What would Florida be like under Gov. Byron Donalds?

Feb. 18, 2026 by David Silverberg

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will stepping down next year after eight years in office—and 39 people are running to replace him.

That’s according to the Florida Department of State as of Feb. 18. The cutoff date for candidates to qualify for the ballot is June 12 and there’s no telling how many more people will declare themselves candidates by then.

Of course, of the 12 Republicans, 11 Democrats and 16 candidates from other parties, non-party affiliates and write-ins currently declared, only a very small handful are considered serious, credible contenders for the seat.

Among these is Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). He is certainly the leading contender for the Republican nomination.

For the past four years Donalds has represented the 19th Congressional District of Florida, a coastal area running from Cape Coral at its northern end to Marco Island in the south.

Because this is the home of The Paradise Progressive and Donalds is the highest-ranking federal official in Southwest Florida, he has been the subject of considerable coverage in these pages, and that coverage can now help inform all Florida voters about the person who is seeking to lead them.

This article focuses only on Donalds, what kind of governor he would be and what policies he might pursue, rather than personal issues or scandals.

It is, as anything looking into the future must be, highly speculative; a sort of “thought experiment” as Albert Einstein would have called it.

The Republican race

The Republican assumption in this race is that the primary election, taking place on Tuesday, Aug. 18, will decide the contest.

Because Republicans have over a million-voter advantage in registrations, the candidates are clearly calculating that the primary will be the decisive election, with the general election on Nov. 3 a mere formality.

Accordingly, to date the Republican campaigns are clearly aimed at a narrow base of extreme, committed Make America Great Again (MAGA) party members who are certain to vote and who respond to Donald Trump-like appeals.

As a result, in imitation of Trump, the campaigns have been petty, personal and insulting. Candidates have attacked opponents’ failures, crimes and weaknesses. They are questioning each other’s loyalty to Trump himself, allegiance to his agenda and belief in his infallibility.

What is missing in this approach is virtually any discussion of running Florida, how the state will be managed, what policies will be pursued and how to handle the challenges it will face in the future.

Donalds has massive advantages in this race, chief among them Trump’s urging him to run before he declared in February 2025. Trump’s Feb. 20 X-post at that time was a “complete and total endorsement” after years of snubs, indifference and neglect.

*Donald Trump’s endorsement of Rep. Byron Donalds on Feb. 20, 2025.*

Trump’s blessing opened the endorsement and money floodgates.

That flood included endorsements from 17 members of the Florida congressional delegation, 27 sheriffs, three quarters of state Republican legislators and numerous donors—perhaps most importantly, Elon Musk.

It also included a cascade of cash. The campaign reported raising over $45 million during 2025.

Clearly, there’s a belief by many in the state that a Donalds victory is all but assured and they want to bask in his favor.

So what would Florida likely be like under Gov. Byron Donalds?

Goodbye Tallahassee, hello Mar-a-Lago

*The Tallahassification of Mar-a-Lago. (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)*

For all intents and purposes, under a governor Byron Donalds the capital of Florida might as well move from Tallahassee to Mar-a-Lago.

As Donalds puts it in his first priority listed on his campaign website: “Enact the Trump Agenda: Byron is committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again.”

Make no mistake: Donald Trump will be governor of Florida in all but name. That’s because Donalds has pledged his fealty to Trump so completely, extravagantly, and excessively that the idea of a shred of independence or autonomy or even a stray individual thought is unimaginable.

That’s not to say that Trump is likely to be deeply involved in the day to day running of the state. He’s got a whole world to run—and he’s still trying to prove that he won the 2020 election. It’s doubtful that he has much interest in insurance rates or water purity beyond the confines of property that he actually owns outright (Mar-a-Lago, Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, and Trump National Doral in Miami, plus adjacent properties and affiliated branded properties).

But it’s also unimaginable that Donalds would make any major move, take any major initiative or even breathe in any way contrary to the desires of Trump. What is more, this is an impression that Donalds himself has nurtured and promoted, especially with a non-stop stream of Trumpist social media posts, particularly on X. He has mounted an indefatigable and unrelenting defense of all of Trump’s most extreme excesses.

For MAGAs this will no doubt be cause for joy. They will be dwelling in the belly of the beast, a Trumptopia that is even more purely ruled by him than the nation he currently dominates. But it also means they will be even closer to the man himself and his rages, unpredictability, and sheer meanness and feel them even more acutely than elsewhere.

For those who oppose his hatred, prejudice and rage—or who are the targets of it—there will be no recourse, salvation or haven in the Sunshine State. A governor Donalds is unlikely to ever make an effort to protect them. The state will no longer effectively be independent—and woe to any state politician who dares to think anything other than Trumpthought or exhale a breath of heresy from Trump doctrine. Certainly no such heresy on any subject is likely to come from the governor himself.

A foreigner-free Florida?

*The new welcome to Florida under a governor Byron Donalds? (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)*

Given his blindly loyal Trumpism and reflecting his and the Florida Republican Party’s anti-foreigner sentiment, as governor Donalds will likely continue and intensify the state’s efforts against all foreigners of all origins and legal statuses on all fronts.

From the time he rode down the elevator in Trump Tower in 2015 Trump has been anti-foreigner. His first and most infamous declaration was that Mexicans were “rapists” and “criminals” and he has not deviated from those perceptions during his entire time in public life.

Trump considers immigration (other than by white, eastern European women he marries) as an invasion that has to be stopped and reversed. Accordingly, upon taking office his second time he began a nationwide purge, not only of undocumented migrants, but of immigrants of all kinds from virtually all other countries (especially, as he once put it, “shit hole” countries).

He is certainly seconded in this by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, of whom Trump once reportedly said “If it was up to Stephen, there would only be 100 million people in this country — and all of them would look like him.”

Certainly, both the legislative and executive branches of Florida’s government have enthusiastically joined this effort to date. Indeed, where there has been disagreement between the governor and the legislature it has been in differences over the severity of their anti-migrant, anti-foreigner measures. Florida has also been the most enthusiastic state in the union in forging bonds between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, with all of its 67 counties and its cities signing 287(g) agreements, sometimes under duress from the state’s governor and attorney general.

Ironically, this comes in a state that before Trump was one of the most diverse in the nation and benefited from foreign contributions and investment. In Florida, especially Miami, immigrants and refugees from around the world flocked to find refuge and built businesses and communities that reflected their origins and enriched the state. In the state’s groves and fields migrants—many undocumented and minimally paid—picked its fruits and vegetables. They also built its buildings, staffed its hotels and resorts and were the sinews of a robust economy.

Beyond businesses and labor, foreign tourists and visitors were a key element in the state’s tourism industry, filling hotels, buying tickets and flocking to Disney World and Universal Studio in Orlando. Even here DeSantis pursued an anti-woke cultural crusade that succeeded in attacking the Disney corporation to the point where the company chose not to make a billion dollar investment in new facilities.

Donalds has proven himself a willing standard-bearer in Florida’s fight against foreigners of all sorts.

When the city council of Fort Myers in his district hesitated to sign on to the 287g program, Donalds was quick to condemn them.

“These officials that don’t understand their role, which is to implement a federal and state law, not circumvent and create sanctuary cities,” he said in an interview on the conservative NewsMax channel. “They simply need to be removed from office. They’re not going to follow the law. It’s that simple.”

He also ostentatiously defended the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security.

On Jan. 21, after American citizen Renee Good was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Donalds posted on X: “What Democrats are doing to obstruct, impede, and sabotage ICE is treasonous. The American people granted President Trump a mandate to deport illegal aliens and Make America Safe Again. As Governor, any Florida official who blocks these lawful actions will be removed from office.”

After Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents on Jan. 24, Donalds told NewsNation: “Nobody wants to see any American lose their life like this…But we also have to be honest about what’s happening in Minneapolis. You have paid agitators. You have a coordinated operation going on in Minneapolis for the sole purpose of doxing ICE officers, impeding ICE officers, stopping them from following and executing federal law.”

While he denied saying that Pretti was a paid agitator he said, “I’m not saying that. I’m saying that what people are seeing on their phones and on news networks around the country is the result of paid protests and paid agitators.”

Ironically, for all its Trumpist loyalty, the state that created the Alligator Alcatraz concentration and detention camp to facilitate Trump’s anti-foreigner effort is also being shortchanged by that president. Despite spending $600 million to build camps and round up, detain and deport migrants, when it came to promised federal reimbursement, Florida’s state government is belatedly discovering another aspect of Trump management—his infamous welching on promises and commitments.

As governor Donalds will no doubt spend whatever he thinks—or is told—it takes for the state to curry Trump’s favor and carry out his wishes, no matter how extreme, harsh or unconstitutional. However, like so many others he will likely discover for himself that a Trump promise isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Still, Florida taxpayers are unlikely to ever hear him complain or make an effort on behalf of the hard-earned dollars they pour into state coffers.

Public de-education

*The future of Florida’s public schools and universities? (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)*

Florida public education is unlikely to find a friend in a governor Byron Donalds. Indeed, it looks like it will be facing an enemy.

Public education is not something that is top of mind in the current gubernatorial race. Only Republican candidate James Fishback has mentioned it and that only to pledge that he would mandate student uniforms and local businesses should provide student meals.

Public education is not even mentioned on Donalds’ campaign website. But Donalds’ wife Erika has long been a campaigner for non-public education (or “school choice” in her parlance) and Donalds has echoed her arguments.

Public education is being squeezed from all sides in Florida. The current governor attacked it as part of his anti-“woke” crusade and reached down to remove, replace or endorse opponents of local school board members he didn’t like. Republican politicians inveigh against it. At every legislative session measures are introduced to restrict or regulate it, whether that applies to classroom content, teacher conduct or state funding. A private voucher program for parents to send children to non-public or parochial schools that came at the expense of public education was voted into being by the legislature and left Florida with $400 million in unused vouchers. Teachers are viewed with suspicion by vocal MAGA parents and even the teachers’ expressions of personal opinion—like heretical statements criticizing the late Charlie Kirk—have been cause for investigation and suspension.

A governor Donalds coming into this mix would likely add a massively anti-public education force. Donalds can be expected to always side with private, anti-public education activists, favor private, for-profit schools and shortchange funding for public education at every opportunity—and this would come on top of the end of federal standards and funding given the dissolution of the Department of Education.

Teachers’ unions can expect no favor, no support and no mercy from a governor Donalds’ office.

As Erika Donalds put it in a 2022 Fox Business interview: “Teachers unions are the enemy of our children when it comes to their education in America.” There’s no reason to believe that her husband holds any different opinion.

Nor would higher education likely be spared. Accreditation, tenure and board membership of Florida universities were all attacked under DeSantis for a variety of perceived sins, particularly for practicing diversity, equity and inclusion. He put very expensive cronies in charge of colleges, who in turn enriched their friends.

There is nothing to indicate that this would be any different under Donalds and in fact it would likely get worse.

Public un-health?

*A child with measles is examined by a doctor. (Photo: World Health Organization/Danil Usmanov)*

Florida is arguably the most regressive state in the nation when it comes to public health. Under a governor Byron Donalds it would likely regress to the Middle Ages.

As in the rest of the world, the COVID pandemic of 2020 to 2022 marks a break point in Florida’s history of public health provision. It was a time when a small but extremely vocal minority of people, encouraged by a dismissive President and a complicit governor, turned against science and the whole edifice of modern health protections, favoring instead unproven potions, quack prescriptions and conspiracy theories.

As a congressional candidate and then as a congressman, Donalds inserted himself into local debates over mask mandates (he was against them), vaccination mandates (also opposed), and consistently opposed federal efforts to protect the population at large from the ravages of COVID.

“Biden and the radical Left are coming for your freedom,” he wrote in a fundraising e-mail on Aug. 12, 2021, which warned that President Joe Biden might intervene against a mask mandate ban put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. “They’re trying to use the federal government to FORCE Anthony Fauci’s anti-scientific mandates and lockdowns on Florida and take away our ability to make our own decisions.”

While never denouncing vaccines per se, Donalds did what he could to feed vaccine skepticism and fight all recommendations to protect the public from COVID and its variants. (For a full discussion of this, see “The Donalds Dossier: Anti-vaxxer or not?”)

Ironically enough, Donalds himself tested positive for COVID on Oct. 16, 2021, causing Trump to shun him and not even mention him in remarks when he came to Fort Myers that day. (Donalds recovered after a two-week quarantine.)

Nor has Donalds been any kinder to health care insurance and coverage for Floridians, whom he believes don’t need “full-blown, gold-plated” health insurance coverage.

