I am running for public office, seeking the Florida Senate seat for District 28, covering Collier, Hendry and Lee counties. This encompasses the towns of Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, Ave Maria, Gateway, LaBelle, and Clewiston—and the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp.
You should now consider this a partisan website and blog, committed to advocacy rather than non-partisan coverage and analysis.
This is nothing I ever anticipated doing. Indeed, if I were pursuing a political career, I would have started this effort last year.
But, as the Declaration of Independence put it, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them”—the American people— “under absolute Despotism,” it is time to take action, even if that action takes one outside a previous sphere of activity.
Donald Trump and, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, have invariably been pursuing the object of reducing the American people and the residents of Florida to a state of absolute despotism.
Our political system still affords us the means of resistance. One of those means is the pursuit of elected public office. For the past eight years in The Paradise Progressive blog I have used logic and language to cover and expose their “abuses and usurpations,” particularly relating to the region of Southwest Florida. The moment has come for me to pursue the power of public office to take that resistance to new levels and battlefronts.
These “abuses and usurpations” are reaching a critical point, indeed one where the very existence of the United States and the future of Americans as a free people is at stake.
Nationally, Donald Trump, reigning as though he were a monarch and ignoring the laws, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, has committed the nation to war without any consultation or consent. Every time Americans have to fill their gas tanks they’re being robbed by a war they had no say in starting. When you watch your wallet drain as your tank fills, that’s Trump at the pump.
He has so mismanaged the economy that everyday Americans are being reduced to poverty despite their most strenuous efforts and hard work.
His actions have robbed Americans of their freedom from fear by sending a masked, murderous, motley mob of mercenaries into towns and cities to terrorize and abuse them.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis, reigning in the style of Donald Trump, has waged war on learning and thought, on science and public health, on public education and teachers at all levels. He and his enablers are waging war on the very water, air and soil that makes life in Florida possible for everyone regardless of their political affiliation, beliefs, or national origins. He has attacked institutions and industries that previously welcomed and depended upon visitors from all over the world and disparaged and insulted innocent people of foreign origin.
In a state that is one of the most environmentally vulnerable in the world, he and his extremist legislature have deliberately and purposefully denied and dismissed the clear and present challenges of climate change, to the detriment and danger of all Floridians.
He and his political followers have also sought to eliminate the autonomy and authority of the state’s local governments, especially when it comes to land use and management, in an effort to override responsible planning and governance.
The ultimate end of these actions will be an oppressed nation and a Florida that is poor, paved and polluted.
For all these reasons and many more, I will try to change the current course of events through the system in place.
That’s why I’m running for state senator in District 28. My campaign website is Silverberg4Florida.com. And yes, I’m taking donations (a link is on the site).
My heartfelt thanks to the people who have already made this possible.
In the days ahead I will be elaborating in this space on my reasons for running, the solutions and actions I intend to pursue, and the end state I hope to achieve for Florida and the nation.
This campaign is a race to restore decency, dignity and democracy to Florida and the life we all lead. It’s a race to conserve our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our freedom from fear, and our pursuit of happiness. It is a campaign to make Florida affordable again. And it is a campaign to end Alligator Alcatraz.
The path to victory is steep. The odds are long. But I believe the journey is worth making.
On Thursday, Aug. 21, Judge Kathleen Williams of the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled that the state of Florida’s concentration, detention and deportation camp, Alligator Alcatraz, had to cease operations and be dismantled within 60 days, which falls on Oct. 21.
The State of Florida appealed the ruling within an hour of the decision’s announcement. That appeal is now pending and could go up to the Supreme Court.
However that appeal plays out, it is not too soon to begin thinking about what should happen to the site of what had previously been the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
This essay recommends that the site be converted into the “William J. Mitsch Memorial Wetlaculture Experiment and Everglades Restoration Project.”
The article will review the court ruling and explain the proposal.
The ruling and reaction
In her ruling, Williams found that the State of Florida, in its haste to set up Alligator Alcatraz, had violated federal laws requiring an assessment of the camp’s environmental impact.
The most relevant law was the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), “which requires that major federal actions significantly affecting the human environment undergo environmental review processes.”
While state and federal officials (Defendants) acknowledged possible “deficiencies” in their haste to establish the camp, they argued that any injunction should be vacated while the case made its way through the judicial process (i.e., the camp should be allowed to continue functioning throughout legal deliberations).
Williams was having none of it. Indeed, so blatant was the state’s indifference to due process and the rule of law that Williams’ scorn comes through even in the dry language of a court ruling.
“Here, there weren’t ‘deficiencies’ in the agency’s process,” she wrote. “There was no process.” [Emphasis ours.]
She continued: “The Defendants consulted with no stakeholders or experts and did no evaluation of the environmental risks and alternatives from which the Court may glean the likelihood that the agency would choose the same course if it had done a NEPA-compliant evaluation.”
(The full, 82-page text of William’s ruling can be read here and is also available for viewing and download at the end of this article.)
The ruling also dealt with issues of venue, finding that the Southern District of Florida was the proper court to consider the case; the degree of permanent environmental harm the camp was causing; and responsibility for the camp’s establishment and operations (the State of Florida rather than the federal government).
