimed at helping the fishing industry after disasters.
Under current law, after a disaster, funding to help fishing industry applicants has to be approved within 90 days. Once approved, it is up to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to sign off on a spending plan for disbursement within 90 days.
The bill speeds up the approval time to 10 days. If a grant applicant’s plan is incomplete, NOAA must tell the applicant what’s necessary to finish the application and then further tell the applicant when the plan is satisfactorily finished.
The plan can be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as long as its review doesn’t extend the timeline past 90 days.
The bill was backed by 49 cosponsors, 31 Republicans and 18 Democrats. It was also backed by 107 fishing-related organizations, associations and lobbying groups.
On Dec. 3 it passed the House by a voice vote. In the Senate it was approved by what is called “unanimous consent”—i.e., no one objected.
On Jan. 4, President Joe Biden signed it into law.
To date Southwest Florida members of Congress have had a poor legislative record, particularly given the needs of the region.
These successes are rare exceptions.
Both Steube and Donalds are intensely ideological congressmen, pledging total loyalty to Donald Trump and his agenda.
In the past, Steube has largely been notable for introducing firearms-related legislation; i.e., making guns faster and easier to get (and allowing their presence in the US Capitol, pre-Jan. 6, 2021). Donalds is a prolific bill introducer on a wide range of topics unrelated to his district (most notably nuclear power and premium cigars) who has shown next to no interest in follow-up and passage. He largely spent the past two years stumping for Trump around the country.
However, the prevalence of disasters and environmental challenges to the region requiring federal attention clearly forced both to propose practical measures transcending ideology.
Steube’s tax bill in particular is a nationwide measure that will bring considerable relief to victims of natural disasters and it is particularly timely in light of the California wildfires now burning.
It bears repeating that Steube’s success would have been impossible without the support of the entire Democratic caucus and leadership, who put his discharge petition over the goal line—and President Joe Biden, who signed the bill into law.
Donalds’ measure is much narrower in scope and far less impactful to the public at large, just making assistance approvals a bit quicker for fishing industry victims.
Following these successes, both congressmen immediately reverted back to ideological combat.
Steube had another legislative success yesterday, Jan. 14, when the full House passed his Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 (HR 28) by a largely party line vote of 218 to 206. The bill establishes that in athletics receiving federal funds, “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”—i.e., it prohibits transgender athletes.
Steube’s other bills in the current Congress include HR 320 to eliminate the “marriage penalty” in certain tax brackets, HR 244 to provide military healthcare to eligible veterans, and HR 321 to expedite airport gate passes for caregivers, guardians and parents boarding airplanes.
Donalds has not introduced any legislation yet this year. In the early days of his past two terms he introduced and then re-introduced the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act and the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act, both of which are of direct relevance to his district. However, he never followed up on either of them.
This year so far, his attention appears focused on preparing a run for the Florida governorship in 2026. (More about this in a future posting.)
This year will be a tumultuous one, given the change of presidential administrations. Steube, Donalds and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.) will all no doubt be working legislatively and, certainly, rhetorically to advance the Trump agenda both in Southwest Florida and nationally.
The thing for Southwest Floridians to watch as the year unfolds is whether these men can keep any of their attention focused on the real needs of their districts and constituents—without the impact of another hurricane.
A storm breaks over the Everglades. (Photo: US Park Service)
Jan. 3, 2025 by David Silverberg
While national-level elections are not scheduled for 2025, there will be some significant elections—especially in Florida.
Two members of Congress need to be replaced: Matt Gaetz resigned his position in Congress in December, so a special election will be held in the 1st Congressional District in the Panhandle to replace him.
In the 6th Congressional District in northern Florida, an election will be held to replace Rep. Michael Waltz (R-6-Fla.), who was nominated to be National Security Advisor and is scheduled to leave the House of Representatives on Jan. 20. A special election will be held to replace him.
While Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will be leaving the Senate to become Secretary of State if confirmed, a replacement will be appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to fill out the remaining four years of his term, which ends on Jan. 3, 2029.
It is not too early to speculate about DeSantis’ own succession. His term ends in 2026 and he cannot run again so the big question will be who will succeed him.
As the year dawns, two of the leading contenders being mentioned are Gaetz and Southwest Florida Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). (More about this in a future posting.)
A bombshell House Ethics Committee report released on Dec. 23 stated that Gaetz regularly paid for sex, underage and otherwise, and possessed and used illegal drugs.
In the past this would have disqualified any candidate. However, in the Trump era these standards may not hold. It is also possible that Trump will pardon Gaetz for any misdeeds given the former congressman’s past loud loyalty to the President-Elect.
But any discussion of the gubernatorial race is just early speculation and by 2026 a whole new cast of contenders is likely to emerge, many with statewide name recognition.
Otherwise, across the country, the major contests will be gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
As of now, there are no local elections scheduled for Southwest Florida.
Southwest Florida investigations
Just because there are no elections scheduled hardly means that there won’t be significant political developments.
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.
No information has been publicly revealed following the search and Oakes himself told the Naples Daily News only that “We’re looking into it, but everything’s good.”
However, the federal agencies involved in the search, as reported in local media, provide clues to the nature of the investigation. The presence of Internal Revenue Service agents indicates a tax-related inquiry.
Secret Service agents were on site. While the public largely knows the Secret Service for its protective mission, it is often forgotten that it conducts financial investigations too. The Secret Service was founded during the Civil War to fight counterfeiting and was under the authority of the Treasury Department for most of its history. (It is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.) The presence of Secret Service agents is an indicator of a financial-related investigation but also a possible homeland security or counter-terrorism query.
Also present were Department of Defense (DoD) agents and in particular the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), which investigates all forms of crime against the Department including fraud, contracting violations, terrorism, and cybercrime. The presence of DCIS agents indicate that the search may be related to Oakes’ federal contracting. While in the past he had lucrative contracts with the Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees supplies and contracting for the military, Oakes told The Paradise Progressive in 2022 that he had sold off those units. He also has a contract with the Justice Department to provide food to the federal Coleman Correctional Facility in Coleman, Florida.
Additionally, the well-documented presence of a DCIS firearms instructor indicates that federal agents may have been wary of Oakes’ reported 3,000 guns. (Interestingly, Florida Highway Patrol officers were present but Collier County deputies weren’t mentioned in the news accounts.)
As with all investigations, Oakes is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This may or may not involve the convening of a grand jury to hand down indictments if probable cause for prosecution is found.
In the meanwhile, the public will have to await any announcements from the agencies involved in the investigation if prosecution is pursued—or dropped.
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.
However, another potential outcome is that given Oakes’ longstanding, outspoken and deep loyalty to Donald Trump, he could be pre-emptively pardoned by the president for any wrongdoing, or, if charged, tried and found guilty, pardoned after the court proceeding.
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.
On Dec. 3 a grand jury convened in Tampa to consider potential charges against the sheriff. The accusations stemmed from allegations made by an electoral opponent, Mike Hollow, in his race against Marceno. Hollow quoted Ken Romano, a contract employee, that he received a “no-work” contract and kicked back money to Marceno’s father. Hollow provided a video of Romano making the allegations.
As of this writing, no word has been heard from the grand jury but if indictments are handed down it will be a major political story for Southwest Florida this year.
Also, the executive branch will be stocked with Floridians. Some must be confirmed by the Senate but others are presidential appointments. In addition to Rubio at State, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has been nominated as US Attorney General subject to Senate approval.
In the executive branch, Florida political operative Susan “Susie” Wiles has been named White House Chief of Staff and Palm Beach resident Taylor Budowich has been named Deputy Chief of Staff. As mentioned previously, Waltz has been tapped as National Security Advisor. Janette Nesheiwat, Waltz’s wife, was nominated for Surgeon General; Mehmet Oz, the television doctor and a resident of Palm Beach, has been named Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Todd Blanche of Palm Beach has been nominated for Deputy Attorney General.
Other Floridians appointed are David Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jared Isaacman as Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the National Institutes of Health; Paul Atkins of Tampa as Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission; Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., and a Floridian, as ambassador to Greece; Daniel Newlin, an attorney, as ambassador to Colombia; and Peter Lamelas, a Trump donor and doctor who helped found MD Now Urgent Care that serves Florida, as ambassador to Argentina. And Naples resident Callista Gingrich has been named ambassador to Switzerland.
The key qualification for all these nominations, of course, is loyalty to Donald Trump.
The big question in the year ahead will be whether—and in what way—all these Floridians favor the state over the rest of the country when it comes to resources, benefits and federal aid, especially if there are disasters or crises like epidemics.
One person who is clearly out of favor and likely to stay out of favor is DeSantis. The governor’s unforgiveable sin was to actually run against Trump for the presidential nomination in 2023. Trump forgives or overlooks a lot of transgressions (after all, his own vice president once called him “an American Hitler”) but primarying the king was beyond redemption. There were reports that DeSantis was briefly being considered for Secretary of Defense but those went nowhere.
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.
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. Not only will Republicans dominate the legislature for the next two years but their majority has grown with the defections of two state House members elected as Democrats. State Rep. Susan Valdes (R-64-Tampa) and Hillary Cassel (R-101-Hollywood) have both declared themselves Republicans, with Valdes being rewarded with a second-place slot on the House Budget Committee. While both lawmakers gave different justifications for their defections, the fact is that they likely could see no way to get anything done other than as Republicans.
That legislature will likely follow a Trumpist-DeSantis anti-“woke” program, although probably with less extremism and zealotry than in the 2023 session. Then, DeSantis looked like he might become president based on an anti-woke culture war and legislators wanted to get on his right side with ever more outlandish and sometimes bizarre proposals.
Presumably that won’t be the case this time unless they aspire to favors from the Trump regime in Washington, DC. 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.
Florida shows all the symptoms of a one-party state. Democrats have been crushed twice in two consecutive elections. Despite the Herculean efforts of Democratic Party Chair Nicole “Nikki” Fried and her success in getting Democrats to contest all open seats in 2024, Democrats lost nearly every race they pursued. They are an even smaller minority in the state legislature than before. The state Party shows little signs of recovery—or even life.
Also defeated were two major constitutional amendments, Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 to protect the right to abortion. Neither received the 60 percent vote they required to become part of the state constitution.
The consequence of Florida’s abortion ban has already manifested itself in Collier County, with installation of a “baby box,” a medieval contraption that allows mothers to anonymously abandon unwanted infants. In the current version approved by the Board of Commissioners in October, babies can be turned over at Medical Services Station 76 near the intersection of Vanderbilt Beach Road and Logan Boulevard in Naples. At least, unlike Texas, mothers aren’t tossing infants into dumpsters—yet.
Not only did the defeat of Amendment 4 mean that Florida women cannot have abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, it deflated the perception of pro-choice women as a powerful voting bloc with momentum that needed to be respected, or at least considered in decisionmaking. Anti-choice groups and activists are now likely to push for a total ban on abortions and may well get it.
Politically, Amendment 4’s defeat broke an important element of the Democratic coalition in Florida. Democrats were counting on women, minorities, the young, Hispanics, unions and working class voters to take them to victory. Instead they were defeated by MAGAs, billionaires, hostile propaganda and an undeniably impressive Republican registration drive.
It’s hard to see a new majority Democratic coalition coming together in Florida or elsewhere that would propel the Party to future victories, especially given the voter suppression and MAGAism that will likely reign, especially if Trump refuses to step down in 2028 or if the 2026 elections are rigged, as they are now likely to be.
America is now likely to become Florida, as DeSantis proposed in his presidential campaign. The politics and culture Americans will find emanating from the Sunshine State will be sclerotic, hypocritical, repressive, regressive and corrupt. All that will be lacking will be the humidity and hurricanes.
At the grassroots
So how will all this manifest itself in the daily lives of Southwest Floridians?
Every indication is that inflation will soar. Whether from tariffs and trade wars or a drastic reduction of the migrant workforce that makes the local economy work, every policy proposal from Trump to date leads to higher prices and fewer goods.
The general perception is that Trump won the election based on the economy and unhappiness with inflation under President Joe Biden. But Biden, along with the Federal Reserve, steadily brought prices down after the highs of Trump’s first term and the COVID pandemic.
But now, as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
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.
The climate change constant
Another impact will come from the skies. Mother Nature doesn’t abide by human politics.
Southwest Florida is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as last year’s experience of hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton showed. Its towns, cities and counties are especially dependent on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster preparation and recovery and the predictions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for accurate forecasting and warnings. Along the coasts homeowners rely on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to insure their homes and property.
How has the state government of Florida reacted to the climate change challenge?
Nationally, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and once tried to change the course of a hurricane with a Sharpie. He took the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords in 2017. President Joe Biden put it back in 2021 and is likely to take it out again.
So, when the hurricanes hit—as they surely will—Southwest Floridians will likely see slower and less effective debris removal, higher taxes and fees as communities try to recover without federal help, and fewer and likely less reliable warnings of approaching storms and dangers.
Stratification
All this appears certain to have a heavy financial impact. Indeed, in Southwest Florida society will likely divide much more starkly into an upper class that can afford to live or own property along a dangerous coast because it can self-insure (without the benefit of NFIP) and pay for rebuilding after disasters without federal aid.