“The biggest thing we need is we need a system where there are catastrophic health care plans … You can have a health care policy around catastrophic care, but that doesn’t really mean you need a full-blown gold-plated health care policy,” he said in a radio interview in October 2025.

He also said at the time that he wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (better known as “Obamacare”)—this in a state that, with 4.4 million enrollees, has the highest number of enrollees in the country.

A big question is whether if elected governor Donalds would keep on the state’s current Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who has been DeSantis’ anti-vaxx, anti-mandate, anti-public health right hand man. Ladapo announced in September 2025 that the state would be abolishing all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren—“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and, and, slavery, okay?” he said of mandates, emphasizing all “are going to be gone for sure.”

It didn’t take long for measles, a previously suppressed disease, to break out in Florida, with one center being Ave Maria University in Collier County. That outbreak is still ongoing and appears to be increasing as of this writing.

So the record indicates that a Byron Donalds governorship would be devastating for Floridians’ health and healthcare—this at a time when previously suppressed or eradicated diseases are making a comeback, widespread vaccination is under attack and public health agencies are being dismantled at the federal and state levels.

The Sunless State?

*Florida’s future landscape? (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)*

On Thursday, Feb. 12, Trump and Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced that they were rescinding the “Endangerment Finding,” which held that greenhouse gases and fossil fuel emissions are dangerous to human health. The action opens the door to unrestricted air pollution and increased climate warming.

It joins a reinterpretation of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act on Jan. 13 to undercut state and local efforts to protect their waters from pollution.

In November 2025 Trump reversed a 10-year moratorium he had previously imposed on allowing oil exploration and exploitation in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, along with other sensitive locations. The moratorium was imposed in the runup to the 2020 election to gain the favor of Florida voters.

All of these are assaults on the natural environment and all will acutely affect the state of Florida—and they come on top of challenges to the environmentally sensitive state like climatic warming, intensifying storms and sea level rise.

Donalds is a member in good standing of the climate change-denying contingent in Florida, which includes the past and current governors and the Republican majority of the state legislature, which has gone so far as to outlaw the term “climate change” from state documents.

When asked in 2023 if he thought there was a correlation between heat waves and climate change Donalds simply replied “No, I don’t.” He has opposed what he called “weaponization” of Section 401 and fought efforts by President Joe Biden to stop water pollution.

In the case of oil drilling, Donalds did sign on to a letter along with seven other Florida representatives disapproving of Trump’s action, saying that drilling would interfere with operations at Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle. It was his only action to protect the Florida environment from Trump’s drive to encourage pollution, despoliation and exploitation in the service of the fossil fuel industry.

As governor—and as a submissively Trumpist governor at that—Donalds cannot be expected to defend Florida’s natural environment, protect its waters or safeguard its Gulf shores from oil pollution and defilement. He will most likely go along with Trump’s insistence that climate change is a “hoax” and do everything he can to eliminate measures to contain, restrain or prepare for it.

This comes on top of a strong movement in the Florida state government to “pre-empt” local governments’ efforts to take immediate steps to prepare or counteract the undeniable effects of climate change in their immediate areas.

Indeed, the pre-emption movement affects a broader swath of life in Florida. Driven by developers, many of whom are also state legislators, it is designed to eliminate all local barriers to development and exploitation.

Adding to this is an assault on the funding sources of local government by the governor and his allies to end property taxes. Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia is seeking the power to overhaul local budgets and remove officials in the name of his Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO, a deliberate play on a profane definition). Ostensibly intended to root out fraud, waste and abuse in local government financial matters, in fact it appears to be an attempt to end all local autonomy.

The logical end result of these efforts and the state over which a governor Byron Donalds would preside, would be a fully paved over Florida, run entirely from the governor’s office at Trump’s direction, with no local autonomy of any kind. There would be no conservation of the natural environment and the air, land and sea would be completely polluted. Natural barriers or wetlands would likely be paved over and no longer protect the population, which would be utterly at the mercy of intensifying hurricanes and rising waters.

Further, Florida would likely cease to be a major citrus-producing state, its trees ravaged by citrus greening, its reliance on citrus imports destroyed by Trump’s tariffs and its groves sold to developers for housing developments.

Ironically enough, Florida’s great natural renewable energy resources, its sun and wind, which might at least mitigate climate change would not only be neglected but would likely be actively opposed by both Donalds and Trump.

Trump is known for his pathological fear and hatred of wind turbines for generating energy. There are currently no wind farms in Florida or offshore, so this is a phantom menace and there certainly wouldn’t be any built under a governor Donalds.

But Florida was making efforts to develop its solar generation capabilities and this too Donalds has opposed.

There can be no clearer statement of his attitudes on this subject than the headline on a 2023 op-ed under his byline for the Fort Myers News-Press: “The Dishonest Fantasy of Wind and Solar.”

“In sum, I’m not opposed to wind turbines and solar panels, but if we seriously want an affordable, reliable, secure ‘green energy’ grid, we cannot rely on the dishonest fantasy of utilizing spiky intermittent energy sources like wind and solar,” he argued. “Instead, we must embrace nuclear power and include nuclear in future green alternative energy discussions. Ultimately, we must base our future energy-related decisions on logic and objective facts—not politics.”

The high likelihood is that this op-ed wasn’t really written by Donalds but by a nuclear energy lobbyist—because in his second term, Donalds signed on as a shill for the nuclear power industry.

In the 2023 Congress Donalds sponsored 14 bills related to the nuclear power industry, mostly deregulating it or in some way favoring it, often in a highly technical manner. None had anything to do with his district, the concerns of its residents, or fell within his usual areas of expertise. (The nuclear industry also didn’t get much for its investment since none of his bills went anywhere.)

Donalds benefited greatly from fossil energy industry political action committees (PACs) and seven of them contributed a total of $25,500 to his campaign in the 2024 cycle. Fossil fuel PACs included those from the companies Sinclair, Valero, Marathon and Exxon Mobile as well as NextEra Energy, a utility infrastructure company, and Duke Energy, an energy holding company. Also contributing was the overall trade group for fossil fuels, the American Fuels and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association PAC.

The race card

*Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as apes in a Xerias_X video reposted by President Donald Trump on Feb. 6. (Image: Truth Social via Laura Loomer on X)*

If elected, Byron Donalds would be Florida’s first black governor.

It’s not a precedent or breakthrough that he’s playing up. On the contrary, he’s doing all he can to get Floridians to overlook his race.

In an atmosphere where racism is condemned and merit emphasized, this would be unremarkable. However, that’s not the current atmosphere.

On Feb. 6, Trump re-posted a 55-second artificial intelligence-generated video by the extreme X-site Xerias_X depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. The video didn’t end there: it depicted a variety of other Democratic figures as African animals, including US House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-8-NY) as a meerkat or lemur, former President Joe Biden as a baboon and former Vice President Kamala Harris as a tortoise. At the end of the video, all the animals bow before Trump as a lion king.

*The animal-politicians bow before Lion King Trump in the Xerias video reposted by the White House. (Image: Truth Social via Laura Loomer on X).*

The video was a clear display of Trump’s utter contempt for other politicians, the public, and his blatant, undisguised racism—with the exception of the unfailingly devoted and politically useful cover of Byron Donalds.

Most of the country exploded in outrage, including numerous Republican politicians.

However, the reaction among Florida Republicans was muted, when it wasn’t supportive. Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R), who is also running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, stated that the controversy was fomented by the political left and the news media. Candidate James Fishback wrote that “President Trump did nothing wrong.” (By contrast, Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly said that “every other candidate in this governor’s race should have condemned racism this weekend and not fallen silent.”)

But of all the Republicans, the one black candidate, the person who stood most to be offended, whose outrage was most to be expected, was silent. His office released a statement to the Tampa Bay Times that “Team Byron Donalds has called the White House and learned that a staffer had let POTUS down”—accepting uncritically the White House explanation that the posting was the work of a staffer, who remains unnamed to this day.

And that was all there was.

Donalds’ reaction—or non-reaction—is instructive of his likely actions and attitudes if elected governor. Florida’s minorities, of all kinds, will find no aid, assistance or support from this governor if they face challenges or prejudice. Racism will go unanswered. And any Trump excess or outrage will not only be uncritically accepted, it will likely be defended, rationalized and when directed, implemented by this governor.

Indeed, Donalds’ whole political career is built on a gargantuan contradiction that will be unavoidable if he accedes to the highest office in the state.

“I am everything the fake news media tells you doesn’t exist,” Donalds stated in his opening campaign video when he first ran for Congress in 2020. “A strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect black man.”

He hasn’t changed positions since making that statement. But increasingly, holding to that Trumpist faith means accepting authoritarian coups, mob and state-sanctioned violence, concentration camps, constitutional violations, mind-boggling corruption, election rigging, dictatorial dominance and increasingly overt and extreme racial prejudice.

Byron Donalds would not be in a position to seek the governorship of a state that was once slave-holding and secessionist, segregationist and lynching-prone if not for the giant steps away from that barbarity over the last 160 years. If not for Emancipation, he would be a slave. If not for Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, he would not be able to vote. If not for the Civil Rights Act, his children would be consigned to second-class schools and separate water fountains. If not for repeal of Florida’s miscegenation law in 1969, he would not have been able to date—much less, marry—his current spouse. If not for the election of Barack Obama, who showed that Americans could accept a capable black man and elect him president, he could not aspire to the state’s highest political office or even the highest office in the land.

Instead, he has embraced a movement and man who wants to go in exactly the opposite direction, to return to a time when in his view America was “great.” But when was that time? Was it before the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that a black man could never be an American citizen? What is more, this is a president who is ferociously and aggressively turning back the clock and trying to bend the arc of history to an imagined time when prejudice reigned, racial violence was common, and intolerance ruled—and there was no place in that world for an ambitious black man like Byron Donalds.

As a loyal, submissive, Trumpist governor, this is what Byron Donald can be expected to bring to Florida.

Donalds may well win the Republican nomination on Aug. 18. But when Florida voters go to the polls in the general election on Nov. 3, they will have a choice. Assuming the election is held as scheduled, assuming every legitimate voter is allowed to cast a ballot, and assuming that the votes are counted fairly, accurately and reported truthfully, the people of Florida can chart a very different destiny for their Sunshine State—if they dare.

To see all The Paradise Progressive’s past coverage of Rep. Byron Donalds, click here.

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Manifesto for an American Rose Revolution

*A new flag for a new movement? (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)*

Jan. 2, 2026

The United States of America today has gone from a beacon of democracy to a dictatorship. The time has come to end that dictatorship.

This can be done non-violently, democratically, legally and constitutionally but it needs to be a revolution nonetheless.

This year’s political activity, whether grassroots street protests or midterm election efforts, whether rhetorical or physical, should be seen, not as fragmented, individual efforts but as part of a broad and reaching cultural, political and legal movement—and revolution.

Perhaps the best metaphor for this revolution and a physical expression of it lies in a small patch of ground, about 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House.

It was known as the White House Rose Garden.

In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, working with professional landscape architects and botanists, reshaped the space into a formal garden, bordered by flowers, primarily roses. It was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected her own.

*Views of the White House Rose Garden in 2007. (Photos: National Park Service)*

In the first administration of President Donald Trump, a new limestone walk was installed, many of the previous trees were removed and flowers were consigned to the sides, all allegedly at the command of First Lady Melania Trump. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss called the alteration an “evisceration” and said that “decades of American history [was] made to disappear.”

In the second administration of President Donald Trump the Rose Garden was paved over entirely. It is now a Mar-a-Lago-style patio with a private “Rose Garden Club” to go along with it, restricted to Trump’s closest sycophants and enablers.

*The paving over of the White House Rose Garden in the second Trump administration. (Photo: Instagram)*

*President Donald Trump dines with co-conspirators on the White House patio. (Photo: White House)*

In the Rose Garden can be seen the struggle between Trump and the American people.

Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He has demolished the East Wing, on his own authority, to replace it with an expensive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name.

But the White House does not “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people whom each resident serves and holds in trust for the next occupant.

The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.

The time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.

And it is time to restore the Rose Garden to its previous state of beauty, grace and elegance.

But it’s not just about restoring the Rose Garden itself; the time has come to restore democracy, dignity and decency to American public life.

The time has come for an American Rose Revolution.

A new color revolution

In the past, a wave of what were called “color revolutions” swept the world when people long deprived of freedom and democracy demanded it. The very first of these was in the country of Georgia, which had long been part of the Soviet Union. When Georgia regained its independence, its people mounted a Rose Revolution to say that they didn’t want the kind of dictatorship they had endured in the past, they wanted freedom for the future.