Because of its violations of law and environmental impact, Williams issued an injunction that prohibited the defendants from installing any new lighting “or doing any paving, filling, excavating, or fencing; or doing any other site expansion, including placing or erecting any additional buildings, tents, dormitories, or other residential or administrative facilities,” although modification of existing buildings is permitted for the sake of safety or environmental mitigation.
New detainees cannot be brought to the camp.
The order applies to everyone involved in camp operations, whether state or federal.
According to the order, “No later than sixty (60) days,” which falls on October 21, state and federal officials have to remove the fencing, lighting and “all generators, gas, sewage, and other waste and waste receptacles that were installed to support this project”—essentially, returning the site to its prior state and giving Miccosukee Tribe members complete access to the area.
Lastly, the plaintiffs were required to post a token, $100 bond.
Not only was an appeal of the order immediately filed in the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Ga., but it was predictably denounced by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
“This is a judge that was not going to give us a fair shake,” DeSantis said the day after the ruling during remarks in Panama City. “This was preordained, very much an activist judge that is trying to do policy from the bench.”
He continued: “This is not going to deter us. We’re going to continue working on the deportations, advancing that mission,” referring to President Donald Trump’s roundups and deportations.
The state is proceeding with plans for a “Deportation Depot” camp west of Jacksonville, Fla.
“We’re not going to be deterred; we’re totally in the right on this,” DeSantis said. “But I would also note, because of the success of Alligator Alcatraz, there’s demand for more.”
While appealing the ruling, Florida officials may simply ignore the judge’s order. There is precedent for this.
In that case, Williams was the judge whose order was defied by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. In April she issued an injunction against enforcing a Florida law making it a misdemeanor for undocumented migrants to enter the state. Uthmeier sent a letter to police chiefs and sheriffs saying that the injunction was legally wrong and he could not force them to obey it. In June, Williams found Uthmeier in contempt but his only punishment was to produce biweekly reports on enforcement actions.
“Litigants cannot change the plain meaning of words as it suits them, especially when conveying a court’s clear and unambiguous order,” Williams wrote at the time. “Fidelity to the rule of law can have no other meaning.”
It remains to be seen if those words will have any impact on the dismantlement of Alligator Alcatraz.
A modest proposal: Restoration and renewal
Bill Mitsch in his natural habitat, 2021. (Photo: Bill Mitsch)
William Jerome Mitsch was one of the world’s foremost scientific experts on wetlands like the Everglades and did much of his work at Florida Gulf Coast University. In 2022 he retired after a 47-year career and passed away in February of this year at the age of 77.
In 2018, Mitsch proposed a solution to the problem of pollution affecting the Everglades.
He called it “wetlaculture.”
The concept was that pollution could be defeated by creating new wetlands and this could be done by planting sawgrass, which is native and thrives in this area. The sawgrass would filter out contaminants while letting water flow. These new wetlands could be created on previously cultivated land. He believed that the grass would create soil so fertile that nitrate fertilizers would be unnecessary.
He calculated that new wetlands could be created over a 10-year time period. At the end of that time, the soil would be flipped and used for farming for 10 years. Then, it could be flipped again to lie fallow for another 10 years and so on, indefinitely.
A small-scale Wetlaculture experiment is already under way in Freedom Park in Naples, Fla. There, 28 bins hold sawgrass and researchers experiment with different levels of water and nutrients in the different bins as the sawgrass grows. Scientists measure nutrients in the soil and see if nitrates and phosphorous are being removed. When the soil is deemed to be clean and fertile enough they’ll plant crops and see how well they grow.
A sign marks the spot of the current Wetlaculture experiment in Freedom Park in Naples, Fla. (Photo: Author)
Now the time has come to attempt a Wetlaculture experiment on a grander scale—perhaps the scale of the 39-acre site of Alligator Alcatraz.
Commentary: A better future
If Alligator Alcatraz is in fact closed and dismantled the “William J. Mitsch Memorial Wetlaculture Experiment and Everglades Restoration Project,” would be a most fitting replacement.
The concrete, asphalt and especially the runway could be scraped and removed and in its place be planted with sawgrass with an eye to flipping it after 10 years, or whenever scientists deem it appropriate. The plantings would likely restore water flow, cleanse pollution and prepare the soil for crops in their turn.
Instead of destroying the natural environment, the “William J. Mitsch Memorial Wetlaculture Experiment and Everglades Restoration Project” would restore it. Instead of the constant floodlights, the area would be restored to the darkness that made it part of Big Cypress’ International Dark Sky Park. Instead of noise and traffic, there would be quiet and calm. Instead of harming wildlife, animals could thrive. Instead of fencing out the public and the Miccosukee Indian Tribe, all would have access.
As for the expense, it would be far less than the $450 million expected to cost Florida taxpayers to run Alligator Alcatraz this year alone. It would also cost Florida and the nation far, far less to maintain in every subsequent year. Moreover, because it would be a scientific experiment, it would be eligible for academic and research funding.