The losers, of course, both nationally and in Southwest Florida, will be members of the middle class and retirees, who have been supported by government policies, especially tax policies, since the New Deal of the 1930s.
But now, the Trump regime is likely to skew taxes to favor billionaires and the extremely wealthy while shifting the burden to a middle class that is likely to decline given Republican and Trumpist assaults on it.
This will probably be especially felt in Southwest Florida. Far from the relatively warm, inexpensive, retiree haven it has been in the past, it will now likely stratify as the costs of living, insurance, property, and climate change damage make it unaffordable for anyone other than the ultra-rich.
This will become even more pronounced if social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are altered, restricted or eliminated altogether. A significant number of less wealthy Southwest Floridians rely on these programs.
In a town hall meeting in November, Elon Musk, who appears to be Trump’s foremost advisor, stated that: “We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
“Hardship” can be very hard on the non-rich and just how “temporary” it will be is anyone’s guess. As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said: “In the long run, we are all dead.”
Who will serve the ultra-rich who remain? Many low-wage workers will be gone, caught and removed in anti-immigrant roundups and detentions. Perhaps some who remain will continue living in affordable localities distant from the wealthy enclaves they serve. So the region will continue to see ever more distant commutes and congested roads as the people who can least afford it travel longer and further to jobs serving ever smaller and more concentrated enclaves of wealth.
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).
The possibility exists that all the medical measures that have improved life over the past two centuries—everything from vaccines to public sanitation—will be turned back or abandoned in the coming year and in the ensuing years of the Trump regime. The whole elaborately constructed public edifice that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against epidemics and outbreaks, the Food and Drug Administration to ensure food and medicinal purity and safety, and the National Institutes of Health for research and cures, will likely be reduced or eliminated, leaving Americans and the world vulnerable to diseases that are either entirely new or were nearly eradicated.
Another example of the war on public health, if a relatively minor one, is the effort to eliminate fluoridation to prevent tooth decay. Once a nationally accepted public health measure, in the last year it was removed in Collier County and then the City of Naples. Ladapo issued a statewide warning against fluoridation in November. Kennedy has stated it should end nationally and Trump has said he’s “okay” with that.
Hunkering down
No matter what happens nationally, Southwest Floridians will feel the reverberations at home, at the supermarket and in their tax bills.
For now, Southwest Florida still has its beaches and tourist attractions. Its vestigial democratic institutions continue to function. The law still applies to everyone other than the president, providing a form of order. And given the arctic blasts of the north, the tornadoes, sea level rise and flooding, for most of the year it still has the best climate in the country when there are no hurricanes.
Many political storms are headed toward Southwest Florida this year. But just as Southwest Floridians have learned to stock up and hunker down when the skies darken and the wind starts blowing, they can do the same politically. Those who value their Constitution, the inalienable rights endowed by their Creator, and the country they made great through lifetimes of labor and service, need to continue their efforts to ensure that freedom and democracy survive until the storm passes and they can nurture the light to fullness again.
The triumvirate of our time: President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President-elect Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping of China.
Jan. 2, 2024 by David Silverberg
In the year 60 before the common era (BCE), the three most powerful men in Rome conspired to divide the world between them.
Gaius Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, having reached the pinnacle of military and financial power and unable to overcome each other for complete dominance, agreed on an accommodation that gave each of them mastery over a piece of what was then the known world.
This arrangement came to be known as the First Triumvirate and the only reason we know about it was that Caesar exposed it when he became consul the following year.
Today we are living in the age of what can be called the first Global Triumvirate: President Xi Jinping of China, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and when he takes office on January 20, Donald Trump of the United States.
This is not an alliance of countries, it is a personal arrangement between three powerful men. Thanks to modern communications they don’t have to work through national bureaucracies or layers of ambassadors to conspire together; they can each pick up the phone as circumstances demand and carve up the world as they please.
Seen in this light, Trump’s recent threats to annex Canada, re-take the Panama Canal by force and buy Greenland make sense. After all, the Western Hemisphere is his fiefdom now to loot, plunder and exploit as he sees fit. In his mind no Canadian, Panamanian or Dane should have the temerity to stop him. Likewise, Putin should be able to do whatever he pleases in Europe and Xi in Asia.
Xi (71 years old) and Putin (72 years) are already effectively presidents-for-life. Both changed their countries’ constitutions, first to extend their terms, then to lift term limits. Trump (78 years) may try to do the same this year, likely by attempting to change the US Constitution. Should that fail, when his nominal term ends in 2028, he may try overriding it altogether as he did in 2021.
In these circumstances it becomes difficult to forecast actions and policy in the year ahead. Traditional analysis is an attempt to rationally think through possible courses of action and outcomes based on national interests, countervailing forces, government policies and other factors. But when governance is personal, the question becomes the mood of the monarch at any given moment and his possible responses to whatever stimuli tickle his perception.
And make no mistake: Whatever happens abroad will affect every American, even those as far from central government as in Southwest Florida.
That said, the year begins with certain basic questions based on objective reality.
Will the United States remain in NATO and will the alliance survive under Trump?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the most powerful alliance in history and now includes 32 countries, which are pledged to come to each other’s assistance should any one of them be attacked.
It has been a force for international stability since its founding in 1949. Then, it was intended to counter Soviet expansionism, ensure US engagement in international and specifically European affairs, and aid the integration of Europe to prevent the kind of hyper-nationalism that led to World War II.
It has been spectacularly successful in all its aims. Today it stands as a bulwark against Putin’s aggression and it continues to attract new members who are fearful of Russian designs.
Trump, as a friend and admirer of Putin and an America First isolationist (whose title echoes the pre-World War II isolationist movement), puts America’s NATO leadership—and the entire alliance—in jeopardy.
In his first term Trump was contemptuous of NATO, viewing it as a scam that cost the United States money to protect allies who didn’t do enough for their own defenses. He called it obsolete, aimed at a Soviet Union that no longer exists.
His most recent statement about NATO is perhaps the most alarming one to date. During a South Carolina campaign rally in February, he told the audience that when he was president, a NATO head of state asked him if he would defend that country if Russia attacked.
“I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want,’” he told the crowd.
Given Russian actions, NATO has never been more important.
And given Trump’s attitudes and past statements, the question in the year ahead is whether Trump can or will break the alliance and whether NATO can survive with an America that is insular, isolationist and possibly no longer a member.
This brings up the next big question for the year ahead:
Will Ukraine survive as an independent country?
For Vladimir Putin, the road to Kiev runs through Washington, DC.
Putin’s gamble on a lightning conquest of Ukraine has been a near-complete disaster. What was to have been a two-week coup has turned into a two-year war of attrition that has killed anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000 Russian soldiers. Putin has had to turn to North Korea for replacements and even these troops have reportedly suffered severe losses. The Russian economy has been crippled by western sanctions, especially those emplaced by the United States. The Russian Navy has suffered heavy losses including the sinking of its premier flagship. Even if he succeeds in conquering Ukraine he will take possession of a land that he himself devastated.
Even worse for Putin have been the strategic geopolitical costs of the war. While one of his war aims was trying to stop the expansion of NATO into Ukraine and elsewhere, instead NATO gained two new, well-armed NATO allies, Sweden and Finland, which were alarmed by Russian aggression. In the Middle East Putin’s Syrian ally ignominiously fell and its president fled to Russia. It was not just a blow to Russian prestige and influence in the Middle East; the Russian Navy was denied a warm water port it had come to count on in the Mediterranean.
The losses have even been personal. Putin’s friend, fixer and the leader of the fearsome mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, mutinied against the Russian Army leadership and had to be put down, which he was with a plane crash in August 2023.
Russia can theoretically still win and experts have said that a war of attrition favors Russian superiority in resources and personnel.
But from Putin’s perspective the war has become a costly ordeal with a very uncertain outcome—unless Putin can turn the United States against Ukraine, or at least neutralize Ukraine’s most important ally.
Such is the usefulness of Trump as an anti-Ukrainian US president who may take Russia’s side, cut off the arms flow to Ukraine and withdraw from NATO, or at least cripple the alliance.
Putin could see the utility of Trump and that’s why he supported him in his 2016 campaign. Despite Trump’s calling it the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” that Russian support was extensively documented in the report by Robert Mueller, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even if Mueller’s conclusions were neutered by Trump’s attorney general, they still detailed a damning connection between Trump’s campaign and Russian efforts (which included considerable activity in Florida).
Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2024 campaign has not been authoritatively detailed but the Russians themselves alluded to it in November when Nikolai Patrushev, a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Security Council told a Russian newspaper that “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
What were these “forces?” What are the “corresponding obligations?” The public doesn’t know and as long as Trump is president it is unlikely to find out, certainly from official US sources.
Whatever the “forces” and “obligations,” the question this year will be whether the United States remains the arsenal of democracy and the primary backer of an independent, western-oriented, democratic, anti-Putin Ukraine or if Trump chooses to end aid and hand Ukraine to Putin.
Trump said on the campaign trail that he could solve the Ukraine crisis in 24 hours. That doesn’t bode well for subtle or nuanced negotiations. Russia has already explicitly dismissed an early Trump proposal for a peace deal that would have delayed Ukrainian membership in NATO for 20 years and deployed European peacekeepers to the border.
If frustrated with negotiations, there exists the possibility that Trump may try to impose a diktat on Ukraine that Ukraine would almost undoubtedly reject.
It needs to be remembered that Trump betrayed a US ally before, in 2019 abandoning Kurdish forces after he had phone call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who wanted to invade their territory. That betrayal led to displacement and massacres of people who had bravely fought off the Islamic State in Syria in cooperation with US forces.
Given Trump’s past adoration of Putin, Putin’s seeming grip on Trump, and Trump’s choice of the pro-Putin Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, as the year dawns the indicators for Ukraine are grim.
Who will win the BRICS versus bucks battle?
However, on a different front a rift has already opened between Trump and Putin and the issue is, perhaps unsurprisingly, money.
The United States dollar is the standard currency of world trade and that has proved a problem for a sanctions-burdened Russia.
In October, Putin hosted a BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and it is a Russian-created international economic organization. First convened in 2009 as BRIC, it has come to include a variety of countries outside the US-Western orbit.
From the beginning, Putin advocated finding an alternative to US dollar dominance. With the Ukraine war and Putin’s need to evade sanctions, the search has taken on greater urgency. This was the theme of the 2024 BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
But in a rare show of dissent from the Putin line, on Nov. 30, Trump issued a direct cease and desist order via a posting on X:
“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER. We require a commitment from the Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy. They can go find another ‘sucker!’ There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, and any Country that tries should wave goodbye to America.”
While the posting was uncharacteristically long and coherent for Trump (so it was likely drafted by someone else) it sent an unmistakable warning shot in Putin’s direction.
“More and more countries are switching to the use of national currencies in their trade and foreign economic activities,” observed Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman. “If the US uses force, as they say economic force, to compel countries to use the dollar it will further strengthen the trend of switching to national currencies” for international trade.
The fight over international currencies may seem wonky and obscure, especially for Trump who finds serious policy matters boring, but this is a major issue and a test of whether Trump will actually stand up for American interests when the conflict is with Putin. It will also determine whether the United States remains the mainspring of world trade in the future, given Trump’s tariff infatuation.
The fate of bucks versus BRICS is more than likely to be a key issue in the year ahead and one that bears close watching.
What will be the fate of Gaza, Syria and the Middle East?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that the way to Trump’s heart is flattery.
“That’s the art of the deal,” he joked in 2017 as he troweled on praise for Trump’s “clarity” and “courage” even as he privately discounted Trump’s diplomatic proposals. He even named a planned city for Trump (Ramat Trump) on the Golan Heights.
Although Netanyahu briefly fell out of favor with Trump for daring to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory three weeks after the 2020 election, Trump’s depiction of himself during the campaign as Israel’s “protector” and his extreme pro-Israel positions indicate that the United States will support any actions Netanyahu takes in the year ahead.
Those actions would appear to include killing every single member of Hamas, even if each one requires a 500-pound bomb to do so.
As the year dawns there are some indications that what is left of the Hamas leadership might be willing to release the remaining hostages they hold and bend on their demands in order to stop Israeli operations.
But the likelihood of an end to the Gaza war still seems distant. After the slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, Netanyahu set the destruction of Hamas as the Israeli war aim and he will stick to it until it is achieved thoroughly and completely, even if a cease fire is called in the interim.
Meanwhile, the non-combatant population in Gaza will continue to suffer, used as shields by the remaining Hamas fighters and viewed as impediments by the Israeli military. Perhaps if the shooting dies down a bit more humanitarian aid will be able to get through this year. But the suffering is likely to continue for generations. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, in a report issued in October, estimated it would take 350 years for Gaza to get back to its prewar economy. That’s not an unthinkable timeframe in the context of the Middle East but it does speak to the devastation of the conflict.