The Georgia Rose Revolution was followed by others as people strove for freedom and democracy: the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the People’s Movement (Otpor! or “outpouring”) in Serbia and the Arab Spring in the Middle East.

When Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower in July 2015 (a descending metaphor in itself!) no one believed that this one man would turn the greatest democracy in the world into a source of fear, oppression and threat reflecting his own hatreds, prejudices and rages. No one imagined that he would turn a people’s presidency into a despotic dictatorship.

But he has done that and the time has come to end it.

What is the American Rose Revolution?

The American Rose Revolution needs to be an effort that transcends political party or past allegiances. It should be the effort of every single American at all levels to right the wrongs that have been done and restore democracy—and not just its outward forms but its inner values: civility, respect and allegiance to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and the rights to participate, enjoy and contribute to the common good of each and every American, regardless of his or her race, creed, or place of birth.

It needs to be a revolution to gain freedom from fear as Americans cease to cower in the face of insults, threats and bullying by Donald Trump and his regime.

One of democracy’s great strengths is that it provides hope—hope that things can change for the better, that there will always be new chances and new opportunities to improve one’s own life and the lives of others. Dictatorship, by contrast, thrives on hopelessness—crushing any hope that anything can change without the intervention or approval of the dictator. Americans have always rejected this and they must reject it again.

So an American Rose Revolution needs to be a cultural revolution of hope and joy against hopelessness and despair.

An American Rose Revolution should be a revolution in which every American can participate by simply being civil to neighbors, by fully, actively and legally participating in political activities and civic life in contrast to the threats, insults and lying of Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) cult; by calling out obvious wrongs and exposing wrongdoing.

This year the first opportunity to support the American Rose Revolution comes with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If still in office on July 4th 2026, there can be no doubt that Trump will try to hijack and make this celebration about himself. There is no other possibility. He cannot abide a situation where he is not the center of attention and flattery and that will certainly apply to the observation of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But for all other Americans, the 250th anniversary has to be a time to rediscover and remember the ideals and principles that led to the first American revolution; that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and that no one man should be able to take them away.

It will also be a time to read some of the original complaints that impelled that Declaration when they wrote about King George III: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither;” he has “obstructed the Administration of Justice;” he “has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures;” he was “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”

And it is worth remembering the conclusion that the Founders reached: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Fortunately, the American Constitution provides a civil and peaceful means to enact change and the next chance for that will come in elections slated for November. By vigorously participating in election activities, supporting campaigns, working for democratic candidates, registering voters, working at the polls and then being sure to vote, all Americans can contribute to making the change that’s needed.

These are traditional, legal and legitimate activities that have long been the essence of democratic, elected government. But this year not only are they more important than ever, they are revolutionary. It won’t just be an election, it has to be turned into an American Rose Revolution.

And those who wish to show their support and approval can use the rose as a symbol of their defiance, courage and hope, wherever, whenever and however they choose to do so.

New amendments

But beyond the general commitment to restoring American dignity and decency, there are some specific proposals that would improve and protect the United States, built from the experience of Trump’s tyranny. These presume that the Constitution remains in force and the procedure for amendments intact.

Passage of a 28th Amendment

The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.

On July 1, 2024 the majority of the United States Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity from the law for their official actions in the case of Trump vs. United States.

In practice, this ruling gave Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate for the second time, immunity from American laws when he gained the presidency. He won the presidency and began governing—actually, ruling—without regard to law, precedent or the Constitution, secure that nothing he did would face legal restraint or recrimination. It effectively led to a dictatorship.

Not only that, Trump vs. United States violates the very principle emblazoned on the lintel of the Supreme Court building: “Equal Justice Under Law.” The ruling creates a single, unaccountable individual above and beyond the reach of the law that applies to all others, in effect, a king. It violates the very first truth of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”

It is time to correct this. In the future, everyone, whether president or everyday citizen, must be subject to the same laws. Since the inherent meaning of the Declaration is unclear to the majority of the current Supreme Court, it must take a constitutional amendment to state this principle outright. All people are created equal in the eyes of the law and that is what the 28th Amendment will do. No kings.

Passage of a 29th Amendment

No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.

When ratified in 1788, the only qualifications for the position of President were that the individual be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.

Those requirements were sufficient to ensure that relatively qualified people filled the office. Given that there had not been a United States before ratification of the Constitution, a prior-office qualification could not be included.

But after 250 years it is time to add to the qualifications for president. It seems a rather low bar to require that a person qualified for President should have the experience of serving in at least one prior elected position—and the position can be anything, from school board to dog catcher. The main point is that the person should have at least one experience of winning the approval of voters and experience the responsibility of serving them before aspiring to the highest office in the land.

As with a prior elected position, the amendment includes holding a military command as a qualification. From such a command the person in question, who has already proven his or her service to the country, will have the experience of being in a position of responsibility and authority. The amendment does not designate a rank, it just requires the experience of command at some level as a qualification.

This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a candidate running—or governing—from prison. And it says: criminals need not apply.

Other measures

There are many other issues that need to be addressed and what follows are only a few of them, in no particular order. This list does not go into details, it simply proposes principles that all reasonable people can work toward as part of an American Rose Revolution.

Immigration: “To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”

America is special because it’s not just a country, it’s also an idea. In the past, America’s ideals of life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness were considered so compelling and attractive that any thinking human could grasp them, live by them and become an American by adhering to American laws and contributing to American society.

Trump and his regime not believe this. They believe in hatred, prejudice and rage. But more, they no longer believe that American ideals and values are sufficiently compelling to inherently attract the allegiance and support of immigrants once they’re American citizens. Nor do they want non-white immigrants to become Americans and live by American laws and principles. They reject these ideals and express their rejection with brutality, threats and violence.

This should not continue. Borders need to be secure, the law must be enforced and those currently in the country without documentation need to comply with American requirements—but they should also have an incentive for compliance and lawful behavior and be treated with due process and reasonable humanity. Those undocumented migrants who came to the United States as children through no volition of their own deserve to have an opportunity for citizenship if they seek it as long as they have clean criminal records.

This all can be done in a rational, humane and lawful way. Requests for asylum should be evaluated on reasonable, humanitarian grounds with the wellbeing and dignity of the requestor as key factors. Citizenship should be granted on the basis of knowledge of the country, its laws and an oath of allegiance.

This was a key point in President George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI.

Asked what the attitude of the new United States might be toward the Jewish community, Washington replied that in America, toleration extended to all.

As he wrote: “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Every American, every naturalized immigrant, as long as he or she performs as a good citizen, obeys the laws and gives the country “their effectual support” should be welcomed and protected by the United States.

It is time that the United States once again, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

All this requires comprehensive immigration reform and the federal government—both legislative and executive branches—should work toward a solution that secures the country, provides a legal path to citizenship, allows for guest workers and treats migrants and asylum seekers with dignity and respect.

Ending ICE

Every sovereign nation must secure its borders, protect them, allow legitimate trade and travel while filtering out criminals and contraband, and have a mechanism to enforce its laws.

This is ostensibly the job of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

However, ICE has been vastly misused and its mission twisted into pursuing mass ethnic and racial population changes. Its warrantless searches and seizures, its masked and unidentified agents, its lack of legal approval, its concentration camps, its absence of due process, its secret transportations and deportations and its deliberate efforts to instill fear are all in contravention of not only the letter of the Constitution but its spirit. It has gone from a form of law enforcement to a paramilitary tool of terror.

ICE cannot be allowed to continue in its current form and is so tainted by its conduct it cannot be sufficiently altered to regain public confidence. It should be abolished as a DHS directorate and taken out of DHS. The previously independent Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should be revived to serve immigrants and the American public. Enforcement should be handed to the Border Patrol or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with creation of an internal enforcement element in whatever agency is appropriate. INS and Border Patrol or the FBI can then coordinate with DHS for other homeland security functions.

All anti-immigrant concentration and deportation camps must be closed, starting with Florida’s infamous Alligator Alcatraz.

Real Americans don’t build concentration camps—real Americans liberate them.

Reaffirmation of birthright citizenship

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the United States is an American citizen: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Period. And that should be the end. However, birthright citizenship has been under assault by Donald Trump from the first days of his candidacy. He has tried to overthrow it every way he can and can be expected to continue the effort in the future.

That should not be allowed to happen. The United States Congress needs to resoundingly reaffirm its support for the 14th Amendment with its grant of birthright citizenship so that there can be no mistake about where the United States stands. Full stop.

Restraints on tariffs

There must be some form of oversight and restraint on the imposition of tariffs. While any President must have some leeway and flexibility to respond to changing conditions there clearly has to be some enhanced form of congressional oversight and restraint.

This could take the form of a congressional veto: If the president proposes a tariff then Congress has 30 or 60 days to stop it. This could take place in one chamber or both. But the kind of wild, unnecessary and very personal and whimsical tariffs that Donald Trump imposed cannot be allowed to disrupt American trade and impoverish Americans again.

Healthcare as a right

The American people have a right to expect that their government will aid the state of their health to the greatest extent possible, through all possible means.

The Affordable Care Act must be repaired from the damage done to it during the Trump presidency.

Reliance on science

Throughout its history the people of the United States have relied on the scientific method to determine the physical state of the world around them and to safeguard their health and wellbeing. As a basic principle of governing, the United States needs to return to reliance on rigorous, unbiased scientific research and investigation in making the decisions affecting its policies and the welfare of its people.

Protecting public health

The government of the United States has a duty to protect and improve the health of the people of the United States based on sound science and rigorous research independently pursued without political or ideological interference.

The United States had the most robust, reliable and principled public health system in the world before Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration and the entire health infrastructure and the people who served it.

The damage done to these critical institutions must be repaired and the research that was under way restored. Sound science and the health of the American people must be the principles that guide the protection of Americans’ health and wellbeing and government of the people has a responsibility to do that.

Supporting climate science

Before the Trump presidency the United States was the world’s leader in the objective study and evaluation of the world’s climate and the changes occurring to it through either human or natural processes.

Because the results were unfavorable to current practices and prejudices, this effort was denounced by opponents as a “climate alarm industry” and its conclusions rejected in favor of old energy uses and routines.

This is unsustainable and will cost lives. It is a course that will ultimately destroy the planet. The United States must restore its efforts to scientifically study and respond to climate changes and prepare for their effects. It must once again take a leadership role in protecting and nurturing all life on the planet and its continuation. The United States must rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, adhere to its principles and recommit to doing what it can to slow damaging climate change.

Helping in disasters and building resilience

Because the climate is changing Americans need to prepare for its impacts and their government needs to assist them in every way possible.

The chief agency for aiding Americans in the event of disaster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As imperfectly as it may have functioned in the past, over time it became the most effective possible mechanism to respond to natural and man-made disasters and then assist in resilient rebuilding after they passed. As its motto stated, it helped Americans before, during and after disasters.

FEMA became a target of Donald Trump’s unreasoning hatred for partisan political reasons during the 2024 election campaign. He wanted to abolish it. His Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was similarly critical, personalized disaster aid and added an approval requirement that virtually stopped the agency from functioning altogether.

FEMA needs to be restored because its mission is too important to the American people and will become even more vital as a changing climate imposes new contingencies.

FEMA should be broken out of DHS and made a full Cabinet department. The experiment of having it part of DHS has failed and the Trump regime has made clear that it is too prone to abuse in its current form. Its head should report directly to Congress and the President and it needs the latitude of independence to completely and neutrally fulfill its mission.

An independent, Cabinet-level FEMA, responsibly managed, will truly help the American people prepare, respond and recover from disasters and emergencies.

Cleaning up corruption

The Trump regime is notorious for its dubious deals, questionable pardons, personal enrichment and commercial schemes—and those are the practices that are blatantly obvious in public. There’s no telling what has gone on below the surface.

Corruption and crime in the presidency, among high officials and their accomplices must be exposed, investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by an impartial, incorruptible and objective federal government and law enforcement establishment motivated by adherence to the law and commitment to seeing justice done on behalf of the American people. All ill-gotten gains at the expense of the American taxpayer must be clawed back.

Supporting and encouraging education

Ignorance is not strength. Ignorance leads to disaster. America should strive to return to being the world’s leader in thought, inquiry and free expression.

The Trumpist assault on education has to be stopped. Teachers should no longer be treated as enemies. Institutions of higher learning are not piggy banks for extortion and targets for threats. American higher education has to resume its place as a leader in the world, a center for inquiry and knowledge, pursuing truth wherever it leads, without political interference.

Public primary and secondary education is essential to a free, healthy and prosperous society. Public schools need to be supported, encouraged and improved to as great a degree as the federal government can provide. While private and non-public schools are welcome they should in no way damage or detract from the quality of public education.

Restoring a free media

As the Framers were well aware, a free media is critical to maintaining a free society. Presidential bullying, extortion and threats to an independent media must come to an end. Journalists and communicators in all media and on all platforms must be able to pursue, report, analyze and comment on the truth as best they are able to determine it. This is a fundamental to American right as part of the 1st Amendment but it needs to be re-learned and renewed.

America abroad

The Framers of the Constitution gave the power to declare war to Congress, which is where it belongs. When it is necessary for the nation to enter into armed conflict it should do so united and with the advice, consent and approval of representatives of the people and states, who after all, will be providing the blood and treasure required.

Pressing contingencies will always require a quick response. But wars of necessity nonetheless require congressional approval under the Constitution and that requirement must be respected when American lives are being put in harm’s way.

But America should always try to make its way in the world without conflict, violence or threats. War and conflict must always be a last resort. The strength and power of the United States should be vested in a Department of Defense that protects the American people and looks after American interests.

Nonetheless, for all its wealth and power, the United States is a nation among nations and it needs to treat all other nations, large and small, rich and poor, with the respect and dignity they deserve.

The United States needs to repair its relations with its closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and earn back the respect, friendship, trade and mutual prosperity it previously enjoyed with them. Their security contributes to the security of the United States.

The United States needs to recommit to its friends and allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and again stand as a pillar for democracy, freedom and peace through strength against aggression, autocracy and tyranny. An attack on any of them is an attack on the United States and should be treated as such.

The United States should return to its previous place in the world by aiding the development, health and welfare of all people, assisting in responding to disasters, promoting democracy, and being a responsible role model and steward of the planet.

The front line of Ukraine is the front line of the United States and should be regarded as such. A peaceful and internationally recognized Ukraine was the victim of unprovoked, unjustified and unacceptable aggression by Russia. The United States needs to totally recommit to the defense, independence and sovereignty of a free, democratic and independent Ukraine, which should be enabled to achieve its victory conditions and pursue its own destiny as its people see fit. The United States should aid Ukraine in defeating Russian aggression and provide whatever material, intelligence and strategic assistance it can offer.

American democracy and opposition to tyranny inspired Ukraine’s Orange Revolution—now Ukraine’s Orange Revolution should inspire America’s Rose Revolution. As the Ukrainian people ejected a Putin puppet, the American people need to now reject another on their own soil.

Borders should never be changed through acts of aggression and invasion and that principle applies to the United States as it does to all nations. And the United States should always support fellow democracies when they are threatened with conquest, invasion or suppression.

Begin the beginning

This is hardly an exhaustive list—indeed, it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done to make America good—and thereby great—again.

What is more, its suggestions—apart from the constitutional amendments—are not completely original and are in no way radical. They are firmly rooted in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, democracy and American history.

Nonetheless, perhaps this manifesto can provide at least some ideas for a revolution that will expunge tyranny and restore democracy to the United States of America.

There is much to be done and little time to do it but the American people, when they are mobilized, determined and awake have always shown themselves unstoppable.

The American Rose Revolution should manifest itself in daily actions and commitment, political and personal. It will express itself in elections at all levels.

But it will truly know success when the American people again take possession of their White House and make clear that presidents serve them rather than rule them, when they emerge from the toilet to which Donald Trump has consigned them and regain their place as the owners and arbiters of their home, their White House and their destiny.

That moment will be known when the ugly and oppressive stones of the Trump patio are dug up and smashed and their pieces distributed as souvenirs and Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Rose Garden is replanted and restored. When those flowers burst into glory again, the American people will know that they have regained their freedom and liberty. It is a goal to be sought and not an easy one to achieve.

But to bring forward that day, let a billion roses bloom.

The time for an American Rose Revolution has arrived.

Coming Jan. 5: The Year Ahead: Swamp or Sunshine? Florida’s choices

The year ahead: Keeping the light alive

Liberty lives in light

Help defend democracy in Southwest Florida—donate here!

David Jolly: Believing in change and a new day for Florida

Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly addresses a town hall meeting in Naples’ South Regional Library on Oct. 13.
(Photo: Author)

Oct. 19, 2025 by David Silverberg

Even in retirement-heavy Naples, Fla., it takes some kind of special magic to fill a large auditorium for a political speech on a Monday afternoon.

But David Jolly managed to do exactly that when he addressed a town hall meeting at the Collier County South Regional Library on Monday, Oct. 13.

Jolly is the Democratic candidate for governor—and if the turnout, interest and enthusiasm of the crowd was any indication, this campaign and election will certainly be intense. People are fired up—and worried.

But if Jolly is worried, he gives no indication of it.

“Believe. Believe,” he told the crowd. “My wife and I would not be in this race, I pledge to you, if we did not believe that in this moment we’ve got the best shot we’ve had in 30 years to change the direction of this state. When we change the direction of Florida, we impact national politics, we give people across the country the opportunity to look to something that’s different and better. Believe. We here believe.”

It seemed like he had the audience believing him.

It’s one thing to believe—it’s another thing to back up that belief with data, money and, ultimately, votes.

But Jolly thinks he’s got the goods.

Pure Florida

Jolly is probably as Florida as it’s possible to be for someone other than an indigenous native. He was born on Halloween, 1972, in Dunedin and grew up in Dade City.

His father was a Baptist preacher and he was raised on Baptism’s precepts, which he has made clear still affect him as “a person of deep faith.”

It was his higher education that took him out of state, to Emory University in Georgia and George Mason University in Virginia, where he graduated with a juris doctor degree cum laude.

A Republican, Jolly joined the staff of Republican Rep. Bill Young in 1994, who at the time was representing central Florida’s 10th congressional district. Jolly rose through the various staff ranks but left the office in 2007 to work as a consultant and lobbyist. When Young died in office in 2013 at the age of 82, Jolly ran in a special election in March 2014 to succeed him, and won a narrow, 2 percent victory. He then won the general election in his own right in November without either a Republican primary challenger or a Democratic opponent.

As a representative, Jolly trended what might be called center-right, favoring what was the standard Republican litany of positions. He had campaigned to repeal the Affordable Care Act and supported overturning Roe versus Wade. In office he was in favor of tighter border controls, more restrictive vetting of immigrants and worked to maintain the prison in Guantanamo Bay.

But he also veered more centrist on other issues, arguing that regulations were appropriate to keep guns away from criminals, despite his support for the Second Amendment. He also supported the legality of same-sex marriage as part of his belief in personal liberty and opposition to government interference. At the same time, he said his Christian faith made him a believer in traditional marriage.

More particularly for Florida, he supported a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and sought to extend the National Flood Insurance Program to cover businesses and second homes.

By the end of his term, Jolly’s approach got him ratings from The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University as Florida’s fourth most bipartisan member of Congress and the 48th most bipartisan member overall.

As the 2016 election approached, he considered a run for the US Senate seat held by Marco Rubio when Rubio was considering running for another office—but Rubio changed his mind, decided to stay in the Senate and Jolly ran again for the 13th.

This time he was opposed by former governor Charlie Crist, who had transitioned from Republican to independent to Democrat. Still a canny politician, Crist narrowly won the election by 51.9 percent to Jolly’s 48.1 percent.

Changing parties

David Jolly in repose. (Photo: Author)

There was never a single, revelatory moment when Jolly suddenly decided to switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic, he told The Paradise Progressive.

“It was more a journey. It really was,” he said. “I mean, I was a Bush 41 Republican who fought the Tea Party, right? I was an appropriator who voted to keep the government open when they wanted to shut it down. On constitutional issues like marriage equality and eventually on reproductive freedom, I was moving away. On guns, I was moving away.”

He smiles wryly: “I say Republicans didn’t want me and Democrats didn’t need me.”

And then there was the presence and over time Donald J. Trump’s domination of the Republican Party. Jolly was no Trumper. “I fought back and lost that,” he reflects.

“I knew the fight had been lost in my mind, that the party I once belonged to was never coming back and that certainly I was not a sufficient leader to try to bring it back. And I spent six years as an independent, which was the most informative part of my political life, to be untethered from a major party, major party dogma.”

It was at the time he and his second wife were expecting their first daughter that he considered leaving the Republican Party. When he did it, he did so in a very public way.

“I basically announced on Bill Maher that I was leaving,” he said of his Oct. 5, 2018 appearance on Maher’s program. “I said I wanted our kids to know, I wanted my daughter to know, that it’s important to fight for what you believe in. But there came a moment where I was accepting that I wanted her to also see sometimes there are fights you walk away from.”

Or as he put it then, “Somebody else can fight for the dignity of the Republican Party now—it’s not my fight anymore.”

Jolly went on to become a political independent and a commentator for MSNBC, where he was consistently critical of Trump.

Then, this year, after making campaign-like appearances around Florida, including an appearance and speech in Naples on May 17, Jolly announced on June 5 that he was running for governor as a Democrat.

Jolly is well aware that there are critics who question his commitment to the Democratic Party and its principles.

He himself said, “I’m in a very post-ideological space. I really am. I think the left-right spectrum confines us and restricts us.”

However, his time as an independent gave him perspective, “I just got to look at what are the big answers to our big problems?” he said.

What is more, as he said to the crowd at his town hall in Naples: “Is it okay to change your mind?” While the crowd applauded and cheered he concluded: “I actually think it is.”

David Jolly speaks outside the Collier County Courthouse on May 17 of this year. (Photo: Author)

A stark contrast

It’s hardly surprising that as a Democrat, Jolly’s positions are starkly opposite those of Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) or his leading likely opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.).

But more than partisan, his positions are aimed squarely at the concerns of everyday Floridians and away from broad, national ideological questions.

Overall affordability and the high cost of insurance are key problems to be tackled, in his view.

“The property insurance crisis is the primary reason so many people in Florida are struggling to afford a home,” notes his platform. “From renters to retirees to homeowners, the burden of property insurance continues to make housing costs in Florida unaffordable for many.” He is pledging to make alleviating that problem a key focus of his governorship.

Notably, he is pro-choice. “Reproductive healthcare decisions should be made between women and their doctors, not politicians,” states his platform. He wants Florida to codify the same rules that held during the Roe v. Wade era.

He also recognizes the reality of climate change. “Florida should accept the science of climate change, protect our beaches and state parks, and invest in resiliency throughout the state,” according to his platform.

While supporting the Second Amendment, he thinks that Floridians have suffered enough from gun violence and lax gun laws. As his platform states: “Florida should ban the sale of assault weapons, require universal and comprehensive background checks, explore licensing, and preserve and expand the red flag laws enacted following the tragedy at Parkland.”

The litany goes down the line. But most of all, he emphasizes, he’s running on a platform that transcends party dogma.

And perhaps one of his most compelling positions is his call to treat everyone with “kindness, dignity and respect.”

“Culture wars divide and demonize,” states his campaign platform. “Florida should reject the politics of division and hate, and instead create a home where everyone is valued, respected, and welcomed. We should become a place where everyone is given dignity and equity, regardless of race, creed, or color, and regardless of who you love or the God you worship. Florida should embrace our immigrant community and celebrate their contributions to our state’s culture and economy. It’s time to create a Florida for all people.”

And there’s another promise he makes when it comes to culture, as he confided to his Naples audience.

“I’ll also tell you, one of the things I want to do when we get elected governor is bring back art to the state of Florida,” he said to enthusiastic cheers. “I want to open the governor’s mansion through loan agreements with major art installations. Bring back the art that lets us see who we are, who we could be, who we’ve been. Test the boundaries, bring back culture and theater, and open it up to the people of Florida. Open it up to school kids and everyone else. Otherwise, who else wants to go to Tallahassee?”

But can he win?

Jolly is running in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 1.4 million, where the Republican governor won by 22 points in 2022, where his likely opponent is endorsed by Trump and has $31.5 million in campaign funds.

And yet Jolly is not only confident he can win, he radiates that confidence and can convey it to a crowd.

“We’re seeing it on the ground,” he said in response to a question about his path to victory. What’s more, “we’re also seeing it in the data.” Polling backs this up, he insisted. “I feel very comfortable saying we’re in the margin of error. We have a poll that has us leading by one [percentage point]. Donalds’ [poll] has him leading by four.”

But it’s the overall political environment that fuels his certainty. “So very critically, the environment and the cycle is one of dramatic change,” he said.