Netanyahu appears to have expended all of Israel’s “soft power;” the power of its values, its humanity and its unique moral authority. But when it comes to “hard power” at the outset of the year, Israel appears to be in an overwhelmingly strong strategic position: while some Hamas elements remain, Gaza appears eliminated as a threat; Hezbollah in the north has been decapitated and its military capabilities virtually neutralized; Iran lost its president during the year to a helicopter crash, is crippled by sanctions and facing a United States that is already antagonistic but likely to become actively hostile under Trump; and when the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad fell the Russians lost a client and their presence in the region.
Of all the questions in the Middle East, at the outset of the year Syria appears the most problematic for all concerned because it is a major source of uncertainty: how will whatever emerges as a new government govern the country? Will the Islamic State revive? What will the new Syria’s relationship be with Israel, Iran, Russia, the United States and the rest of the world?
And over it all: will all the fighting ever stop?
As the mother says in the Adam Sandler movie You Don’t Mess with the Zohan: “They’ve been fighting for 2,000 years. It can’t be much longer.”
Triumvirates’ end
The first Roman triumvirate didn’t make the ten-year mark.
Crassus led a disastrous military campaign into Parthia (modern day Iran) and was defeated in battle at a place called Carrhae in 53 BCE. The story is that he was captured and his captors, knowing his infamous greed for gold, killed him by pouring molten gold down his throat.
Pompey and Caesar maintained friendly relations for years (Pompey had married Caesar’s daughter) but over time their relations strained. Ultimately, Caesar went to war against the Senate and Pompey was sent to crush Caesar militarily. Instead, Caesar defeated him and Pompey was murdered after fleeing to Egypt. Caesar became Rome’s dictator-for-life until he was assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BCE.
None of today’s triumvirs are likely to lead an army from the front as Crassus did but the dynamics and rivalries of men pursuing power and glory are much the same and likely to yield the same results.
As noted above, signs of personal and national rivalry are appearing, as evidenced in the BRICS versus bucks battle. Also, Trump tried to reorient US trade policy against China in his first term and seems likely to try the same again.
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 does all this mean for the everyday Southwest Floridian—and all Americans?
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. In particular, Trump’s hostility to China and his infatuation with tariffs may result in a decline in the amount and availability of manufactured products to which Americans have become accustomed. Far from a promised reduction in inflation, the cost of everything is likely to climb.
In a broader context, the rise of the new triumvirate marks an authoritarian reaction against the wave of democracy that swept the world from the 1990s onward. Whether it was Tienanmen Square, the end of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the fall of the Soviet Union, or the Arab Spring, people saw the example and success of the United States, and aspired to greater freedom, democracy and human rights.
This was the movement that Putin saw and despised from his perch as a KGB agent in East Germany. It was the movement that threatened to topple China’s Communist government in 1989 and no doubt alarmed Xi. And it is a form of government for which Trump has no use except when it ratifies his own proclivities for domination and control.
As in domestic politics, the year ahead promises to be a hard one for Americans.
The United States is built on the premise that power flows upward from the people, the “consent of the governed.” The rule of the triumvirate is premised on exerting control downward from the top. It’s a conflict that goes back to the days of Athens versus Sparta and seems baked into human nature.
For most of its history, the world looked to America as an example of democracy and freedom. But now, under Trump, Americans need to look for their inspiration to the people who smashed the Berlin Wall, the protesters who took to the streets in the Arab Spring, and the dissidents who stood up to the Soviet Union and Putin.
But there is value in persistence, especially on a matter as important as this. As the writer Thomas Paine put it at one of the darkest and direst points in the American revolution: “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.”
The first triumvirate: Pompey, Crassus and Caesar. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
This will be a dark and tragic year—unless a miracle intervenes
It will be chaotic, disruptive and stressful.
Make no mistake: it will be a year of assault on freedom, democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution.
America is not facing a mere change of administrations; it is facing a revolution from above and one so sweeping and comprehensive that firm and confident predictions are almost impossible to make.
More relevant than attempted predictions are the questions that will arise as the year unfolds.
The key one will be: as darkness descends, how can light be kept alive?
After all, what once passed for “politics” is no more.
In the past, “politics” was generally understood to mean the interplay of power, policy and personalities, along with popular participation. Governance, representation and elections were its essence and informed voting citizens were its foundation.
Now American politics—or more accurately, governance—will revolve around the whims, urges and rages of a single individual.
It is exactly the situation that the Founders rebelled against and sought to avoid. But Donald Trump 2.0 will ultimately affect every aspect of American life. No place or person will be unaffected.
The story of the year is going to be the interaction between the Trump regime (this goes beyond an “administration”) and the American public and the country’s constitutional institutions.
Ultimately, the question will be whether the Constitution survives the pressures and efforts to change, ignore or destroy it and whether American democracy can withstand his assaults.
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.
Aside from executive actions, people can expect the norms that ensured civility, rationality and decent conduct at the highest levels of government to face constant assaults and efforts to overthrow them—and they are likely to crumble.
What is more, they are likely to see the breakdown in civility and decency at street level, in their neighborhoods, and in their everyday interactions. After all, presidents have always served as role models. Donald Trump will turn the presidential bully pulpit into a pulpit for bullying.
The shooting and killing of Brian Thompson, chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare in New York, no matter how unrelated to electoral politics, is likely a precursor of more violence to come.
But even short of physical violence, personal conduct is likely to become nastier, more uncivil, more entitled, more insulting and more arrogant in imitation of Trump’s example.
Will the American public accept and approve of this disruption and will public opinion count at all in making national policy?
Will there be any consideration of the needs of ordinary Americans as the Trump regime’s roster is filled with billionaires? How long will Elon Musk stay in Trump’s good graces before he’s jettisoned? How far will the American tax structure be altered to favor the very rich while putting the burden of supporting the state on those least able to afford it?
Economically, will measures like extreme tariffs so drive up the cost of goods that the life to which Americans have been accustomed becomes unsustainable? Will Trump hurl the United States into a Venezuelan or Zimbabwean economic fiasco?
For those who do not buy into the Trump personality cult the overarching question will be how to respond. Is resistance the answer and what form it will take? Is it still worthwhile to work through existing institutions, which will increasingly be assaulted and weakened? Is it principled civil disobedience, with all its dangers and penalties? Is the answer personal withdrawal from the public arena and a quest for inner tranquility? Or just leaving the country altogether?
As official delusion and deception become the norm and independent media is beaten down and intimidated, how will people find the truth, share it and act on it? As government actions become increasingly immoral and inhumane, how can people respond in an ethical way?
In purely practical, everyday terms, how can the average grassroots citizen thrive or even survive under a government and in an economy in constant turmoil and subject to unpredictable and unforeseeable changes caused by the whims of one man?
As previously seemingly solid social safety nets like Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are attacked how will Americans who depend upon them survive?
What will be the consequences of a US government pursuing a policy of isolationism, anti-immigration, withdrawal and xenophobia? To what degree will a draconian anti-immigrant effort driven by extremists creep over the line into “ethnic cleansing?” And to what degree will those states, cities and citizens that resist these efforts suffer for their dissent?
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.
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.
Americans will know a new emotion from their government: fear. They will go from the most fearless people in the world to among the more fearful, a much more common sensibility among the governed of the world.
Perhaps the best way to think of what is coming is to think of Donald Trump, not as a president but as a Mafia don, like Don Corleone in The Godfather, with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers as his accomplices.
The Don is all-powerful, mercurial, demanding complete obedience and submission. There is no loyal opposition or legitimate differences of opinion; there are only believers and heretics, loyalists and traitors—and heretics and traitors must be punished and eradicated.
This is already in evidence. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told a political conference on Dec. 12, that when it came to approving Trump’s appointments, he and his allies had essentially sent a message that: “We got you here. And if you want to survive, you better be good.”
Or as Florida pundit and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson put it in an essay titled The Administration from Hell: “Trump is the Prince of Darkness in this particular drama. He wants nothing more than to destroy everything in his path. It’s not always coherent, but it’s always him.”
Southwest Florida, for all the noisy, fanatical Trumpism of some of its residents, will not be spared the consequences of the chaos, incompetence and misrule that will likely characterize this year and every year that Trump is in office.
Indeed, the Trump transformation appears at its outset to be so sweeping and comprehensive that perhaps it is best to concentrate on its impact on Southwest Florida to get a sense of its effects both locally and nationwide.
The new trail of tears
The first big action being promised by the Trump regime will be roundups and deportations of undocumented migrants.
These roundups will hit Southwest Florida hard, particularly in the agriculture sector, which relies extensively on seasonal migrant workers for harvests of crops such as strawberries, citrus and tomatoes. But it will also impact the construction, hospitality and service trades, which are also highly dependent on migrant labor.
In 2023 the Florida legislature passed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed, Senate Bill (SB) 1718, which aimed to crack down on undocumented migration by punishing employers and transporters of undocumented migrants.
While implementation of SB 1718 was uneven due to court challenges, the Florida Policy Institute estimated that the law would cost the state’s economy upwards of $12.6 billion in the first year alone when all the accounting was done. Employers saw an immediate impact. For example, in Fort Myers, the locally well-known firm Crowther Roofing lost 10 percent of its workers in 2023 as a result of the law, its owner, David Crowther, told National Public Radio.
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.
Trump, his followers and his executive branch nominees are stating that their roundups are only aimed at purging the country of violent offenders and proven criminals.
In fact, the administration of President Barack Obama pursued a policy of detaining and deporting criminal, undocumented migrants and deported 1.18 million people in its first three years. But that effort was relatively quiet. It was meant to be effective and actually accomplish its mission of making American streets safer and enforcing the law. President Joe Biden followed a similar course, deporting 1.1 million people in the fiscal years from 2021 to 2024. Furthermore, these efforts were accompanied by reform efforts aimed at giving undocumented aliens a chance to “get right with the law” and find a path to legitimate citizenship.
But 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.
Unlike previous immigration reform efforts like those made in 2007, 2014 and most recently the bipartisan effort in the Senate that sought a border solution providing security and smart enforcement while also providing labor and economic benefits, this crackdown will likely be driven more by hatred of all immigrants than policy goals. It will likely be infused with rage and racist rhetoric by both Trump and his loyalists as they seek to make America white again.
For the first time there will be concentration camps on American soil and Americans will see them on their television screens. The state of Texas has already offered land for their construction. Even as Trump himself expressed sympathy for “dreamers,” people brought illegally into the United States as children, his would-be implementers like prospective Border Patrol chief Tom Homan, have stated that any leniency on dreamers would be contingent on Democratic support for harsh border measures.
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.
Ultimately, the anti-migrant effort will be aimed at cutting off the influx of people seeking to live, work and contribute to the United States, to isolate the nation, and “cleanse” it of all races and ethnicities that come from what Trump in 2018 termed “shithole countries.”
Trade wars and tariffs
One of America’s greatest blessings is that it shares borders with two countries with which it is at peace and who constitute its largest trading partners.
That trade is massive: $908.9 billion with Canada in 2022, according to the US Trade Representative. US exports were $427.7 billion and imports were $481.2 billion. Trade with Mexico was similarly robust: $855.1 billion with in 2022 with exports of $362.0 billion and imports of $493.1 billion.
Trump is promising to upend this happy situation with a completely unnecessary and unprovoked trade war as he seeks to impose crippling tariffs.
In Trump’s mind tariffs are cost-free sources of revenue and he’s justifying these by saying he wants to force Mexico and Canada to take stronger border measures against undocumented migrants and contraband.
In fact, free North American trade benefits all countries and the kind of 25 percent tariffs Trump has floated would land squarely on the American consumer who would see prices skyrocket, especially for items like durable goods, car parts and food, which make up much of North American trade.
Both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have made their cases personally to Trump in an effort to dissuade him from this course of action.
But this is a perfect example of the perversion of American government by the Trump regime. Any policy decision will not be reached by reasoned analysis and debate; instead it will depend on the mood of the monarch, backed by a subservient Congress and his political base.
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.
The war on women
The 2024 election was a setback for women politically.
Trump’s record on women is nauseatingly long and detailed and needs no recounting here. His initial nominees for high office—Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Peter Hegseth for Secretary of Defense—faced well-documented allegations of harassment, trafficking, underage sex and even rape. Once upon a time, these charges would have been automatically disqualifying for high office. But now it is as though attacks on women are a criterion for nomination.
It all spoke volumes about the regime’s attitude. Only true MAGA believers like former governor Kristi Noem and White House Chief of Staff Susan “Susie” Wiles will have a say in the regime, while independent voices like Nimarata “Nikki” Haley, who challenged Trump in the primaries, will be excluded.
When it comes to abortion, Trump has stated that he will leave it up to the individual states—i.e., where it stands right now. However, the anti-choice movement is likely to push for a national ban. A big question in the year ahead will be how much resistance anti-choicers meet, how effective that resistance proves to be, and whether Trump changes his mind.
Florida is already a petri dish for this (as will be covered in detail in a future posting).
The war on truth, science, health and learning
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.
This could be seen from the very day after he took office in 2017 when he had his spokesman, Sean Spicer, insist that he’d had the largest inaugural crowd in history despite clear and obvious evidence to the contrary. It was so absurd an assertion that it led to one of the greatest sketches in the history of Saturday Night Live.