Why? “It’s because people are angry, they’re worried about their economy, and they don’t trust incumbent politicians right now. And so, yes, for us, that made the decision to get in this race. I really mean this, having been involved in probably 30 races—as a candidate in only three or four—I have zero interest in chasing a generic ballot, as I say. I know there’s an opportunity for change in Florida.

“And layer into that, we have a generational affordability crisis that truly is hitting Republicans as much as it’s hitting Democrats. And so that contributes to this environment.”

He pointed out that recent special elections in Florida have swung Democratic by 15 and 16 points. It has led DeSantis to avoid special elections, for example for his appointed lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, or in counties like Palm Beach. It’s also a trend throughout the country.

“This is a race that allows an Andy Beshear to get elected in Kentucky, a race that allows Steve Bullock to get elected in Montana, and a race that allows David Jolly to get elected in the state of Florida,” he told the crowd in Naples.

But he also acknowledged that the odds present a direct challenge to him: “I have to build a campaign that can win in this moment and win in this cycle.”

That also means closing the money gap. Donalds is reporting $31.5 million in the bank. Jolly has raised $2 million.

But Jolly sees an upward trend and points out that it’s still early in the race.

“We have small dollar donors from all 50 states,” he said in our interview. “Some of the largest investors in American politics have agreed to support us. But others are just ‘wait and see,’ right? There’s no reason for them to spend money in October of ‘25.”

What’s more, the Republican fundraising advantage may not endure.

“I would also say Republicans are very likely about to have a bloodbath of a primary and spend all their money against each other. And what I’m begging Democrats is—and that’s why I said it over and over today—if I’m insufficient, make me stronger.” In other words, he wants to have the dialogue that will enable him to learn and become more effective.

He also dismisses the impact of Trump’s endorsement of Donalds in the general election.

“With a state exhausted by MAGA, it hurts more than it helps,” he observed.

He continued: “The way I look at this race is that 33 percent of the state is probably unavailable to us. I’ll make my case as hard as I can. But if 39 percent of voters are registered as Republicans, I believe we will get 15 percent [of that].” If he can win over that percentage of Republican voters he can negate six points of likely Donalds supporters.

“So I do believe 33 percent of the state is loyally behind Donalds and Donald Trump. But in the midst of a dramatic change environment, to be able to have 67 percent of the state available to us, I feel very, very good about that.”

The possibility still exists that Jolly could face another Democratic challenger for governor. Right now he’s the only Democratic candidate and both in his speech and interview he called on his fellow Democrats not to be part of what has traditionally been called “the circular firing squad”

“Be a part of how we win,” he urged. “Don’t be a part of how you tear us down. Whether that means we have a primary or not, we’ll see. Family conversations aren’t all bad. They can be good. But we just have to remember that this is about Democrats leading a new coalition in American politics. And the only way we do that is if people look at the Democratic Party and see something they want to be a part of. If we fight each other for the next year, nobody’s going to be interested in that.”

Meanwhile, Jolly is taking a leaf from another former Democratic Florida candidate. He said his strategy is to go into communities across the state no matter their apparent ideological tendencies.

“I’m going to do what Lawton Chiles did in 1970. We’re going to go everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Deep red communities, frankly like Naples.” In 1970 Lawton Chiles, campaigning for the US Senate, did a 1,000 mile trek across Florida, visiting every community en route and talking to people along the way. He won the Senate seat and then went on to be elected governor in 1991, passing away in 1998.

Similarly, Jolly intends to visit as many communities as possible and once in those communities he intends to challenge Republicans to reveal their proposed solutions.

“Republican, what are you willing to do?’ he said. “I think we need a safe cap for insurance [i.e., ensuring that insurance can cover all contingencies]. Republicans will call it socialism. So what’s your plan? Can you convince enough people in Naples that you’re going to reduce their homeowner’s insurance, Byron? I don’t think you can. Can you convince enough people that they’re safe from school shootings? I don’t think you can, Byron. So we have to be willing to go into conservative media environments, into conservative communities and have conversations that not only express our values but ask the other side to be held accountable for their view and for their vision.”

A movement within a movement?

A demonstrator at the “No Kings” protest in Naples, Fla., on Saturday, Oct. 18, shows her support for David Jolly amidst the signs opposing Donald Trump. (Photo: Author)

There’s no doubt that Jolly projects a confidence that has been sorely lacking among Florida Democrats ever since Trump won the state in 2016 and DeSantis took the governorship in 2018. It’s a tonic for the crowds that come to hear him and it has electrified audiences, particularly in Naples.

Jolly has the experience, the objectivity and the analytical capabilities to be fully aware of the obstacles he faces, particularly in a state and a country being battered by rising authoritarianism, repression and anti-democratic tricks.

Asked if he worries about threats to the upcoming elections he acknowledges the dangers but is determined to press on.

“I still have faith, but I worry about it,” he admits. “And I worry about other areas of interference shy of Election Day.

“I worry, for instance, as a candidate, that the Trump administration is going to investigate major Democratic candidates across the country. And I worry about that on a personal level. I know there’s nothing [I’ve done] that merits an investigation. But it’s easy for what I believe is the current posture of the president to launch an investigation.”

He also worries that Trump could declare a national emergency on some pretext shortly before the election and somehow try to stop it. But he continues to campaign on the presumption that the election will be free, fair and honest.E

He is also fully aware of the physical danger to candidates and public figures in the current atmosphere. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Jolly said that he sat down with his wife and his team and had a conversation about whether to stay in the race. But he—and they—decided the stakes were too big and the outcome too important not to keep campaigning.

He also wanted to send a message to his children. “I guess with our kids, I wanted them to know that the story I’m telling is true. I want them to know we’re trying to change the world. And that, win or lose, it’s a gift.”

Jolly has set an arduous task for himself. His is a campaign that is truly grassroots, he will be campaigning everywhere in a big state; his Naples town hall was already his 81st campaign event and the campaign is still in its early stages. He knows how intense it’s going to get as time goes on and especially in a year’s time when the race has tightened and is nearing the finish line.

But if Jolly is fazed by the prospect, he doesn’t show it. If anything it fuels his resolve.

“I know what is within our power, which is to build a coalition strong enough to win overwhelmingly,” he said emphatically. “And I know that sounds like a wild aspiration in Florida, but it’s why we’re in it. It’s why we’re in this, because if we can build a big enough coalition in Florida to overcome that, then I think that people have spoken.”

He also knows the part he must play to win and that it’s long, exhausting and potentially dangerous. “But,” he continues, “if we win, it’s because Florida’s voters have decided enough is enough—and we’re going to overwhelmingly take back the state.”

Liberty lives in light

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Part 3—Defying darkness: Southwest Florida politics and the year ahead

*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.

Marceno has called the allegations baseless.

DeSantis is reportedly already considering people he can tap to replace Marceno.

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.

The state, the legislature and the Trump regime

On the one hand, with Florida resident Donald Trump scheduled to take office Jan. 20, the likelihood is that Florida will be favored in federal decisionmaking in the year ahead. After all, during the height of the COVID pandemic, the state of Florida was given special access to the US stockpile of COVID supplies and vaccines.

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?

In May 2024 the state banned the term “climate change” from statutes. When DeSantis sought a special session of the legislature to tackle the resulting insurance crisis, he was rebuffed by the House.

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.

What is more, Project 2025, which will likely be implemented in whole or in large part, calls for the dismantlement of NOAA for being part of the “climate change alarm industry” and elimination of NFIP. FEMA will likely become far more stingy in its support of states and localities after disasters.

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).

It’s worth remembering that Florida lost 89,075 people to the COVID pandemic, of which 551 were in Collier County and 1,009 in Lee County. Yet in what is likely a precursor of national Trumpality, the Collier County Board of Commissioners passed an anti-public health ordinance and resolution in 2023.

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.

_________________

Part 1—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead in domestic politics

Part 2—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead abroad and the new triumvirate

Liberty lives in light

Help defend democracy in Southwest Florida—donate here!

Part 1—Defying darkness: Anticipating the year ahead in domestic politics

Jan. 1, 2025 by David Silverberg

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.

The war on equality is already under way in Florida, where in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed Senate Bill 266, a law banning the pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion in state college hiring decisions. This comes on top of the Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act passed in 2022 that prohibited discussion of the impact of racism and gender inequality in state schools and businesses.

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

Liberty lives in light

Help defend democracy in Southwest Florida—donate here!

Milton the storm and Milton the man: Who was Florida’s suicidal governor and what lessons does he hold for today?

*Florida Gov. John Milton. (Oil painting over photograph, Claribel Jett, Fla. Dept. of State)*

Oct. 10, 2024 by David Silverberg

When “Milton” came up on the National Hurricane Center’s list of hurricane names, it hardly seemed appropriate for a killer storm.

Rather, it seemed nerdy, best suited for an owlish accountant. It evoked Milton Berle, the slapstick comedian who had his heyday in the early days of television (for people who remember him).

But for those with a sense of Florida history, it was a creepy evocation of a volatile governor who was so completely tied to the Confederate cause that he could not bear its defeat. A hurricane bearing his last name aimed at Florida seemed a coincidence ripe for the hauntings of Halloween—and very ominous for those following the storm’s track.

So, who was John Milton and what happened to him and what did he mean for the state of Florida? And could there be a cosmic meaning in what was otherwise a complete coincidence of timing and names?

Origins of a reluctant Floridian

The most famous John Milton was the seventeenth century English Puritan poet who penned the epic poem Paradise Lost about the revolt of the angel Satan against God and his subsequent exile to the depths of Hell.

As it happens, Florida’s John Milton was related to that John Milton. Indeed, he was part of a family distinguished both in England and the United States. His great grandfather, also named John Milton, was a hero of the Revolutionary War and a presidential candidate in 1789, when he ran as a Federalist from Georgia and received two electoral votes. His son, Homer Virgil Milton, was a hero of the War of 1812.

The John Milton who became governor of Florida was born on April 20, 1807 near Louisville, Ga., and grew up in Georgia, “reading” law (a less formal education than a degree and one also pursued by Abraham Lincoln).

Milton practiced law in Georgia and in 1830 he married Susan Amanda Cobb, with whom he had a son and two daughters. They subsequently lived in Georgia, Alabama and New Orleans.

He married a second time (presumably on the death of his first wife) and had two sons and seven daughters by his second wife, Caroline Howze.

Florida had been acquired by the United States from Spain in 1821. While it attracted immigrants as a land of opportunity then, as it does to this day, Milton, who was described by The New York Times in his youth as “gay and dashing” went there driven by a different motivation: he killed a man in a duel over a lady and had to flee Louisiana.

Wealthy by the time he moved to Florida in 1846, he bought a 7,000-acre plantation near the town of Marianna, about 65 miles northwest of Tallahassee. Named Sylvania, it was worked by an enslaved population.

When the Third Seminole War broke out in 1855, Milton served as captain of volunteers until the conflict ended in 1858.

But Milton made his real mark in politics.

Success and secession

In the presidential election of 1848 Milton served as a presidential Elector, voting for Democrat Lewis Cass.

Florida’s Democratic Party was split between Conservatives, who favored states’ rights and Whigs who favored the union. Milton turned out to be an effective orator and a fiery Conservative. In this he followed the thinking of John Calhoun and South Carolinians who argued that states had the right to “nullify” federal laws with which they disagreed.

By 1849 the question of slavery was beginning to roil national politics. In 1852 it suddenly moved to the forefront of the national debate when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published.

As a wealthy slave owner and states rights advocate, Milton became a defender of slavery and a proponent of secession. Elected a state senator in 1850, he obsessively pursued the idea, making emotional, intense speeches in its favor. In this he closely resembled another southerner, planter and author Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, who also fanatically advocated secession.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 brought the question of union, secession, state rights and slavery to a head.

In 1860, Florida had only 140,424 inhabitants. Most worked in agriculture in some way and settlement was largely in the northern part of the state with the exception of Key West, which at the time was America’s richest city, built on salving wrecked shipping. As small as the state’s population was, it had expanded exponentially in the years since the United States had acquired the territory.

Of the population, according to the 1860 census, 41,128 were white men, 36,319 were white women, 31,348 were black male slaves and 30,397 were black female slaves. There were only 454 free black men and 478 free black women.

The electorate was tiny. Only white men had the vote. When debate began over secession in 1860—in what may be surprising to modern readers—there was strong unionist sentiment in the state legislature and about half the state’s population.

Milton’s fiery oratory won him the Conservative nomination for governor. His opponent was Edward Hopkins, who led the Constitutional Unionists. The ultimate vote was small and extremely close: 6,994 for Milton and 5,248 for Hopkins, a difference of only 1,746 votes, but enough to make Milton governor.

It was the same election that made Abraham Lincoln president. Across the South secessionists prepared for war. The outgoing governor, Madison Perry, was authorized to spend $100,000 in arms and munitions for state forces.

Milton continued to push for secession and Edmund Ruffin of Virginia traveled to Tallahassee to add his support.

At Milton’s strenuous urging, on January 10, 1861 the state legislature passed an ordinance of secession by a vote of 62 to 7, becoming the third state to secede. The seven dissenters unsuccessfully tried to have the ordinance submitted to a general referendum but failed.

A minority of partisan politicians prevailed and declared Florida a “sovereign and independent nation.”

Civil War

Milton was such a secessionist that he didn’t even want Florida to join the Confederate States of America. He even resisted the Confederate Secretary of War’s call up of the state militia to serve in the Confederate army.

Nonetheless he realized, however vaguely, that the rebellion would take a common effort. Still, with Florida’s tiny white male population, people were not going to be its greatest contribution to the cause.

Instead, Florida contributed the fruits of its agriculture, especially cattle and salt, to the Confederacy and Milton was instrumental in organizing its collection and shipment to the north. It briefly made Florida, if not the breadbasket of the confederacy, certainly its meat monger.

During the war the Union took note of this supply and tried to stop or impede it.

In February 1864 Union troops marched out from Jacksonville, which they held, to disrupt the food supply. Their commander, Gen. Truman Seymour, decided to exceed orders and take Tallahassee. Confederates from Florida and South Carolina sought to stop him and they met in battle at the town of Olustee. The Confederates beat the Union troops who retreated back to Jacksonville.

*A contemporary illustration of the Battle of Olustee, which has been criticized for various inaccuracies. For example, neither side fought from behind fortifications. (Art: US archives)*

Battle even came to Fort Myers, which in 1865 was an actual fort, whose surrounding community was home to around 400 pro-Union Floridian refugees.

The fort, which was largely a wooden blockhouse, housed the 2nd Florida Cavalry, largely made of pro-Union Floridians, a company of New York volunteer infantry and the 2nd United States Colored Infantry. The troops raided surrounding ranches, depots and grazing lands to cut off Confederate supplies.

*Fort Myers in 1865. (Art: Leslie’s Illustrated)*

On February 20, 1865 about 500 Confederates approached the fort, which was manned by about 275 Union troops, and demanded their surrender. When the Union commander refused, battle commenced and after four hours of fighting the Confederates withdrew. In March the Union forces abandoned the fort on their own volition.

It was barely more than a skirmish but has gone down in history as the southernmost battle of the Civil War.

A shot in Sylvania

As the southern cause declined so did Milton’s will and determination and he was reportedly worn down by the cares of office.

In March 1865 he left Tallahassee for his plantation in Marianna but not before he sent a message to the state legislature. In it he stated that Union Army leaders “have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them.”

By the dawn of April the Confederacy was on its last legs and the capital, Richmond, was about to fall.

Apparently unable to face the prospect of a Union victory, Milton committed suicide at his home plantation, Sylvania, on April 1, putting a bullet in his brain.

The next day Richmond fell. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on April 9. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15. And Edmund Ruffin, Milton’s fellow secessionist, also committed suicide on June 17.

To the best of this author’s ability to determine, John Milton was the only American governor ever to commit suicide in office.

Commentary: Omens or oddities?

Aside from the oddity of having a storm hit Florida that bore the name of one of its governors, the story of Gov. John Milton revives the specter of the causes he favored, which were otherwise laid to rest by the civil war and subsequent history.

There was the idea of nullification; that a state could simply “nullify” a federal law it didn’t like by calling it unconstitutional.

In 1830 this was the argument South Carolinians made over a federal tariff they opposed. John Milton supported their rejection of federal law and policy.

In 2023 Collier County, Fla., passed its own nullification ordinance, the misleadingly named “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” ordinance, giving itself the right to nullify federal law if a citizen deems a federal law unconstitutional. With the passing of Hurricane Milton, this ordinance may come back to haunt the county as it deals with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which operates, of course, under federal law.

There was the idea of secession, of pulling out of the federal compact altogether.

In 1860 this is what John Milton energetically propounded and vigorously pursued, eventually succeeding in leading Florida out of the federal union.

Today, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pursued what has been called “soft secession,” defying federal mandates, rules, regulations and policies as he serves his own political ambitions. He has defied the federal government in matters large and small ranging from COVID mandates to extraditing Donald Trump to other states to answer for his crimes. He even made a point of snubbing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris when they visited or called to offer or coordinate assistance with hurricanes Helene and, yes, Milton.

No doubt DeSantis will continue to pursue his version of secessionism through the November election and after, especially if its results don’t favor his opposition to abortion rights and the election of Harris.

But as John Milton—and January 6th—helped to show, secessionism and insurrection don’t end well and they’re not likely to end well this time.

The storm named Milton also throws into relief Florida’s determined denial of the reality of climate change. From then-Gov. Rick Scott informally banning the term from state government to the legislature and DeSantis officially striking it from state legal and official documents, climate change denial is embedded in the state’s leadership mentality—even when climate change-induced storms pummel the state they govern with increasing force.

Perhaps the coincidence of an extremely powerful, destructive, climate-change fueled storm called Milton and the legacy of a fanatical but destructive governor named Milton provides a kind of poetic lesson that Floridians should heed.

And that lesson is simply this: Denying climate change is…well…suicidal.

Liberty lives in light

*Hurricane Milton seen from the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA)*

Project 2025 denies climate change, strangles weather science, would cripple storm predictions

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.

In 2015 then-Gov. Rick Scott (R) informally banned use of the term in state government.

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:

Project 2025 would end federal flood insurance, devastate Southwest Florida and coastal communities

Project 2025 remake of FEMA would hit communities hard after disasters

Project 2025 takes aim at education—and Collier County, Fla.

Liberty lives in light

Project 2025 remake of FEMA would hit communities hard after disasters

Southwest Florida would face fiscal blow after nature’s damage

*A victim of Hurricane Ian in Venice, Fla., hugs a federal officer in gratitude for his help as part of the national response after the storm in 2022. (Photo: CBP/ Glenn Fawcett)*

Aug. 1, 2024 by David Silverberg

Updated Aug. 2.

While the head of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has departed, the ideas his Project proposes for completely remaking the federal government remain and could be implemented if Donald Trump is elected president a second time.

These changes would directly affect Southwest Florida in the event of a disaster like a hurricane—and one may be on the way as this is written. Today, Aug. 1, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared a state of emergency in 54 of Florida’s 67 counties in anticipation of a storm coming from the Caribbean Sea.

Among Project 2025’s proposals are changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which would impose new and heavily burdensome costs on local governments and reduce federal support.

Changes at Project 2025

Project 2025 is a sweeping, 887-page tome of recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump. It is authored by the conservative, Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think-tank. The proposals were accompanied by a drive that included recruitment of personnel, training for those people and a 180-day Playbook for immediate implementation should there be a change of administrations.

As people become familiar with its contents, it is increasingly a target for Democrats and critics alarmed by its radical proposals.

Although Trump campaign operatives repeatedly called on the Heritage Foundation to stop promoting Project 2025 as part of the campaign, the Heritage Foundation did not do so, leading to a rift between the camps.

On Tuesday, July 30, Paul Dans, head of Project 2025 stepped down from his position under pressure from Trump and his campaign.

“Friends and patriots: to every thing there is a season. We completed what we set out to do, which was to create a unified conservative vision, bringing together over 110 leading organizations united behind the cause of deconstructing the administrative state,” Dans wrote in an email to Heritage and Project 2025 staff.

“This tool was built for any administration dedicated to conservative ideals to utilize. The work of the project was due to wrap with the nominating conventions of the political parties. Our work is presently winding down, and I planned later in August to leave Heritage. Electoral season is upon us, and I want to direct all my efforts to winning bigly,” Dans wrote.

Despite Dans’ departure, the work of Project 2025 is expected to continue, as confirmed by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation.

“Project 2025 will continue our efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local,” Roberts stated in an X posting.

While Trump has denied and dismissed Project 2025, much of it was written by former officials in his administration and it is endorsed by Sen. James David “JD” Vance (R-Ohio), his vice presidential running mate. Vance wrote the foreword to an upcoming book written by Roberts based on Project 2025.

Moreover, if Trump is elected, his army of loyalists, enablers and aspirants will no doubt use Project 2025 as their policy roadmap regardless of what he says—and therein lies its potential impact on Southwest Florida.

Targeting FEMA

If changes proposed by Project 2025 are made to FEMA, Southwest Florida cities and towns would incur a far heavier financial burden for disaster preparedness, response and recovery than at present.

The proposals would especially impact this region vulnerable to hurricanes, algal blooms, wildfires and other natural disasters. This is especially relevant in the midst of what is expected to be a very active hurricane season.

Under Project 2025’s proposals, Southwest Florida communities—and all American communities—would have to bear a far larger proportion of the expense of a disaster or meet deductibles, as in the private insurance market.

Lee County communities just went through the trauma and uncertainty of retaining a discount for flood insurance, which if lost would have been extremely costly to local homeowners. The Project 2025 proposals would be similarly costly to local governments, which would have to pass on the costs to residents in new taxes to provide the funding for recovery.

A quick primer on the current system

To fully understand the impact and nature of Project 2025’s proposals, it helps to be familiar with the existing FEMA system of disaster response and support for individuals and communities.

The current FEMA system is fundamentally based on the belief that the American government has a duty to assist its citizens and communities when disasters occur that are beyond their immediate ability to handle. While it regards this as an integral role for the federal government, it relies on states and localities to first respond to the degree they can before relying on federal help.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act is 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.

The law was first passed by Congress as the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 and then substantially amended by then-Sen. Robert Stafford of Vermont in 1988. It has been amended further as definitions were refined and different forms of disaster added.

(Of relevance to Southwest Florida has been the effort, started under then-Rep. Francis Rooney in June 2019, to include harmful algal blooms as officially designated disasters. Rooney’s successor, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), although reintroducing the bill as the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act (HR 1008), has not pursued it with any effort during his time in office.)

When a disaster strikes, state and local officials determine if they need federal assistance. If they do, they put in a request for aid and the President (actually, FEMA and the Office of the President) approves the request and makes a disaster or emergency declaration. A major disaster declaration allows a wide variety of assistance, while an emergency declaration provides federal supplements for local efforts, for example to stave off a worse disaster or protect property and public health.

There are three types of federal assistance:

Individual Assistance helps individual survivors with immediate needs like shelter and repairs.

Public Assistance is a government-to-government program. It provides federal grants to state, local, tribal and territorial governments. It helps with a wide variety of activities like restoring public infrastructure and providing life-saving emergency protection.

Hazard Mitigation helps with the rebuilding of communities to be stronger, more resilient and prepared for future hazards.

Of great importance to Southwest Florida is federal assistance for debris removal, which has been a major expense for all communities hit by hurricanes.

After the immediate response, FEMA aids communities with their rebuilding and recovery. This is guided by the National Disaster Recovery Framework.

The Lee County experience

The impact and importance of federal support can be seen in Lee County in the aftermath of 2022’s Hurricane Ian.

The Lee County government put the estimated cost of Hurricane Ian in the county at $297.3 million. Over half of this was for debris removal, whose cost came to $156.3 million.

According to Lee County, FEMA approved $477.7 million in Individual Assistance. That included $299 million for repair and replacement assistance and $6 million in rental assistance for 23,704 households. Moreover, 775 households were approved for direct housing assistance.

When it came to Public Assistance, Lee County received $293.9 million in funding. This aided in repairing the Fort Myers Beach Water Reclamation Facility, lift stations for sewage flow, repairing the Lee County Sports Complex and Jet Blue Park, and the Bonita and Lover’s Key beaches.

Looking toward the future from 2023 when Lee County’s report was written, it was estimated that improving and rebuilding Lee County communities would cost $293.9 million, which would be covered under the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

These were substantial funds provided to Lee County by FEMA. They have made the rebuilding of communities like Fort Myers Beach possible at a much faster pace than would be otherwise possible.

Project 2025 would change that.

What Project 2025 would—or wouldn’t—do

The changes to FEMA are contained in the section of Project 2025 that covers homeland security, since FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

This section appears under the byline of Ken Cuccinelli.