Trump is aggressively taking legal action against media reporting he dislikes. He sued ABC News for erroneously reporting that he had been liable for rape rather than the correct “sexual abuse” and won a $15 million settlement. On Dec. 17 he announced a lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for reporting that he was down in their polling prior to the primary caucuses.
He is promising many more such lawsuits in the future. 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.
For over 200 years, virtually from the moment Benjamin Franklin scientifically determined that lightning was electricity, the thrust of American thought was to clinically understand the world in as realistic a way as possible in order to effectively respond to it.
But in the first Trump administration the world was treated to the spectacle of a president who tried to change the course of a hurricane with a Sharpie, who dismissed as hoaxes anything he disliked, from a COVID outbreak to climate change, and who ultimately denied the reality that he had lost the 2020 election.
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.
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.
A Trump war on science and even the notion of climate change will likely have a devastating impact on Southwest Florida, which in recent years has found itself even more reliant on accurate weather forecasting in the face of multiple hurricanes and dependent on support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuild and recover from the storms.
Trump and his minions have vowed to eliminate the Department of Education and there is a strong possibility that they will find a way to do it this year—with extreme prejudice.
What that will likely mean is a loss of grants and funding to promote education and educational initiatives.
In the 2024-25 fiscal years, Collier County, Fla., received $7 million in direct federal education grants and an additional $80 million in federal funding through the state. The Lee County School District received $154 million or 5 percent of its budget in federal funds. Both will feel a severe impact if federal funding is cut off because the Department of Education and its grant programs are eliminated.
Every other school system throughout the country will face the same.
The war on equality
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal… ,” states the Declaration of Independence.
While more modern usage might change that sentence to “all people are created equal,” the fact remains that idea of human equality is the cornerstone, the fundamental bedrock on which all American government, law and society is built. Advancing equality is what defines the American notion of progress. All the social and political advances in American history—emancipation, women’s suffrage, civil rights, integration, non-discrimination—were based on advancing equality to all.
The idea of equality pervades all American law; on the lintel of the US Supreme Court is the motto: “Equal justice under law.” It means that the law applies equally to absolutely everyone and that it will be administered impartially to all.
But that is no longer the case. The anti-equality movement has now established that there is one person who is officially above the law. Donald Trump is the living embodiment of it.
He has plowed through every application of law, every enforcement action, every civil proceeding, every impeachment effort and through a jury’s criminal verdict. He will likely never be sentenced for the 34 felonies of which he was convicted. He has been handed immunity by the Supreme Court. In his own mind he is and will forever be guiltless for any action he has ever committed and now that will be the case in fact, likely encouraging new crimes.
For the first time in its history since it threw off the shackles of a distant king, Americans are led by one person who is above the law. He is a de facto monarch, a single source of power. The Declaration’s truth is no longer self-evident. All people under the Constitution of the United States are not created equal.
As of right now, only that one person is officially above the law. But in the coming year and in all the years subsequent in which this situation continues, others will claim or attempt to attain this elevated status. Over time the idea of equality before the law will face disintegration. Those who are clearly guilty of crimes will walk free and defiant—imitating and citing Donald Trump—and the majesty, dignity and most of all, authority, of the law will crumble down to the lowliest courtroom and street cop.
In this Trump will be aided and abetted by a subservient, all-Trumpist Congress, hand-picked, blindly loyal judges, and an avalanche of propaganda justifying it all.
Although the Stop WOKE Act is still subject to court proceedings and parts of it have been ruled invalid, it remains in force in Florida. In the year to come versions of it are likely to be passed in other state legislatures and nationally, with encouragement from the White House.
The war on equality in all forms is almost certain to take place on many fronts this year.
The opposition
For Democrats and the 75 million Americans who opposed this state of affairs at the ballot box, this will likely be a year of introspection, healing, reorganizing, reassessing and most of all, learning to endure.
For the Democratic Party and its caucus in Congress, it is clearly time to pass the torch to a new generation, just as Biden (82 years old) had to pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris (60 years). In 2022 then-House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-12-Calif.) (84 years) stepped aside in favor of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-8-NY) (54 years). But the transition will not be smooth or even. For example, Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-11-Va.) (74 years) bested Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14-NY) (35 years) for the ranking position on the House Oversight Committee in what was seen as an early test of generational change.
There may be handings off of batons to younger politicians. But it will take time for the next generation to consolidate, find its footing and build political capital. As they do this they will be under extreme pressure from the Trump regime and its party to thwart their every effort. Nor will the pressure only be national; it will be at the state level too and it will all be very personal.
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.
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.
California will no doubt be denied federal disaster benefits (in 2020 Trump said it could avoid wildfires by raking up leaves and threatened at the time to withhold disaster aid). That Trump will use the full force and power of the federal government against a potential rival was demonstrated in 2019 when he tried to get Ukrainian help against Joe Biden, for which he was impeached, although acquitted.
But it won’t just be Trump attacking California, it will be the entire regime and the Trumpist movement because California is the most obvious target for anti-“woke” crusading.
Also, California has Hollywood, which has been a target of conservatives since movies started being made there over a century ago. The world’s entertainment celebrities, having overwhelmingly endorsed Harris, can expect retaliation this year and beyond. Once again, Florida provides a good example of this kind of warfare, where DeSantis went to war against the Disney corporation for its “woke” heresy.
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.
This will be more than just competition. The regime will attempt what has been called “politicide”—the political destruction of a party, movement or belief system.
Responding, persisting and surviving
How can non-Trumpers of all stripes and parties respond to this onslaught and prevent it from succeeding?
One answer is from Rick Wilson who argued that all of Trump’s appointments should be fought tooth and nail: “Every one of them. Stop the worst. Expose the rest.”
Moreover, he argued: “Attack the disinformation infrastructure. MAGA thrives on lies. Cut off their supply.
“Brand the MAGA GOP. Chaos, corruption, and crisis—they own it. Make it stick.
“Prepare for 2026 and 2028. The battle for America’s soul didn’t end on November 5th.
“Lead with courage. Fear and apathy are their weapons. Fight back with strength.”
A similar response came in an answer to a question from a reader who expressed despair and hopelessness in The Washington Post. Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist, responded: “It is a common sentiment these days, but giving way to hopelessness ensures the triumph of cruelty and authoritarianism. We owe it to our more vulnerable fellow Americans to continue to fight for our democracy. Every day, civil servants trying to hold the line, judges committing to the rule of law and activists struggling on behalf of immigrants and other at-risk people will get up, do their work, and try to move the needle in the direction of justice, fairness and freedom. The least the rest of us can do is not surrender. No single person can fix everything, but there is something everyone can do, even if it is just buying one subscription to a quality local newspaper, writing one letter to a lawmaker, attending a school board meeting, volunteering in your community, or supporting a decent person’s candidacy for local, state or federal office.”
There is no doubt, though, that 2025 will be a year of defense for all who oppose Trump’s absolutism. It will be a year to protect the Constitution—and all the rights it enshrines—from an unconstitutional onslaught and even efforts to change it by, for example, ending birthright citizenship or prolonging the presidential term.
Trump and his regime have the momentum going into the year but that momentum and whatever victories they score are unlikely to last forever.
The past historical record shows that authoritarian regimes can succeed for a time but then usually make a major miscalculation or face an overwhelming crisis that the supreme leader is unable to overcome, usually as a result of overweening ambition: for example, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union; Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
In the case of Trump, when faced with the COVID outbreak in 2019 he initially dismissed it, wished it away, derided it, then prescribed absurd responses like fake drugs and injecting bleach. It exposed his unfitness, incompetence and belief that his delusions could become reality. It was a major factor in his 2020 defeat—another setback he tried to imagine away.
In the second Trump presidency, after a period of irrational exuberance and the complete deregulation of commerce and industry, an economic crash on the order of 1929’s looms as the most the probable disaster. That may not occur until after Trump’s first year.
“Monarchy is like a sleek craft, it sails along well until some bumbling captain runs it into the rocks,” said Fisher Ames, one of the earliest members of Congress. “Democracy, on the other hand, is like a raft. It never goes down but, dammit, your feet are always wet.”
Historically, authoritarian regimes have also been riven and sometimes brought down by factional differences. As political differences cease to be expressed in open, multi-party forums and through elections, they appear as internecine battles within the ruling regime.
An early expression of this was evidenced last month in an argument over continuation of H-1B visas for highly skilled foreigners, with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arguing to continue the program and anti-immigration MAGAs like Laura Loomer, Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon calling for its elimination.
The DOGE brothers appear to have won that battle but it is indicative of the kind of infighting to be expected from the Trump regime, that will have echoes at the grassroots.
A climate change-related natural disaster along the lines of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina is also a strong possibility.
The horrible irony of all this is that for all the conservative bleating about “American exceptionalism” and Trump’s past rants about an America in decline that only he can save, the policies he and Musk seem determined to pursue will firmly and irrevocably put America on the same path of decline and decrepitude that has afflicted every great nation and empire throughout history. Moreover, Trump seems determined to lead the nation over this cliff while blinding the public with lies, delusions, and emotional chest-thumping nativism and hyper-nationalism.
There’s no doubt that it will be a long and difficult year. Friends of democracy need to prepare for a lengthy marathon. The sprint is over.
However, like the jewel at the bottom of Pandora’s box, there’s still hope and the unlikely inspiration for it is provided by, of all people, Donald Trump.
After being defeated in 2020, after a delusional and fruitless effort to overturn the election, after impeachment, disgrace, Florida exile, investigations, derision, trial, and criminal conviction, Trump came back from political Hell to win the presidency.
If Trump can make such a comeback on behalf of selfishness and greed, then surely those who oppose him can also come back from defeat and disaster, loss and setback. With persistence and determination they can rebuild and renew themselves and take the first steps on a road that, no matter how long and hard it may be, will truly make America great again.
____________________
Tomorrow: Part 2—Darkness descends: Anticipating the year ahead abroad and the new triumvirate
Coming Jan. 3: Part 3—Defying darkness: Southwest Florida politics and the year ahead
What could be more Southwest Floridian than looking to the future through a crystal ball on the beach?
Dec. 30, 2024 by David Silverberg
The end of 2024 has come and with it the usual lazy media roundups looking back at the events of the year.
Far more productive and important are looks ahead, although these are necessarily speculative—and they will be coming in these pages. But first, it seems sensible to see how well The Paradise Progressive was able to foresee the events of 2024, one of the most momentous years in American history.
In the past, we’ve graded our projections on an A through F scale. This year, though, we’ll grade some of the key ones as “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
Prophetic: “It will be an interesting year but not a fun one. Indeed, it will be dangerous, stressful and frightening.”
Well, that was certainly true. Not much further explanation is needed there.
Prophetic: “…the outcome of the 2024 presidential election will determine whether America stays a democracy or becomes a dictatorship.”
While this remains to be seen, all indications are that America is heading in a dictatorial direction under Donald Trump.
Prophetic: “Throughout the year expect court rulings to drop like bombs, with Supreme Court rulings making the biggest explosions of all.”
This was certainly the case. In January, in a civil case first brought by writer E. Jean Carroll in 2023, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages for defamation. On May 30 in the New York falsified business records case, Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies, a verdict that seemed a major blow to his presidential candidacy. However, in a decision announced on July 1 in the case of Trump vs. United States, the Supreme Court granted presidents—i.e., Trump—immunity for “official acts,” a decision that now hands him virtually unchecked power.
Prophetic: “If he wins he becomes dictator, he pardons everyone who committed a crime on his behalf, and he attains absolute, unrestricted power. If he loses, he forfeits his life, his fortune and his own freedom.”
The situation is certainly set up for this prophecy to be fulfilled and the likelihood is that he will evade justice altogether once he takes the presidency.
Pathetic: At the outset of the year, a movie called Civil War, which imagined armed domestic conflict in the United States, was being promoted and threatened to “encourage those thinking of civil war and political violence to actually take up arms and make this fiction real.”
Civil War was released in April and while garnering $126 million at the box office, essentially sank like a stone, making little to no impression across the country. In its 2023 promotions, it was unclear whether the movie’s villain was President Joe Biden or not. Once released, however, the movie posited a revolt against a president who had overstayed his two terms and was clearly Trump. But the movie’s fictional California forces and especially the “Florida coalition,” that took up arms in revolt was wildly off the mark. Overall, this movie didn’t seem to have any impact at all on the election or domestic politics.
Prophetic: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) presidential candidacy would be “do or die” in New Hampshire and “that is likely to fall on the ‘die’ side of the equation.”
Indeed, DeSantis dropped his bid on Jan. 21, just before the New Hampshire primary after falling steadily in the polls.
Prophetic: “The Republicans will be throwing everything they can at Biden, like a baseless impeachment proceeding that is unlikely to go anywhere, and attacking him through his son, Hunter.”
That certainly came to pass. Hunter Biden was found guilty of firearms-related felonies in June and pled guilty to tax charges in September. However, by then his father had dropped out of the race and Hunter’s crimes had no political impact. Ultimately, he was pardoned by his father on Dec. 1.