Project 2025 observes that while FEMA is the lead agency for preparing and responding to disasters, “it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt.”

Project 2025 blames the Stafford Act for a shift in disaster response from the states and localities to the federal government and complains that FEMA is too “state-friendly.”

In particular, it takes aim at a “per capita indicator.” The indicator gives FEMA the authority to set a threshold below which states and localities are ineligible for public assistance, i.e., the level under which a community won’t get FEMA assistance if its damages are too small.

FEMA, argues Project 2025, sets the indicator so that most communities will get FEMA assistance.

What is more, it states, the indicator has “failed to maintain the pace of inflation and made it easy to meet disaster declaration thresholds. This combination has left FEMA unprepared in both readiness and funding for the truly catastrophic disasters in which its services are most needed.”

Project 2025’s solution is to make it tougher to get federal aid.

“FEMA should raise the threshold because the per capita indicator has not kept pace with inflation, and this over time has effectively lowered the threshold for public assistance and caused FEMA’s resources to be stretched perilously thin,” it states.

If the indicator can’t be raised there’s another option: “Alternatively, applying a deductible could accomplish a similar outcome while also incentivizing states to take a more proactive role in their own preparedness and response capabilities.”

“In addition, Congress should change the cost-share arrangement so that the federal government covers 25 percent of the costs for small disasters with the cost share reaching a maximum of 75 percent for truly catastrophic disasters.”

In other words, states and localities should bear the greatest financial burden for disaster preparation, response, recovery and resilience and that’s where Project 2025 would put it.

For Southwest Florida, this would be…well, in a word…a disaster.

The impact

Under Project 2025 communities already reeling under the devastation of a disaster would be hit with far higher costs and financial burdens for response and recovery than at present. They could look to FEMA for assistance but that assistance would be much lower and more grudging than at present.

FEMA would go from “state-friendly” to “state-stingy.”

Imagine Lee County in the wake of Hurricane Ian under Project 2025 guidelines.

Lee County would have had to bear the cost for most of the $297.3 million in damages from the hurricane. It would have been a staggering burden; in fact, it could have driven the county into bankruptcy—or at the very least the recovery would be even slower and more painful than at present. People would suffer longer. As it is, Lee County’s recovery has been agonizingly slow for some people. Under Project 2025, it wouldn’t recover for decades.

The other Project 2025 alternative, having communities pay deductibles, would be equally burdensome. At a time when their communities were flattened by hurricanes or tornadoes and digging out, towns and cities would be ineligible for aid at the very moment they need it most unless they met arbitrary deductible thresholds.

Lastly, imagine a system in which “small” disasters get only 25 percent in federal support. Was Hurricane Ian a “small” disaster or a “truly catastrophic disaster?” Anyone on the ground knew it was truly catastrophic—but in the full spectrum of disasters handled by FEMA it might not be considered such and so would not have gotten the support for a full recovery. Every new disaster would leave devastated populations wondering: was this “a truly catastrophic disaster” that will get federal help?

The evolution of caring

In 1927 President Calvin Coolidge included this in his annual message to Congress:

“The Government is not the insurer of its citizens against the hazard of the elements. We shall always have flood and drought, heat and cold, earthquake and wind, lightning and tidal wave, which are all too constant in their afflictions. The Government does not undertake to reimburse its citizens for loss and damage incurred under such circumstances. It is chargeable, however, with the rebuilding of public works and the humanitarian duty of relieving its citizens from distress.”

Coolidge was writing in the midst of a truly horrendous Mississippi River flood that devastated the states along its banks and displaced millions of people.

Throughout that disaster, which lasted over months, he refused to visit the site of the floods, wouldn’t request additional appropriations from Congress, wouldn’t make any appeals for voluntary donations and for all intents and purposes ignored the whole event.

It’s a response unthinkable today. But he was reflecting the attitudes of the time. People were on their own, he was saying, and so were their towns, counties and states.

That attitude changed with the Great Depression and the New Deal.

The Great Depression was a natural disaster only in that evoked natural feelings of panic and fear. But it was a disaster that overwhelmed people and even their best individual efforts had virtually no effect.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt altered the national attitude. For the first time the federal government felt an obligation to aid its citizens in their times of need, when they couldn’t cope with a disaster with the tools at hand. (For a full history, see the author’s book, Masters of Disaster: The Political and Leadership Lessons of America’s Greatest Disasters, available on Amazon Kindle.)

More specifically, each natural disaster has led to greater federal involvement to help people crushed by overwhelming events.

In 1950, Congress passed the Federal Disaster Relief Act authorizing federal assistance if a governor requested help and the president approved by declaring a major disaster.

In 1968 the National Flood Insurance Act was signed into law to aid people afflicted with flooding (and which is another program that Project 2025 proposes ending. For more details see “Project 2025 would end federal flood insurance, devastate Southwest Florida and coastal communities.”)

In 1974, after tornadoes struck across 10 states resulting in six federal disaster declarations, Congress passed the Disaster Relief Act.

Then, in 1980, after Mount St. Helens erupted and blanketed parts of the West in volcanic ash, for the first time the federal government assumed 75 percent of the cost of the recovery.

The capstone was the 1988 passage of the Stafford Act, which has been updated since.

Commentary: Project 2025 makes Americans vulnerable again

Project 2025 is critical of FEMA from a banker’s perspective. It correctly points out that FEMA’s emergency fund sometimes gets low. In the Project’s view, that is because FEMA is overly generous to states and localities.

But when this last happened, in August 2023, it was because FEMA was handling multiple disasters including Hurricane Idalia—which especially hit Florida—and wildfires in Maui, Hawaii. As a result its funding had to be replenished by an emergency appropriation of tax dollars.

(It should also be noted that Southwest Florida’s congressman, Rep. Byron Donalds, has consistently voted against appropriations bills that would replenish FEMA funding.)

What the Project 2025 analysis neglects is that FEMA is not a bank. It does not operate a profit and loss balance sheet. It doesn’t charge interest.

FEMA’s mission is to “help people before, during and after disasters.” That means assisting them when they’re in need and usually at the worst times of their lives. It’s not a loan or a handout.

Federal disaster assistance is one of the greatest benefits of being an American citizen.

What’s more, it is what a citizen’s taxes buy. As has been said in these pages before, taxes are a two-way street. A citizen pays into the general pot but gets appropriate benefits as needed.

In this case people’s taxes buy them help when they need it as a result of a natural disaster.

There’s nothing wrong with that, nor is there anything wrong with replenishing FEMA’s emergency funds when there are so many disasters that those funds run low.

Lastly, as for FEMA failing to promote state and local preparedness and response, as Project 2025 charges, the Project’s authors might ask the city officials of Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers Beach and Lee County whether FEMA insists on local preparedness, readiness and resilient rebuilding.

Project 2025 wants to leave American citizens, states, territories, tribes, counties, cities and towns financially naked and vulnerable to natural disasters. It wants to go back to Calvin Coolidge’s cold indifference to Americans’ suffering and return to a time when there was no federal help of any kind.

Moreover, it wants to do this at a time when climate change is making disasters of all sorts more frequent, more intense, and more devastating—and there is no longer any reversing this, it is the new normal. The state of Florida may think it can eliminate climate change by banning mention of it in textbooks and official documents but that’s not the way reality works, as its current state of emergency demonstrates.

Project 2025 is correct in one assertion: FEMA is indeed “overtasked.” But far from gutting FEMA and its capacity to help Americans and their towns and cities, FEMA needs buttressing and support. It already has a big mission and that mission is only going to get bigger.

If Donald Trump is elected and Project 2025 implemented by his sycophants, enablers and loyalists, when it comes to disasters they won’t make America great again.

Instead, they’ll make it weaker, more vulnerable and more devastated— and they’ll do it in Southwest Florida just as much as they’ll do it everywhere else they can.

That is, unless the American people stop Project 2025 at the ballot box this November.

To subscribe to FEMA’s Daily Operations Briefing, click here. This free service provides a daily overview of American disasters, hazards and FEMA responses. (It’s especially informative during hurricane season.)

Liberty lives in light

Project 2025 would end federal flood insurance, devastate Southwest Florida and coastal communities

*Florida National Guardsmen evacuate flood victims in Arcadia, Fla., in the wake of Hurricane Ian on Oct. 3, 2022. (Photo: US Army/Spc. Samuel Herman)*

July 7, 2024 by David Silverberg

Project 2025, a blueprint for post-election decisionmaking in a second Donald Trump administration, is recommending termination of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

All of Southwest Florida and its residents rely extensively on NFIP for affordable insurance in the face of events like hurricanes, storm surge and flooding.

“The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program,” states Project 2025.

It’s a radical proposal that could have a devastating fiscal impact on Southwest Floridians.

A quick primer on Project 2025

Project 2025 is a sweeping, 887-page tome of recommendations for presidential and legislative changes to be made under a conservative president, in this case, upon the election of Donald Trump.

The Project is actually a continuation of an effort by the conservative, Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think-tank that began in 1981. Then, the Foundation published a book called Mandate for Leadership with conservative policy recommendations. These were largely adopted by President Ronald Reagan, who handed out the book at his first Cabinet meeting.

Since then, a Mandate has been published every four years.

Project 2025 is a continuation of the Mandate series, only broader, more comprehensive, more radical and entirely Trumpist. It has also expanded beyond just the book and policy recommendations to include recruitment of personnel, training for those people and a 180-day Playbook for immediate implementation should there be a change of administrations.

Because of the radical nature of its current recommendations and Trump’s avowed pursuit of retaliation, revenge and retribution, Project 2025 is getting much more attention than previous Mandates.

It is sweeping in that it includes a complete reorganization of the federal branch, installment of ideological loyalists in place of non-political civil servants and reorientation of government toward unchecked presidential rule.

A quick primer on the National Flood Insurance Program

In 1968 Congress passed the National Flood Insurance Act, spurred by losses in Florida and Louisiana caused by Hurricane Betsy and its storm surge. The bill was signed by President Lyndon Johnson and led to establishment of the NFIP to protect Americans from the financial hardships of flooding.

The program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), takes three forms.

One is mapping flooding risk along rivers and coasts. By 2018, the fiftieth year of the program, NFIP had mapped all of the nation’s populated areas, or 1.1 million miles. Among other things, these maps help mortgage lenders determine flood insurance requirements.

A second goal is to mitigate risk by supporting local flood prevention and management measures. The program’s managers estimated this saves the country over $1.6 billion each year in flood losses.

The third pillar—and the one closest to everyday property owners in Southwest Florida and across the country—protects insurance policyholders from financial flood losses. In 2018, 5 million people held NFIP policies in 22,000 communities across the country.

Under NFIP, homeowners who meet its requirements can get flood insurance for most buildings and dwellings of all sorts, including condominiums, mobile homes on foundations, rental units and more. Policyholders are charged lower than market rates to make it affordable. Many commercial insurers don’t offer flood insurance and NFIP is the only option.

While homeowners are not required to purchase the insurance, some federally-backed mortgages require it if the building is in a Special Flood Hazard Area—places especially prone to flooding.

Given Florida’s susceptibility to storms, its flat terrain and its extensive coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, NFIP is crucial to protecting Floridians and making life affordable.

In Southwest Florida, the City of Naples and Everglades City joined NFIP in 1970. Charlotte County joined in 1971. Collier County followed in 1979. Lee County joined in 1984 when it did its first flood insurance study and created maps to establish flood zones and determine elevations. Today, there are 51,103 NFIP policyholders in Lee County (statistics are unavailable for Collier and Charlotte counties).

Participation in the program “is crucial for coastal communities such as Lee County because most standard homeowner’s insurance policies do not cover flood damage, and without access to NFIP coverage, property owners would have to bear the full financial burden of flood-related losses or pay higher premiums from private insurers,” states the Lee County website.

Project 2025 versus NFIP

Project 2025 has no use for NFIP.

In its chapter on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it deals with FEMA and dismisses NFIP in a single paragraph on page 153:

“FEMA is also responsible for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), nearly all of which is issued by the federal government. Washington provides insurance at prices lower than the actuarially fair rate, thereby subsidizing flood insurance. Then, when flood costs exceed NFIP’s revenue, FEMA seeks taxpayer-funded bailouts. Current NFIP debt is $20.5 billion, and in 2017, Congress canceled $16 billion in debt when FEMA reached its borrowing authority limit. These subsidies and bailouts only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer. The NFIP should be wound down and replaced with private insurance starting with the least risky areas currently identified by the program.”