More relevantly, Republicans in the House of Representatives continued a feeble effort to impeach Biden. However, without an actual crime, this blatantly partisan payback scheme went nowhere.
Pathetic: “Biden would also likely crush Trump in any one-to-one debate.”
This was one of the biggest surprises of the year. On June 26, Biden proved weak, incapable and almost senile in his debate with Trump. It was probably the most consequential debate in American history and led to Biden dropping his re-election bid on July 21 in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Prophetic: “The possibility of one—or even both—of the candidates dropping out or dropping dead must be considered.”
Biden dropped out and Trump was nearly felled by an assassin’s bullet on July 13.
Prophetic: “If either man falls the entire political calculation will fundamentally change.”
That’s exactly what happened when Biden dropped out and Harris took his place.
Prophetic: “In Florida questions that loom for 2024 are: will pro-choicers get their amendment on the ballot? Can the DeSantis administration suppress it through the courts? Will Florida officials invalidate the signatures? And if it is on the ballot, will it receive the 60 percent approval from voters to pass?”
Pro-choicers got Amendment 4 guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion on the ballot and sure enough, the DeSantis administration tried to suppress it through the courts and invalidate the signatures. Ultimately, it failed to get the 60 percent of votes needed to pass.
Prophetic: On the war in Ukraine, “there’s no end in sight right now and the war seems set to continue in its current state for at least another year.”
Indeed, the war continues and The Paradise Progressive was further prophetic when it noted that as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin was alive, “the course of Russian policy and warmaking will likely remain as it has since the invasion.”
Prophetic: On the war in Gaza: “All Hamas has to do in the year ahead to win its war is simply survive since [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu set the Israeli war goal as destroying it. Israel seems unlikely to achieve its goal before the year is out.”
Even with the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas fights on and the war in Gaza is active. But as was also predicted: “If all other factors remain the same Netanyahu will continue Israel’s current course no matter how long it takes or what it costs in blood, treasure, or prestige.” That was certainly prophetic.
Prophetic: Continuation of the war meant the possibility that “yet another front opens or a third major war suddenly breaks out somewhere during the year.”
Israel pre-emptively opened another front against Hezbollah in Lebanon and conducted a virtually separate war there. Then, suddenly in December, in Syria the regime of President Bashar al Assad fell to rebels.
Pathetic: “Given the tensions, stakes and desperation in so many theaters there will undoubtedly be terror and mass casualty events in the United States this year, some of them severe.”
This did not come to pass, in large part thanks to the vigilance and professionalism of federal counter-terror agencies and personnel.
Prophetic: “There may be efforts to stop voting or scare people away from polling places.”
Prophetic: “Some lone shooters, random crazies and violent extremists will get through.”
That’s what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, although Ryan Wesley Routh’s staking out of a sniper position on the Trump golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sept. 15 was caught before any shots were fired.
Prophetic: “As Russia has interfered in US elections ever since 2016, so it can be expected to attempt to interfere in the 2024 election.”
As noted previously, there are suspicions of Russian interference in the election and the Putin government seemed to reference these in November when Nikolai Patrushev, a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Security Council told a Russian newspaper that “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
However, with Trump declared the winner, the disbanding of the cases against him and the dropping of investigations by prosecutor Jack Smith, the American people may never know the full extent and nature of Russian intervention in America’s 2024 election—and the public will certainly not learn it from any official body of the US government under a Trump administration.
Pathetic: “Migrant flows to the US southern border are already at record levels. They will likely skyrocket as the year proceeds.”
Instead, the exact opposite occurred; border apprehensions and encounters with US authorities fell sharply. As a Pew Research Center analysis put it on Oct. 1: “After reaching a record high at the end of 2023, the monthly number of U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico has plummeted so far in 2024.”
According to the Pew analysis, the Border Patrol recorded 58,038 encounters with migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2024, a 77 percent decline from 249,741 encounters in December 2023, the most ever recorded in a single month.
And why this sudden plummet in crossings and encounters? “The decline in encounters has come amid policy changes on both sides of the border,” stated Pew. “Authorities in Mexico have stepped up enforcement to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border. And U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June that makes it much more difficult for migrants who enter the U.S. without legal permission to seek asylum and remain in the country.”
So Biden administration changes made a big difference in border crossings but not in time or with the fanfare to stave off wild Republican charges that the border was “open” and unpoliced.
Prophetic: “…The surge at the border will no doubt be a major headache and vulnerability for Biden this year.”
While there was no surge, it was still a headache—but largely because Trump prevented consideration and passage of a bipartisan border security bill that addressed many of the problems. As the article predicted, he and Republicans “can be expected to exploit the situation to the full,” which they did.
Prophetic: “There is virtually no prospect for any real progress being made on immigration or border security in 2024.” Further, “the prospects for the year ahead are for Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants to keep getting uglier, Republican exploitation of the situation to increase and get more apocalyptic, numbers of migrants and their suffering at the border to keep growing, strains on border security mechanisms to keep expanding and the rewards of finding practical consensus solutions to stay elusive.”
Collier County, Fla., faced critical elections for its Board of Commissioners and School Board in 2024.
But the biggest surprise came in June when Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the outspokenly conservative and pro-Trump farmer, grocer, activist and major Collier County power broker, missed the deadline to file his candidacy papers for State Committeeman and lost his official position on the Collier County Republican Executive Committee. The Paradise Progressive certainly did not foresee that.
Prophetic: “So going into 2024, Collier County voters are faced with seasoned candidates with experience, knowledge and proven competence in their fields or unseasoned MAGA amateurs running on grievances, conspiracies and blind belief.”
Ironically enough, in the Aug. 20 party primary, Collier County Republicans rejected, as one piece of campaign literature put it, “angry, inexperienced individuals” for critical positions in county government and instead voted for seasoned, proven candidates. In particular, Melissa Blazier retained her position as Supervisor of Elections, despite two challengers.
At least in this corner of Florida, as prophetically predicted, the result was “a county that is run on behalf of its residents with effectiveness, efficiency and integrity.”
Summing up
By and large, when it came to broad trends, The Paradise Progressive’s projections for 2024 were strikingly prophetic.
But lest that seem too self-congratulatory, it must be pointed out that it made no firm predictions on outcomes: it never stated who would win at the ballot box, whether locally or nationally, or which side would win the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, or how the Florida constitutional amendments would turn out.
Further, it did not foresee the dramatic, abrupt turns of the year in domestic politics: Biden’s dropping out; Trump’s near-assassination; the Harris candidacy.
Locally, some of the biggest unforeseen developments were Alfie Oakes’ disqualification from Republican Party candidacy; the massive search of his properties by federal law enforcement agencies on Nov. 7; and, in Lee County, the allegations and investigation into corruption by Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
The consequences from these events will play out in 2025.
Indeed, what will 2025 bring the nation, the world and especially Southwest Florida? Informed and humbled by its record from 2024, The Paradise Progressive will be looking ahead at likely developments in days to come.
And that, at least, is a prophecy on which you can count.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” the writer HL Mencken once observed.
Having elected Donald Trump to a second term in office, Americans are going get the Trump agenda “good and hard:” Project 2025 will be implemented whether Trump knows what it is or not, mass roundups of migrants and even legal immigrants are likely starting on day one and Trump will rule—not govern, rule—with absolute immunity and without any checks or balances whatever.
There is no sugarcoating this: it is an absolute catastrophe. It has no redeeming aspects. It is a disaster for America and the world.
Two models suggest themselves as possible precursors for Trump’s governance. One is what we’ll call the “Florida model” and the other is the Vladimir Putin model.
The Florida model
In 2022 Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won re-election with a 20 percent margin, giving him an ironclad mandate, a super-majority Republican legislature in both houses and a Supreme Court of his own choosing. What this effectively meant was that there were no checks or balances on executive authority or scope of action.
It was largely the same situation in which Trump finds himself today, although final disposition of the US House of Representatives remains uncertain as of this writing.
(Regarding the judicial branch, DeSantis has appointed five of the seven justices currently on the state Supreme Court. In Florida, state Supreme Court justices are appointed to six-year terms by the governor from Judicial Nominating Commission recommendations. There is no advice or consent by the state Senate but judges are subject to retention votes after one year in office and must retire at age 75.)
Also similar to Trump’s situation, DeSantis aggressively promoted an ideological agenda and imposed it on the state. In large part, this was driven by his 2023 run for president against Trump, his previous mentor and patron. Essentially, DeSantis sought to offer an alternative to Trump but still promoted Trumpism. As his campaign slogan put it, he sought to “Make America Florida.” That meant promoting measures that in some cases were even more extreme than Trump’s. (Ultimately, it didn’t work as a campaign strategy.)
In all, the second DeSantis term provided the model of a regime that was unchecked by any kind of effective opposition in its ideological crusade but still worked through an existing constitutional and legal framework. Although it made for a chaotic and sometimes jerky patchwork of actions and laws that occasionally ran afoul of judicial judgments, it succeeded in clamping down on free expression of ideas in the public square, in schools and academia, as intended. Culturally, it went a long way toward imposing a sclerotic, regressive official culture on the state that brooked no dissent, independence—or creativity.
Given that Trump is a Floridian and much of his administration is likely to be staffed by loyalist Floridians, these ideas and practices will probably provide much of the policy and legislative framework for the entire country when the new regime takes power.
Presumably, as in Florida, the incoming Republican regime will work through already standing procedures so proposals will have to be considered and approved by Congress and signed by the president, providing some space for debate and dissent rather than outright rule by decree.
One disturbing trend that emerged in Florida under DeSantis that could manifest itself nationally under Trump is the inclination to ban political parties and make the Republican Party the only allowed political organ. In 2023 there was one legislative proposal to decertify the Democratic Party but it wasn’t seriously pursued or considered. However, Christian Ziegler, who was chair of the Florida Republican Party before being deposed in a sex scandal, once said that: “For the Republican Party of Florida the work continues as our job is not done until there are no more Democrats in Florida.”
This extremist rhetoric and legislative activity in Florida bespeak an absolutist mentality that has been a critical aspect of authoritarian regimes throughout history and could be extended to the entire United States.
The Putin model
There are many possibilities in trying to think through the future course of a Trump dictatorship. Another preview is not Trump’s previous presidency but the reign of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump idolizes, likely obeys, and is highly likely to emulate.
Putin came to power, not with a tsarist bang or as some kind of television star, but during the chaotic but democratic administration of President Boris Yeltsin. After a career in the Soviet spy service, the KGB, he served as an obscure bureaucrat working in the St. Petersburg municipal government. He steadily rose through various government agencies, founding a liberal political party along the way that would provide him a popular base. He entered Yeltsin’s inner circle, ultimately replacing him in return for issuing a pardon that exonerated Yeltsin and members of his family for alleged corruption. Throughout Putin’s career he was also promoted by elements of the old Soviet security community, known as the siloviki, which pushed his advancement.
Since first becoming president in 2000 Putin has tightened his grip on Russia using techniques Trump is likely to imitate. (More below.)
Putin’s increasingly repressive and absolute hold on power was gradual, and faced opposition from people who worked through legal, constitutional means. However, he brought economic order and stability to what had been a wrenching transition to capitalism from communism, building a genuinely supportive following.
An increasingly subservient parliament or Duma passed gradually more repressive laws at Putin’s direction. The Constitution was amended to enhance his powers. The initial generation of billionaire oligarchs was murdered, prosecuted, bullied or co-opted into obedience. Russian law was weaponized to return desired verdicts in cases against Putin’s targets. What was briefly a freewheeling, independent media was brought to heel. Numerous political parties were banned. Elections were increasingly subverted and became decreasingly free or fair, resulting in, for example, an 88 percent return for Putin in the 2024 election.
Some measures stood out as especially Putinesque: one was the outright murder of opponents, critics and journalists whether in Russia or abroad, often through exotic poisons or elaborately staged assassinations.
Another was his ability to alter the Constitution to extend his terms in office until today he is in this fifth term and effectively president-for-life.
Given Trump’s scorn for elections and his refusal to accept adverse electoral outcomes, the Putin model, or at least elements of it, is highly likely to be followed in the coming Trump administration.
Red flags and red lines
Based on these models and the historic course of dictatorships, Americans who value a pre-Trump democratic society and government under the Constitution should regard some developments as red flags marking the imposition of outright despotism.
What are these red flags?
Changing the Constitution
Every dictator who came to power through democratic means made changing the country’s Constitution a priority; thereby ensuring that he would never jeopardize his control again.
Putin oversaw several changes to the post-Communist Constitution. This also applied in Nazi Germany. Once he legally entered parliamentary government as chancellor, Adolf Hitler pushed through an “Enabling Law” that allowed him to govern without parliamentary approval.
The probability that Trump and what is likely to be a rubber-stamp Congress will attempt to alter the US Constitution or do away with it altogether is very high and Trump has said that the outcome of the 2020 election, which he falsely called fraudulent, justified “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
While the existing process for amending the Constitution is long and arduous, a regime that ignores rules and procedures may attempt to dispense with them and make the changes by decree, with the support of followers in the legislative and judicial branches.