Project 2025 has numerous authors and, as Edwin Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation, is proud to point out in an afterword, it draws on the expertise of 360 experts and 50 organizations. The recommendation to terminate NFIP is under the byline of Ken Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli has long been known as an ideological extremist. He ran for governor of Virginia in 2013, losing to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. He had a tempestuous tenure as Virginia’s attorney general from 2010 to 2014 where he denied climate change and fought research into it, even launching an investigation of a climate scientist whom he accused of fraud for his scientific conclusions. In this case, Cuccinelli was rebuffed by the Virginia Supreme Court.

He’s an anti-immigration hardliner who has advocated repeal of birthright citizenship. Under Trump he was appointed acting director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services directorate of DHS. However, his appointment was disputed and resulted in suspension of all his directives. At the same time he was appointed acting deputy secretary of DHS but this too was determined to be improper by the Government Accountability Office. He was the subject of whistleblower complaints for his decisions regarding handling DHS intelligence.

After Trump’s departure from office, Cuccinelli joined the Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow and last year in Florida he launched the Never Back Down Political Action Committee on behalf of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid.

Analysis: A fiscal fiasco

Termination of NFIP would be as fiscally catastrophic for Southwest Florida as the worst, most destructive hurricane—in fact, much worse. It’s not enough that Florida is facing an insurance crisis anyway—this would dump yet another cascade of woe and expense on homeowners.

It would immediately impoverish existing homeowners who wouldn’t be able to afford commercial flood insurance—if companies even offered it. More than likely, most would have to leave the state for less expensive areas.

It would create two classes of Floridians: the uninsured and the ultra-rich. The uninsured would be wiped out every time there was a storm or flooding event because they would have no backstop or support. The ultra-rich, already paying high premiums for property insurance, would be the only ones able to afford what would be staggering flood premiums at commercial rates. Not even the merely wealthy would be able to keep up.

Flood insurance for Southwest Florida’s most flood-prone areas, its barrier islands like Gasparilla, Pine, Captiva and Sanibel, would be astronomical. Rates for property on larger islands like Estero and Marco would hardly be better.

This would come amidst the ravages of climate change, which is incontrovertibly causing more frequent and intense storms, greater storm surge, sea level rise, tidal inundation and more frequent flooding—and nowhere is this truer than in Florida, which is perhaps the most climatically vulnerable state in the union.

Lee County is already in a crisis because it failed to meet FEMA requirements for permitted rebuilding after Hurricane Ian and faced the loss of its discount under the Community Rating System. That’s a FEMA program providing discounts on flood insurance premiums to communities that exceed NFIP minimum requirements.

Without the discount, affected homeowners are looking at hikes of $300 to $500 in their insurance bills. Potential loss of the discount has caused distress, fear and anger among Lee County property owners and officials.

NOW IMAGINE THE COST IF THERE IS NO FEDERAL FLOOD INSURANCE AT ALL! THAT’S WHAT PROJECT 2025 IS PROPOSING.

This disaster wouldn’t just affect Southwest Florida: the end of NFIP would hit every community on every body of water that could flood: oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, even canals. Even places inland and as landlocked as South Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona and New Mexico would be affected.

In 2018 FEMA estimated that 13 million Americans lived in flood zones. However, that same year a study, “Estimates of present and future flood risk in the conterminous United States,” by seven scientists called the FEMA estimates too low. They put the number at 41 million. That has probably risen in the years since and is expected to rise even further in the years ahead.

The scientists also noted that “…It is evident that the absolute value of assets on the Floridian floodplain is also particularly high at $714 billion: Florida is thus a hotspot of flood exposure.”

Imagine over 40 million Americans stripped of access to affordable, government-backed flood insurance as Project 2025 envisions.

Project 2025 is scornful of NFIP’s “subsidies and bailouts” that “only encourage more development in flood zones, increasing the potential losses to both NFIP and the taxpayer.”

However, there’s another way of looking at this: NFIP policyholders are getting the benefit of the tax dollars that they paid to the US Treasury.

It always needs to be remembered that taxes aren’t a one-way street. The taxpayer puts money into the national treasury—but the taxpayer also gets benefits from the taxes he or she paid and those benefits take many different forms.

In this case, taxpayers living in flood zones get the benefit of their tax dollars in the form of subsidized federal flood insurance at lower than commercial rates. It isn’t a handout or a bailout; it’s a purchase made through taxes.

As for encouraging building in flood zones, as Lee County residents have discovered, FEMA is very strict and alert to building and construction in flood plains and communities participating in NFIP have to rigorously adhere to FEMA standards.

Rather than encouraging unregulated building, NFIP provides an incentive for communities and individuals to prepare for climate change, build resilience, strengthen homes and adhere to firm standards.

Commentary: The consequences of Project 2025

In the past, presidents and political parties didn’t rely out outside entities like Project 2025 for these kinds of sweeping proposals. Instead, they laid out their ideas for the entire electorate to see in the party platforms that they adopted through consensus and party input at their national political conventions.

In 2020 the Republican Party surrendered its political platform to Donald Trump, not bothering to adopt a set of proposals from Party members as it had in the past. Instead it stated that “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” It adjourned without adopting a new platform “until the 2024 Republican National Convention.”

In the absence of a Party platform, there is Project 2025 to provide the world with a roadmap of Republican intentions.

As alarm has spread over the Project’s recommendations, Trump has disavowed any knowledge or awareness of it.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” he posted on his Truth Social platform on July 5. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

However, as Edwin Feulner noted in his afterword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation Mandates have had Trump’s attention since 2016. That one “earned significant attention from the Trump Administration, as Heritage had accumulated a backlog of conservative ideas that had been blocked by President Barack Obama and his team.”

Feulner continued: “Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Administration began to implement major parts of the 2016 Mandate. After his first year in office, the Administration had implemented 64 percent of its policy recommendations.”

Since it’s safe to say that Trump lies with every breath he takes, his protestations of ignorance of Project 2025 and its origins ring hollow. Furthermore, since his word is worthless, so is any pledge he makes not to implement Project 2025.

Even if Trump has not or will not read all 887 pages (hard to imagine him reading anything longer than an X posting!), his cultists will be looking to Project 2025 for guidance if he’s elected. In keeping with the Heritage plan, they’ll seek to implement its proposals in the first 180 days of his administration, many through executive action.

This article looks at just one small slice of Project 2025 that directly affects Southwest Florida. But if implemented as a whole, Project 2025 will be a disaster for all of America. Coupled with the total presidential immunity just granted by the Supreme Court, it will result in a radical reordering of the United States and American society. It’s a roadmap aimed at enabling a total dictatorship of unchecked power enforced by advanced technologies. Or as Winston Churchill put it when speaking of the Nazis, “all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

The world knows America is at an inflection point. The battle is on between democracy and dictatorship. Project 2025 makes clear what’s at stake—for every Southwest Floridian and every American citizen.

This is the first in an occasional series of articles examining the implications of Project 2025 for Southwest Florida and the nation.

Liberty lives in light

Make sure you’re ready to vote—despite the hurricanes

*A lone American flag flies over a devastated Fort Myers Beach in the days after Hurricane Ian. (Photo: U.S. Air National Guard /Jesse Hanson)*

May 29, 2024 by David Silverberg

As has been well publicized by now, this year’s hurricane season, which officially begins Saturday, June 1, is predicted to be an especially active one.

There are already reminders in various media for storm preparation: buy batteries, flashlights and water, make a plan and know your evacuation zone, among other measures.

But it also makes sense to plan to vote despite any hurricanes that hit—because this year there’s so much at stake and every vote counts, whether in primary or general elections.

What’s more, in Florida there’s an extremely important primary election on Aug. 20—the date when the hurricane season traditionally kicks into high gear.

“Now, storms can get going before Aug. 20, but this is typically about when they start,” Philip Klotzbach, a famous hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University told the Christian Science Monitor in 2011.

This primary will be a “closed” primary, meaning that only registered members of a particular political party can vote for the party’s candidates. But there will also be important “universal” races at stake, where all voters can make a choice and some of the races may be decided at that point. All voters, regardless of party, should be registered and eligible to vote on these universal ballot measures. (The universal measures will be covered in a later posting.)

This article will provide links and information to check your registration and apply to vote by mail in Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties. It will then provide some historical background regarding elections and hurricanes in Florida.

Bottom line on top: Voting by mail is your best option. Make sure you do what’s necessary. Now.

Registration and vote-by-mail applications

To vote in the Aug. 20 primary, you must be registered to vote by July 22.

Check to make sure you’re properly registered. This is worth doing because there have been allegations in the past of misregistrations. To check, click on the links below and fill out the forms:

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot for the Aug. 20 primary election is Aug. 8 at 5 pm (and that hourly deadline is very important! Nothing after that will be accepted.)

The form for mail-in voting applies statewide. An English-language PDF from the Collier County Supervisor of Elections can be accessed and downloaded here. A Spanish-language version can be accessed here.

You can apply to vote by mail:

In Collier County:

By phone: (239) 252-VOTE (8683)
By email: MailBallot@CollierVotes.gov
By fax: (239) 252-2630
By mail/In person: 3750 Enterprise Ave, Naples FL 34104

(Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier provides a 3-minute, 40-second video on the vote-by-mail process and ballot tabulation here.)

In Lee County:

This webpage starts the process.

In Charlotte County:

This webpage starts the process.

Why vote by mail?

There are several advantages to voting by mail, especially in hurricane-prone Florida.

One is that you don’t have to vote by mail once you have the ballot. You can mail it back, put it in a drop box or take it to a polling station and hand it in there.

This is especially useful if voting is disrupted by weather. It gives you the flexibility to return your ballot several different ways and over a longer period of time.

Another advantage is that once you receive the ballot in the mail, you have the time and leisure to research and ponder items that you may not have previously considered, like judicial elections, amendments or more obscure, down-ballot races.

Also, by and large, voting by mail is reliable. You usually receive your ballot in the mail in a timely fashion and you can reliably return it and be confident that it will be received and properly counted—and you can check online that it has been received.

Even if storms strike, even if mail delivery is disrupted by a storm, voters can get their ballots into the system. The US Postal Service (USPS) makes strenuous efforts to deliver mail even in the wake of severe disasters.

Indeed, there have been times after disasters when the arrival of a USPS delivery truck or mail carrier on foot was the first indication of recovery and a return to normal. This dedication is a much-underappreciated aspect of USPS operations.

The Lee County Supervisor of Elections makes the point on his website that under a new Florida statute that went into effect in April, mail-in ballots will not be forwarded to an address other than the one on the voter’s registration.

(So, in other words, if you’ve requested a mail-in ballot and you’re away from your Florida address when the mail-in ballots go out, you will not receive it at any other address.)

This applies statewide.

Voting by mail only became controversial in 2020. That year it provided a safe way for people to vote despite the COVID pandemic. Then-President Donald Trump went to great lengths to disparage it as “rigged” despite no evidence that it encouraged fraud or tampering. Ironically, in prior elections, voting by mail had actually favored Republicans in Florida since so many were seasonal residents and voted from second homes in northern states. While the Republican Party tried to conceal or contradict Trump’s discouragement of mail-in voting, he created a deep suspicion of the practice that lingers to this day. So far this year he is encouraging voting by mail.

The storms of August

There are plenty of historical examples of hurricanes striking on or around Aug. 20.

In 1969, it was from Aug. 17 to 22 that Hurricane Camille, one of the most destructive storms in history, rampaged through the western Gulf coast. (For more details on this and other disasters, see the author’s book Masters of Disaster: The Political and Leadership Lessons of America’s Greatest Disasters.)

As bad as August can be, even the general election on Nov. 5 is not immune from the influence of hurricanes. For example, in 2018 Hurricane Michael struck the Florida panhandle on Oct. 10, just before that year’s midterm elections and disrupted voting. Then, just two years ago in 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida on Sept. 28, a day short of a month before early voting began in the general election.

In both cases, voting was disrupted as people tried to dig out and recover. No doubt voting was far from their minds in the immediate aftermath of the storm. A study of Hurricane Michael found that after the storm voting rates dropped the further voters had to travel to reach operable polling places.

In the event of disasters the governor can authorize special voting arrangements like mobile polling places and emergency election stations. Following Hurricane Ian, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) issued an executive order to officials in Sarasota, Charlotte and Lee counties giving them authority to open polling places wherever feasible.

Given the threat being predicted for the 2024 hurricane season, it’s time for everyone to start preparing. We’re not just protecting our homes and communities; this year like no other, we also need to protect our democracy from all threats foreign, domestic— and climatic.

Liberty lives in light