It seems almost certain that Trump will also attempt to alter the two-term presidential limit either through a constitutional amendment or by outright fiat or coup. He did not accept constitutional or legal limits when he was defeated in 2020 and tried to overturn that election. If he is not felled by ill-health or natural causes by 2028, there is a high likelihood that he will seek to stay in office for the duration of his natural life. In this he will likely be enabled by obedient supporters in Congress, loyalists in the executive branch, a hand-picked judiciary—which may expand with additional Supreme Court appointments—and his cultists among the public.
Postponing, canceling or rigging elections
The pillar of American constitutional government has been the absolute commitment to holding elections at their constitutionally determined times. This has held throughout American history.
(To the best of this author’s ability to determine, the only postponed election in all of American history occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 when the terrorist attack disrupted a scheduled New York City primary election. In the aftermath of the attack, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani wanted to extend his term by three months to deal with its consequences, the New York legislature refused on the principle that keeping to an election schedule was greater than the exigencies of the moment no matter how grave. President Abraham Lincoln too refused to postpone the election of 1864 in the midst of the Civil War.)
A red flag marking a major move toward tyranny would be any attempt by Trump or his allies to postpone, reschedule or cancel the regularly scheduled elections for 2026 or 2028.
Putin’s path to power included regularly scheduled elections. However, as previously noted, these elections became increasingly less free and fair.
From the beginning of his political career Trump has denounced elections with unfavorable outcomes as “rigged” (although he always accepted the results of elections when they were favorable). Given his propensity for projection, there is a high likelihood that future US elections will be rigged the way they are in Russia or in other dictatorships throughout history, to ensure a favorable outcome for Trump.
Murdering opponents
Throughout his political career Trump has fostered and encouraged an atmosphere of violence. This reached a crescendo on Jan. 6, 2021 but even that event will now likely be overshadowed. Violence, threats and intimidation are now likely to be institutionalized during his presidency.
In the early years of past dictatorships the outright murder of prominent opponents brought initial outcries and public reactions. In Italy in 1924 the murder of socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti by Fascist thugs created a huge outcry against Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. While denying direct involvement, Mussolini ultimately took responsibility. However, he then defied authorities to do anything about it and faced no prosecution. Some historians mark this murder and its aftermath as the true start of Mussolini’s dictatorship.
Despite the lack of evidence from a court of law, it can safely be said that Putin has used assassination extensively to eliminate opponents, with poisoning a favorite method. Most recently his foremost political opponent, Alexei Navalny, was first poisoned and then murdered in prison after returning to Russia from exile.
Trump murdered an opponent before, but it was a foreigner: Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. It was done as an official US act and occurred outside the United States but it was an assassination nonetheless and Trump acknowledged responsibility. Whether any other murders have occurred at his command has not been brought to public light.
There is the possibility that prominent American opponents of Trump, if not imprisoned, could be murdered. As Trump infamously noted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Having been granted complete immunity for official acts by the US Supreme Court, the likelihood of domestic political violence, including murder, during the coming Trump regime is very high.
Crushing a free press
A free and independent press is an obstacle to tyranny as both tyrants and democrats have understood throughout history. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights stated in 1776, “…The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” In the modern era all dictators have moved to suppress the media.
In Florida, as noted above, the DeSantis administration threatened prosecution of television channels if they broadcast a pro-choice advertisement. In Russia, Putin cracked down on the media, even regulating bloggers. This last measure had an echo in Florida in 2023 when state Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-10-Seminole and Orange counties) introduced a bill that required bloggers to register with the state if they covered or commented on the governor, Cabinet officers or state legislators. (This bill did not advance.)
Trump has both loathed the media and loved its attention throughout his political career. More recently his threats have become more serious. He has threatened television networks with the loss of their licenses and repeatedly attacked print publications for their actions. These tactics bore fruit this year when both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post declined to make presidential endorsements.
There is a high likelihood that during his presidency Trump will either actually close down major media outlets through the Federal Communications Commission or bully them sufficiently to prevent critical coverage of his regime and actions.
Bringing billionaires to heel
Putin inherited a number of mega-wealthy billionaires dubbed the “oligarchs,” who had an outsized influence on Russia in the wake of its communist collapse. At least one, Vladimir Gusinsky, owned Russia’s first, free-wheeling independent television station, which featured a satirical show Putin loathed.
Putin broke the power of the oligarchs or pre-empted them throughout the course of his career. Gusinsky was charged with fraud and tax evasion and fled overseas. In addition to Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at one point the richest man in Russia and owner of the Yukos oil company, was arrested for economic crimes and imprisoned. It sent a chill throughout the Russian oligarchy and did much to break its power. Other billionaires have died under mysterious circumstances.
Trump has been backed by a large number of American billionaires who hope to profit from his election. Chief among them is Elon Musk, who has been promised a high position in the administration.
However, this situation is unlikely to last. Musk, ironically enough, is likely to be an early target when Trump becomes jealous or feels threatened by his prominence and power.
When American billionaires start dying from mysterious ailments or falling out of windows, the American public will know that the era of the billionaires is over and the triumph of Trump is complete.
Outlawing political parties
Outlawing opposition political parties has been a feature of all modern dictatorships. As noted above, there was one attempt to do this in Florida but it wasn’t seriously considered. Nonetheless, Americans should be alert to efforts to ban the Democratic Party, which Trump has called “the enemy within.”
This is a major red flag of encroaching dictatorship.
Personalizing law enforcement
Throughout his first presidency Trump was repeatedly frustrated by attorney generals who refused to commit crimes at his command or who countenanced the independent application of justice. Trump wanted to be above the law at all times and able to prosecute his enemies or other targets at will, without regard to legal or constitutional restraints.
In his second presidency, Trump will no doubt appoint an attorney general who will be completely subservient and will persecute his targets on command regardless of legal restraints, due process or probable cause—a situation akin to Putin’s Russia.
The arc of history
“First time tragedy, second time farce,” Karl Marx once said of the repetition of historical events. With Trump that saying is reversed: if Trump’s first presidency was a chaotic, criminal, corrupt farce, his second presidency will be a directed, deadly, destructive tragedy that will leave the United States vastly diminished and its people oppressed.
Americans may think that a Trump presidency will come to a close in 2028 when Trump’s term theoretically ends in accordance with the Constitution. However, given Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020, his extralegal and even violent efforts to stay in power and his expressed regret that he left office at all, the greater likelihood is that he will, like Putin and Xi, find ways to extend his reign to the end of his natural days and become, effectively, President-for-Life.
He will also be ruling with complete legal immunity, with a completely subservient Congress, a completely compliant Supreme Court and a law enforcement establishment and military that he will not hesitate to deploy to physically crush any opposition.
He is as absolute and unchecked a ruler as America has ever had since King George III.
By their votes the majority of Americans have determined that this is what they want. They chose to inaugurate an era of darkness and oppression.
But what can Americans who believe in the virtues of justice, constitutional government and democracy do?
When there is no formal path to change, there can only be resistance.
There have been other times when America seemed far from its ideals. During the slave era, when this oppressive, peculiar institution had legal, religious and governmental sanction, anti-slavery Americans resisted by forming the Underground Railroad, smuggling slaves to freedom. During Jim Crow, people resisted discrimination and racism any way they could and eventually succeeded in breaking its shackles. During the first Trump presidency, when Americans opposed administration efforts to target migrants, they resisted by forming sanctuary cities where they refused to comply with directives they felt were unethical.
It is a tragedy when law and government diverge from what is moral but it has happened in America before and America appears poised to do so again.
If Trump takes his governing principles from Putin, Americans might draw their inspiration from Russian dissidents. People like Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Anatoly Shcharansky fought and struggled and pursued freedom, truth and dignity despite the overwhelming and seemingly invincible edifice that was the Soviet state. Then, as Putin’s presidency became more oppressive , people like Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Garry Kasparov followed in their footsteps.
Despite the vast odds against them, these people were driven by democratic visions and idealism. They persisted in their dissent over a long period of time without any promise of ultimate success or any prospective date for future victory.
The Rev. Martin Luther King once said that “the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.” With the election of Donald Trump that arc will be far longer than it might otherwise have been. But unless people continue their efforts to bend it toward justice, it will not bend by itself.
As it was for the American founders and all those who have struggled since, the ultimate goal will remain, as always, justice, equality, dignity and freedom. As in the past, when success was uncertain and the outcome wasn’t guaranteed, people had to commit their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to their cause.
Rep. Byron Donalds at the Congress, Cognac and Cigars event in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 4. (Photo: Monica Herndon/Philadelphia Inquirer)
Nov. 1, 2024 by David Silverberg
A red tide drifting toward Charlotte, Lee and Collier county beaches highlights the failure of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) to advance legislation that would aid Southwest Floridians in the event the algal bloom becomes a major disaster.
Red tide is a naturally occurring toxic microscopic algae that kills marine life and causes respiratory distress in humans. The current tide is drifting southward from the Tampa area following hurricanes Helene and Milton.
During his time in Congress, Donalds has done nothing to promote the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act (House Resolution (HR) 1008), which he introduced on Feb. 14, 2023. The bill would allow the federal government to declare harmful algal blooms (HABs) major disasters eligible for federal aid.
Since he has done nothing to advance the legislation, if the current red tide arrives at local beaches and persists, Southwest Floridians and businesses will not be able to receive any federal assistance if homes become unlivable or their businesses are hurt.
With a three-word addition, HR 1008 amends the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, the law that defines and determines what officially constitutes a disaster. It also sets out the authorities and responsibilities of different federal agencies in responding to disasters. HR 1008 would make a slight change to the existing law, striking the words “or drought” and inserting “drought, or algal blooms.”
The Big Bloom and aftermath
The need to include HABs as major disasters grew out of the “Big Bloom” of 2018. This red tide went on for roughly a year, first appearing in October 2017 and then intensifying and peaking in the summer of 2018, finally breaking up in the late fall.
The Big Bloom significantly damaged the area’s economy. Based on surveys filled out by area businesses, 152 or 92 percent of surveyed business owners stated they had lost business due to the red tide in the Gulf. Of them, 126 or 76 percent stated they had lost $500,000 or more. Others estimated losses between $20,000 and $2,000. It also resulted in adverse national publicity for Southwest Florida, dampening tourism.
In response, in 2019 then-Rep. Francis Rooney, who represented the 19th Congressional District, the coastal area stretching from Cape Coral to Marco Island, introduced the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act and a second piece of legislation, the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act, which would ensure that HAB monitoring by federal agencies continued despite any government shutdowns.
Rooney’s legislation advanced to the point of committee consideration but went no further. He declined to run for another term in 2019 and his seat was won by Donalds.
Among his first actions in Congress, Donalds introduced the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act and the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act upon taking office in 2021.
However, he never advanced either piece of legislation during his first two years in office and they died when the 117th Congress adjourned.
In 2022 Donalds was re-elected. Once again, he reintroduced both pieces of legislation. Again, he made no effort to advance the bills, which were referred to committees where they were not considered.
As a result, this year Southwestern Floridians and businesses will not be eligible for federal assistance if a red tide bloom damages lives and businesses.
Analysis: Donalds’ ineffectiveness and incompetence
Donalds has been hyperactive in introducing legislation during the current session of Congress. According to the official record of Congress, he introduced 81 bills and five amendments. None of the bills he introduced advanced beyond the introductory phase.
However, in the four years he has been in office Donalds has proven unable or unwilling to focus and do the hard work it takes to get legislation through Congress.
Donalds’ failure stands in stark contrast to the success of his neighbor to the north, Rep. Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.), who represents parts of Charlotte and Sarasota counties.
A hard-core Republican conservative and Trumper like Donalds, Steube nonetheless recognized the needs of constituents—and all victims—for tax breaks in the wake of disasters like hurricanes and wildfires. In October 2023 he introduced the Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023 (HR 5863) to provide these tax breaks and also extend them to victims of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment and chemical release.
When HR 5863 didn’t move in the House, in large part because of the neglect of House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-4-La.), Steube chose to employ a rarely used tool called a “discharge petition.” This meant getting a majority of House members, 218, to sign a petition demanding the bill be brought to the House floor for a vote, no matter what the Speaker preferred.
It took a long effort to round up the members from both parties to sign the petition but Steube persisted. On May 15 he got the last signature needed, forced his bill to the floor and on May 21 it passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 382 to 7. (Donalds did not vote on the bill.)
The kind of persistence, focus and effort that Steube made is the kind it takes to get legislation through Congress—but it is also the kind of effort Donalds has never made and seems incapable of or uninterested in making.
Instead, Donalds has concentrated on advancing himself in Republican ranks, unsuccessfully pursuing Republican Conference Chair, Speaker of the House and vice presidential running mate to Donald Trump.
Indeed, the past year Donalds almost entirely spent his time promoting Trump and bashing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. He has traveled around the country in the service of Trump, smoking cigars and drinking cognac in Atlanta and Philadelphia and making stump speeches and appearing on far right media outlets to regurgitate an unoriginal mix of accusations, insults and falsehoods when he wasn’t praising Jim Crow discrimination for its family values. At best he’s walked the beach for photo ops and signed a few letters with other members of Congress.
What he most emphatically has not done is attend to the needs of his district, which was hit by hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton and now seems destined to suffer a red tide—and even another possible very late season storm.
The Southwest Florida coast is vulnerable, suffering and its people are in pain. They are getting no succor, sustenance or support from their current representative in Congress.
In this satellite view, two storms churn in the Atlantic Ocean at the same time that Milton spins in the Gulf of Mexico (lower left). This photo was taken about one hour before Milton was officially declared a hurricane. (Photo: NASA)
Oct. 8, 2024 by David Silverberg
Southwest Floridians know the drill when a hurricane is on the way: buy bottled water, stock up on batteries and canned foods, put up the storm shutters, fill the car and if necessary, get out of town.
But whether hunkering down at home or hitting the road, all eyes turn to news of the storm, whether on television, the Internet, mobile devices, weather apps or social media.
Much of the information on those media is the same—because it all comes from the federal government, which has the resources, the organization and the technology to provide it like no one else. And then there are the periodic updates from the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service, and the Hurricane Hunters who fly into the storms, that are treated like gospel from on high.
But if Project 2025 is implemented, all that information, which is now provided free to the public, would come at a price. The federal government agencies that collect and interpret the data would be broken up. And even the famous Hurricane Hunters would be shunted into a government agency that buys desks and manages the government’s real estate.
The fact that Project 2025 targets the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for elimination has caused public alarm and prompted criticism.
But what is it that Project 2025 actually seeks to do? What does Project 2025 specifically say when it comes to meteorology and government research? And what would be the results for everyday Americans if Project 2025 was actually implemented?
For all Americans, especially those living on the vulnerable, hurricane-prone Gulf “Paradise Coast” of Florida, the future of government meteorology is no academic concern.
Increasingly, it’s a matter of life and death.
Project 2025’s denial of climate change
Project 2025 is the sweeping, 887-page volume of very specific policy recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump. Increasingly infamous, it is a continuation of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership program that has been issued every four years since 1980.
Project 2025’s weather and climate recommendations are contained in its chapter on the Department of Commerce, the agency where the weather services reside. The chapter appears under the byline of Thomas Gilman, who served as the Commerce Department’s chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration during the Donald Trump administration. Prior to taking that position, which required Senate confirmation, Gilman worked for over 40 years in the automotive industry. There, he was employed by the Chrysler Corporation. He rose to be chief financial officer for its lending and financial arm, Chrysler Financial. In 2011 he oversaw Chrysler Financial’s sale to TD Bank Group.
Thomas Gilman in 2019. (Photo: Dept. of Commerce)
Most of the public’s attention—and alarm—has focused on Project 2025’s intention to do away with NOAA.
Project 2025 does indeed intend to eliminate NOAA and states so quite explicitly at the outset of the chapter (page 674): “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”
But that is not where Project 2025 will have its most damaging impact.
Rather, it is the fact that Project 2025 views itself at war with what it calls “the climate change alarm industry” and sees NOAA as “a colossal operation” that is “harmful to future US prosperity.”
Throughout the document, Project 2025 proposals are clearly aimed at eliminating independent, science and data-based conclusions that investigate, measure or confirm climate change. Instead it seeks to ensure that government conclusions come into line with administration policy rather than scientific evidence.
Project 2025 holds that NOAA, as a main driver of the “climate change alarm industry,” has a “mission emphasis on prediction and management [that] seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions.”
But more than just eliminating NOAA, Project 2025 believes that science should bend to policy.
A key recommendation is that a new administration should: “Ensure Appointees Agree with Administration Aims. Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.”
In another section it argues that NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research “is… the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”
When it comes to the work of the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service, Project 2025 admits that the offices “provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions,” but it argues that “Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”
Project 2025’s organizational mandates
In addition to changing the entire focus, tenor and scientific independence of government climatological and meteorological efforts, Project 2025 recommends extensive organizational changes.
To understand these recommendations and their impact, it is helpful to be familiar with the current system.
NOAA consists of six main offices:
The National Weather Service (NWS);
The National Ocean Service (NOS);
Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR);
The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS);
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); and
The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps.
Ironically, it was Republican President Richard Nixon who in 1970 consolidated the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Weather Bureau and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries into NOAA, which was made an office of the Commerce Department (although he wanted to make it a full-fledged Cabinet department). This occurred in the wake of 1969’s horrendous Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Louisiana Gulf coast and then—like Hurricane Helene—went north; ultimately dumping its accumulated moisture far from any coast in Nelson County, Va.
Since its creation, NOAA has evolved until it assumed its current form with different offices to deal with different aspects of weather, climate and technology.
Project 2025 sees this evolution in a negative light, especially from a budgetary standpoint.
“NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures),” it notes. The offices, as noted previously, “form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future US prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”
It continues: “NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.”
Project 2025 wants to make NWS (National Weather Service) a revenue-generating operation. It argues that since studies have found that consumer-oriented forecasts and warnings are better provided by local broadcasts and private companies like AccuWeather, NWS “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations”—i.e., charge for its products. This, it states, would bring in revenue, make it compete in a commercial weather marketplace and the profits could be invested in more research and data tailored to customers’ needs.
NWS would become a “performance-based organization,” which in management parlance means it would have measurable goals, set metrics and performance standards—i.e., it would take on the characteristics of a for-profit company rather than a scientific laboratory.
OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) would be reduced since Project 2025 views much of its work as duplicative of the National Hurricane Center. All of its laboratories, undersea research and other research efforts “should be reviewed with an aim of consolidation and reduction of bloat.”
NOS (National Ocean Service) would have its functions transferred to the US Coast Guard and the US Geologic Survey. While Project 2025 doesn’t say so explicitly, this would presumably result in its disestablishment.
The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which provides the ships, planes, drones and other hardware used by NOAA agencies, including the famous Hurricane Hunters, “should be broken up and its assets reassigned to the General Services Administration or to other agencies.”
Analysis: Organizational changes
Project 2025 decimates the current structure of weather science and reporting by the US federal government—as it’s intended to do.
The end of the Hurricane Hunters?
The men and women of the NOAA Hurricane Hunters with a P-3 Orion, one of their primary aircraft. (Photo: NOAA)
Ever since a pilot flew his training aircraft directly into the eye of a hurricane on a bet in 1943, hurricane-hunting pilots and air personnel have been taking up the challenge of measuring storms.
Today they’re known as the Hurricane Hunters and they’re the stuff of legend: the best pilots in the world flying in the most dangerous and challenging weather, bringing back precious, life-saving data.
Project 2025 does not explicitly state that it would abolish the Hurricane Hunters. However, it would break up the NOAA air fleet and reassign its assets to other agencies, most notably the General Services Administration, which oversees the contracting, purchasing and management of the civilian federal government—i.e., science and meteorology is not its main mission.
This would be tantamount to ending the Hurricane Hunters. The whole structure of the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations is designed around the NOAA mission and operates according to its needs. To disperse this elaborate, intricate—and effective—organization, its people and its assets, which include aircraft, vessels, drones, other technologies and their support network, would for all intents and purposes destroy or at the very least disrupt a vast swath of American scientific capabilities when it comes to weather and climate.
And when it comes to hurricanes and dangerous storms, it would create a gaping hole in the public’s awareness and preparedness that could prove deadly just at the moment the nation needs it most.
Crippling research and ignoring the oceans
Project 2025 takes particular aim at oceanic research. OAR and NOS would be broken up and OAR likely eliminated altogether. This targeting appears to be caused by more than just the expense of maintaining these institutions—it is likely the result of oceanic research being a major source of data proving the existence of climate change
This would not only eliminate a vital source of research about the state of the oceans in general, it would also likely eliminate data of critical use to the US Navy, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine and mariners of all types. It would harm national security and impact attempts to enforce maritime borders and provide coastal protection to say nothing of private boating safety.
For-profit weather
It is in Project 2025’s intention to turn the National Weather Service into a for-profit entity that everyday Americans who turn to their television stations and apps for weather information would be impacted.
Accurate, useful government-provided weather data accessible to all Americans is essentially something people have purchased with the tax dollars they pay to the federal government. Suddenly demanding payment for this data would be a form of robbery, taking from them vital information that they already purchased with their taxes.
Free access to government-gathered weather data has also made possible a robust industry of repackaging, interpreting and disseminating that data. It’s behind every weather broadcast and specialized media like the Weather Channel as well as countless apps, blogs and individual weather efforts.
All of this would now be jeopardized as the US government sold its products to the highest bidder.
That sale, or auction, would likely put government weather data in the hands of a few extremely wealthy corporations or individuals—like Elon Musk—who could then repackage it, resell it or withhold it at will. It would destroy the credibility of government-collected weather data and potentially give rise to warped or distorted reporting in the service of private political or commercial aims rather than objective reality.
It would also put a cost on weather data whose price could then be manipulated by the individuals or corporations that owned it. Further, it would create a fragmented and unequal view of the state of the weather and climate, reducing the credibility and reliability of information on which every human being on the planet depends.
Whatever husk of NWS that would remain after its dismantlement by Project 2025 would have to have profit goals, not scientific aims or objectives, as its priority. That would result in a warping and distortion of NWS’ critical, primary mission pursuing realistic, objective science, which it might no longer be able to meet.
Analysis: Climate change denial and the Florida model
Bryan Koon, Florida’s Emergency Management Director, tries to respond to state senators’ questions without mentioning the term “climate change” in a 2015 exchange. Then-Gov. Rick Scott had informally forbidden use of the term in state government. The entire discussion can be seen in a 2-minute, 12-second video on YouTube. (Image: Fox13)
At the core of Project 2025’s goals in re-engineering American meteorology is the intention to deny the reality of climate change.
In this, Americans can see a preview of a Project 2025’s end result in the state of Florida.
Over and over again, as concern over climate change rose nationally and its consequences impacted the state with increasing severity, Florida officials responded with increasingly vehement denialism.
His successor, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), initially reversed much of Scott’s anti-environmentalism. However, when DeSantis began a run for the presidency in 2023 on an “anti-woke,” anti-Green New Deal platform, he fully embraced climate denialism.
Ultimately, the state legislature, seeking to curry favor with DeSantis and add to their own denialist credentials, officially banned use of the term in official state documents. In March 2024 the legislature passed House Bill 1645, which struck the term “climate change” from Florida law and official documents.
“Radical green zealots want to impose their climate agenda on people through restrictions, regulations, and taxes,” DeSantis stated at the time he signed the bill.
All of this official denialism did absolutely nothing to stop the onslaught of climate-change induced weather, disasters and challenges. (As this is written, Hurricane Milton is advancing on the Florida peninsula as a Category 5 hurricane, immediately following the ravages of Hurricane Helene.) In fact, official state climate denialism has impeded local efforts to prepare and reverse the effects of climate change in communities’ own front yards, as can be seen in flooding, storms, eroding beaches and wild, unpredictable weather over a fragile and vulnerable landmass.
As DeSantis wanted to “make America Florida” as he put it in his campaign slogan, so Project 2025 would make climate denialism a pillar of American policy. Project 2025 views efforts to respond, reduce or resist climate change as “the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”
When added together, it is clear that Project 2025 seeks to alter or censor government climatological and meteorological science and research in order to deny climate change. NOAA agencies would not be following the data and drawing conclusions from it; they would be following administration directives and tailoring their findings to accommodate political policy.
This should not be surprising given former President Donald Trump’s past dismissal of climate change as a “hoax,” his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords or his effort to alter the cone of a hurricane with a Sharpie. Nor should it be surprising given that Gilman, the chapter’s author, spent 40 years working in the fossil fuel automotive industry.
Project 2025 would leave the United States naked, vulnerable and at the mercy of climate change, without the research, resources or will to meet its challenges.
And that would result in countless devastated communities and potentially millions of dead Americans.
Science in service to the nation—or not
Since colonial days Americans have been concerned with weather. As a nation of farmers, they were at its mercy and they needed some way to predict its patterns.
Two of America’s founders were, in a way, weathermen. Benjamin Franklin provided long-range forecasts that farmers used for planting in his Poor Richard’s Almanack, a very popular bestselling annual book. Thomas Jefferson, a planter, regularly took weather measurements and recorded them. On July 4, 1776 he noted that the temperature in Philadelphia reached a high of 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
In 1870, seeking to create a national weather measuring system and communicate it by telegraph, Congress created a weather office in the US Army’s Signal Division “for the Benefit of Commerce.” In 1890, following a presidential request, Congress transferred weather reporting responsibilities to a civilian US Weather Bureau in the Department of Agriculture.
Ever since then the United States government has invested in and steadily expanded meteorological and climatological research and technology. The fruits of that steady, sometimes painful, 154-year investment and effort have resulted in the most scientifically advanced, accurate, and capable weather and climate establishment in the world.
The federal government has also organized and refined its weather and climate offices to reflect changing conditions and improve their capabilities.
And throughout this period, just as the weather and climate affected everyone in the territory of the United States, so the US government freely shared its findings and results with all its citizens and the world.
Today people ordinarily think of weather forecasting in personal terms: Will it rain tomorrow? Should I bring an umbrella? Or, more importantly: Where will the storm hit?
But beyond just tomorrow’s predictions, increasingly accurate and sophisticated weather reporting and forecasting has been an incalculably powerful force multiplier for the American military, which can plan operations around it. It has enabled American agriculture to become the most productive in the world. It has made transportation more efficient and it is absolutely essential for air travel and the movement of goods by all modalities. It has, as the first weather office intended, benefited commerce.
The products of American meteorological prowess are everywhere and pervasive. As a rising tide lifts all boats, weather awareness and knowledge benefits all recipients.
Government meteorological efforts have protected Americans from the ravages of the most extreme weather. They have helped to make cities more resilient and enabled planning, whether in agriculture, construction or trade. Indeed, entire commodities markets depend on weather information provided by government research and monitoring.
Right now America is in a crisis as the climate alters due to human influence.
One response is to adapt, take measures that build resilience and preparedness, try to slow global warming, and raise awareness so that every individual can make some small effort to protect and preserve human life on the planet.
The other response is to deny that climate change is happening, to outlaw mention of “climate change,” to twist science to meet preconceived notions, or to ignore it altogether. It’s a response as likely to be successful as the Inquisition’s attempt to stamp out the Copernican solar system by banning the books that explained it.
This is the approach of Project 2025, which puts it into detailed, specific bureaucratic recommendations. If implemented by a second Donald Trump administration, it would cripple science, make Americans vulnerable, destroy cities and accelerate the very processes it seeks to deny. It would also dismantle the greatest research and applied science endeavor in history, one that has been of incalculable benefit to the United States, its citizens and the rest of the world.
Just as they have a choice between two candidates and between democracy and dictatorship in this year’s elections, when they cast their votes, Americans have a choice between ignorance, denial and disaster or knowledge, realism and progress.
On that choice on every ballot hangs the fate of the federal government’s weather and climate enterprise—and arguably, the future of human life on this planet.
This is one of a series of examinations of the implications of Project 2025 for Southwest Florida and the nation. Other articles in the series are:
Like all American schools, Southwest Florida’s classrooms would feel the impact of Project 2025. (Image: First Focus on Children)
Sept. 3, 2024 by David Silverberg
If it came to pass that Donald Trump won the election and his administration implemented Project 2025’s educational proposals, how would Florida’s parents, teachers, students and school staff be affected?
Project 2025 is the sweeping, 887-page volume of very specific policy recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump. It is a continuation of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership program that has been issued every four years since 1980.
Donald Trump has disavowed any knowledge of, or familiarity with, Project 2025, although the Heritage Foundation organizers say that he implemented 67 percent of their recommendations in his first administration. Former Trump staffers have been heavily involved in Project 2025’s formulation, including Sen. James David “JD” Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate.
When it comes to education, the Project 2025 recommendation that has received the most attention is the disestablishment of the US Department of Education (ED).
The very first sentence of Project 2025’s education chapter states: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”
That proposal has alarmed parents, teachers and education experts. It has energized Trump’s opponents, whether Democrats, independents or traditional Republicans who value learning. It is the first thing that critics cite when they attack Project 2025’s education ideas.
“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools!” Vice President Kamala Harris declared in her speech to the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 23, to intense and prolonged applause.
Trump, despite his disavowals of Project 2025, has doubled down on ending the department.
During a rambling X interview with Elon Musk on Aug. 13 he pledged to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” As recently as Friday, Aug. 30, he repeated his position at a Washington, DC conference held by Moms for Liberty—who also advocate eliminating the department.
Beyond the agency
Project 2025’s education recommendations go well beyond just ending the department.
They are contained in Chapter 11 (page 319), a sweeping chapter of 44 pages including citations, that covers a wide variety of education-related policies and proposals. It appears under the byline of Lindsey Burke, the Heritage foundation’s director of the Center for Education Policy. She has worked at the Heritage Foundation for over 16 years.
Project 2025 gathers up all the ideas that have been circulating in conservative circles, some of very long standing, and then puts them into tangible, concrete recommendations for action.
Among these ideas are many that are already in force in Florida, including expanding non-public school alternatives like charter schools, providing parents with vouchers to use in non-public schools, lowering accreditation requirements for non-public schools, passing legislation to prevent the teaching of critical race theory, and passing a “Parents Bill of Rights” that has led to practices such as book bans.
All of these would have significant consequences if implemented nationally.
But eliminating the Department of Education is Project 2025’s big idea, its headline and the one getting the most attention.
Looking ahead at the consequences of such an action is necessarily speculative, of course. But some results can be imagined—and the Collier County, Fla., public school district provides a microcosm that can give a sense of the impact at the grassroots level.
A quick history: the Department of Education
Republicans have sought termination of the current Department of Education ever since it came into being in 1980, when it was split off from the then Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
According to the department’s official history, a Department of Education was first created in 1867 to collect data about the nation’s schools. It had a budget of $15,000 and four employees. This happened in the midst of Reconstruction and the first wave of education for freed people and their children.
The next year the department was demoted to an Office of Education because of concerns that as a Cabinet department it would exert too much control over local schools.
However, starting in the 1950s public interest in education policy began to rise again along with the civil rights movement and the effort to end segregation. Segregated black schools in the South were woefully inadequate, underfunded, and discriminatory and along with the national effort to end segregation the nation made an effort to raise the general level of education for all students regardless of race.
In 1980, backed by the National Education Association, Congress passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed, the Department of Education Organization Act, making it a stand-alone Cabinet department again.
Project 2025 has a less benign view of the department’s creation. In its version, advocates of expanded education funding didn’t like the existing scattershot approach to education because “a single, captive agency would allow them to promote their agenda more effectively across Administrations. Eventually, the National Education Association made a deal and backed the right presidential candidate— Jimmy Carter—who successfully lobbied for and delivered the Cabinet-level agency.”
(Today, Project 2025 recommends rescinding the National Education Association’s congressional charter because it views it as “a demonstrably radical special interest group that overwhelmingly supports left-of-center policies and policymakers.”)
Ever since its establishment, Republicans have made ED a target and pledged to eliminate it. President Ronald Reagan, who took office immediately after Carter, was bent on ending it but the person he tapped to do the deed, Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, instead formed a commission that issued a report, A Nation at Risk, proposing reforms. Reagan liked the report so much he claimed it as his own and the department was saved, changing its focus to raising the quality of public education.
Ever since then abolishing the Department of Education has become part of the Republican mantra, an essential article of faith about which nothing has been done in actuality.
In 2016, during a campaign speech in—of course, Florida—then-candidate Donald Trump said “there is so much waste” at the department that he planned to cut it down to “shreds.”
When he became president he appointed Betsy DeVos to be secretary of the despised agency. Whatever else she did as secretary, she did not abolish the department—and as president, neither did he.
And so it stands today, a target of Project 2025.
Breaking the big bank
The US Department of Education has been described as “a big bank with a small policy shop attached.”
It’s an apt description. For all the rhetoric and misconceptions to the contrary, ED’s primary role is administering grants and financial aid to school systems and students around the country. While it tries to maintain and raise academic standards and eliminate educational inequities in school systems, it largely does this through the finances it administers.
Project 2025 would end the federal role in supporting education financially.
“To the extent that federal taxpayer dollars are used to fund education programs, those funds should be block granted to states without strings, eliminating the need for many federal and state bureaucrats,” it states. “Eventually, policymaking and funding should take place at the state and local level, closest to the affected families.”
Currently, federal funding can be a big boost to the school districts that receive it.
Collier County, Fla., illustrates this. In its tentative 2024-25 budget released on July 31, the Collier County School District estimated it would receive $7,243,150 in direct federal funding. Not all of this will come from ED; other federal agencies like the Department of Agriculture, which administers nutritional programs, also provide funding. However, it is a good indicator of the kind of federal support that primary and secondary school districts receive.
That’s not the only federal money Collier County receives. It also receives federal money passed on through state agencies and that’s much greater: $79,023,516. (Impressive as these figures might be, the vast majority of the district’s funding comes from local taxation: over $842 million.)
The funding goes for everything from salaries, to supplies, to services to furniture and more.
Breakdown of special, non-tax revenues and expenditures for Collier County Public Schools. (CCPS)
Below, where the money goes: Collier County grant recipients, amounts and officials overseeing the programs for the 2024-25 budget year. This includes grants from non-government, non-profit and philanthropic sources. (CCPS)
(Perhaps surprisingly, the federal Department has no local influence on curricula, which is entirely formulated at the local level.)
So assuming that Project 2025 was implemented as proposed and ED was terminated, the very first thing that would happen in Collier County is the school system would stand to lose up to $86 million in federal funding, whether directly or through the state.
It might make that money back, if the state—which would now have total control over all non-local educational funding—decided to be generous or at least maintain current funding levels.
The omens for this, however, are not favorable because DeSantis, i.e., the state, has a propensity and a preference for cutting appropriations for educational institutions.
A glaring illustration of this occurred in the 2025 state budget when DeSantis vetoed $98 million in higher education funding. Florida Gulf Coast University, the local institution of higher learning, had $16.3 million excised from appropriations the legislature had otherwise approved.
Collier County public schools were not spared either: $2 million in approved appropriations were cut from its pilot education program for pre-kindergarten children.
Collier lost 1,000 seats as a result of the pandemic and needed to ready young children from all backgrounds for kindergarten. The money would have been used for 10 new modular pre-kindergarten classrooms and modification of existing facilities so that 160 more 3 and 4 year olds and their parents could participate in school programs near their homes and elementary schools. Educators hoped it would establish strong bonds between the families and schools and prepare the children to enter the classroom. It would also train parents—from very diverse backgrounds, languages and cultures—to be school-ready, teach their children early literacy and prepare the children for schoolrooms.
The fact that the budget request was made by no less a personage than state Sen. Kathleen Passidomo (R-28-Naples), president of the Florida Senate, made no difference to DeSantis at all.
So on a practical level, terminating the Department of Education would at the very least inject great uncertainty into Collier County public schools’ cash flow. At worst it could result in a serious loss of revenue that would affect all aspects of school operations, resulting in a potentially significant reduction of capability and resources that would negatively affect students, teachers and staff. Furthermore, it would do this in a county that is rapidly growing and needs new school facilities and resources to handle the influx.
If Project 2025 were implemented these kinds of losses would apply across the country as all school districts lost federal funding.
Project 2025’s recommendation that money be provided to states “without strings” is also dangerous. The reason there are “strings” on federal money now is to ensure that the funds are used for their intended purpose and not misappropriated or diverted into private pockets. Project 2025 hates the “many federal and state bureaucrats” currently administering and overseeing federal education funds. However, the reason they’re there is to ensure that the money is spent properly. Without them there would be no oversight, regulation or enforcement.
Florida has already seen the fruits of this. The DeSantis “war on woke” in academia has also been a gold rush for favored politicians taking over academic positions for ideological reasons.
Under Project 2025’s proposals, the removal of “strings” on federal funding would no doubt open the floodgates for a season of unrestrained corruption and turn ivory towers into feeding troughs.
Analysis: Going back?
More broadly than just money, Project 2025’s measures would subvert the entire educational effort of the past 70 years to make American quality education more expansive, equitable and accessible to everyone. After all, it was an educational case, Brown vs. Board of Education that ended legal segregation in the first place.
Eliminating the department “would shutter thousands of public schools, end supports for low-income students, divert taxpayer funds to the private education of wealthy students and, ultimately, destabilize public education altogether,” argues Lily Klam, director of education policy at the First Focus on Children advocacy group.
The reason that the federal government intervened in education in the first place was because the racial and economic disparities among different school systems, especially in the segregated South, were so great that only the federal government was capable of correcting them. Then, starting in the Reagan administration, it sought to improve public education’s quality and outcomes.
These have been the thrust of federal efforts, as embodied in the Department of Education, since its founding. It is premised on the idea that a uniformly educated, literate, thinking population benefits the nation, is essential for democracy, and makes the country stronger.
This is the notion that Project 2025 is challenging. Project 2025—and the whole anti-public education movement—whether consciously or not, would bring back the past disparities in education and make education uneven and uncertain. By undermining public education and putting the states entirely in charge, it would revive past abuses and disparities.
Ultimately, wrecking public education, as Project 2025 seeks, would lead, not just to racial inequalities, but to socio-economic and political ones as well. While the entire movement of American education since independence has been to make Americans more prosperous, educated and equal as citizens, Project 2025 would make them less prosperous, less educated and less equal. It would ultimately create an undemocratic class of literate masters ruling ignorant serfs.
When it comes to education, this is the “again” in the slogan “make America great again.”
And preventing this outcome is the “back” in the slogan “we won’t go back.”
This article is one of a series looking at the impact of Project 2025 on Southwest Florida and the nation. Others are:
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