Most of all, it would replace a concentration camp that is likely to be a blot and a stain on Florida’s history and on the history of the United States. Rather than a disgrace, Florida and the Everglades would have a site that improves the future, addresses environmental challenges and would be in harmony with the land, water, plants, animals, people and climate. Instead of punishment, the Mitsch Memorial Experiment would be a place of possibilities.
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” Yogi Berra, the Yankee baseball catcher famous for his malapropisms, supposedly said. Along the old Tamiami Trail, right on the Collier County-Dade County line, Florida and the American people have come to a fork in the road. One path leads to a concentration camp of deliberate human suffering, oppression and brutality. The other path leads to a restoration of nature’s balance, a hopeful future and great potential benefits.
The time has come to take the fork in the road. A “William J. Mitsch Memorial Wetlaculture Experiment and Everglades Restoration Project” is clearly the better path to follow.
The Everglades. (Photo: National Park Service/Robert Krayer)
The ordinance establishing Collier County as a Sanctuary County.
Aug. 21, 2025 by David Silverberg
State and federal actions at the Alligator Alcatraz detention and deportation camp that violate the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights could be nullified under Collier County’s “Bill of Rights Sanctuary County” ordinance, since the camp is in Collier County, Florida.
Violators of these rights can be personally held liable in civil litigation under the ordinance.
This may present a lifeline to detainees and a possible avenue of release for their attorneys to pursue.
The camp is intended as a holding facility for undocumented migrants seized in roundups prior to their deportation. It faces growing opposition from local residents, religious leaders, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and environmentalists. (For more on the camp see: “Straight outta Dachau: Past lessons and potential futures for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.”)
The venue argument
On Monday, Aug. 18, Judge Rodolfo Ruiz of the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida ruled that the proper venue for resolution of a lawsuit regarding Alligator Alcatraz was in the Middle District of Florida.
Prior to that, lawyers for detainees being held in the camp had filed their lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, which covers Miami-Dade County since the site sits on the boundaries of Collier and Miami-Dade counties and the facility was previously run by Miami-Dade County.
(The lawsuit brought by the detainees’ lawyer named Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as defendant and charged that authorities at Alligator Alcatraz had denied detainees their First and Fifth amendment rights by blocking and impeding access to counsel.)
The Southern District of Florida, comprised of Broward, Dade, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Monroe, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, and St. Lucie counties. (Map: US District Court)
However, the state, which established the camp and opened it on July 1, argued that the camp’s proper address was Ochopee, Florida, which is in Collier County.
(The camp sits on the 39-acre site of what was the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. Two thirds of it is in Collier County, although the training facility was run by Miami-Dade County. Its precise coordinates are: 25°51′42″N 080°53′49″W.)
State lawyers argued that because it was in Collier County, the proper venue for any litigation was in the Middle District of Florida, which includes that county.
The Middle District of Florida, comprised ofBaker, Bradford, Brevard, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, De Soto, Duval, Flagler, Glades, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Hernando, Hillsborough, Lake, Lee, Manatee, Marion, Nassau, Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, St. Johns, Sarasota, Seminole, Sumter, Suwannee, Union, and Volusia counties. (Map: US District Court)
In his ruling, Ruiz agreed, officially establishing Collier County as the location of the camp. (The full text of the 47-page ruling is available for reading and download below.)
Collier County is a ‘Bill of Rights Sanctuary county’
On Aug. 22, 2023, by a vote of 4 to 1, the Collier County Board of Commissioners passed an ordinance declaring the county to be “a Bill of Rights Sanctuary County.”
(The full text of the ordinance is available for viewing and download at the end of this article.)
“Collier County has the right to be free from the commanding hand of the federal government and has the right to refuse to cooperate with federal government officials in response to unconstitutional federal government measures, and to proclaim a Bill of Rights Sanctuary for law-abiding citizens in its County,” states the ordinance.
It defines an “unlawful act” as “Any federal act, law, order, rule, or regulation, which violates or unreasonably restricts, impedes, or impinges upon an individual’s Constitutional rights including, but not limited to, those enumerated in Amendments 1 through 10 to the United States Constitution.”
Further, it states: “Any such ‘Unlawful Act’ is invalid in Collier County and shall not be recognized by Collier County, and shall be considered null, void and of no effect in Collier County, Florida.”
The ordinance defines penalties for violations in Section Five: “Anyone within the jurisdiction of Collier County, Florida, accused of being in violation of this ordinance may be sued in Circuit Court for declaratory and injunctive relief, damages and attorneys’ fees.”
Of note: The ordinance specifically states that “anyone” in the county may be sued if they violate a person’s constitutional rights.
Analysis: Possible implications
Because Collier County is a “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” county, Alligator Alcatraz detainees may have standing to sue the US government for violation of their constitutional rights.
What is more, their guards and the operators of the camp may be personally liable for any constitutional violations under the same ordinance.
Further, county employees, officials and law enforcement officers are prohibited from aiding, assisting or abetting federal Alligator Alcatraz activities if those activities are determined to violate constitutional rights.
Detainee lawsuits under the county ordinance—and the ordinance itself—could pause or halt transfers into the camp and force due process adherence and proper treatment. It could also be the basis for an injunction stopping the camp’s operations. (The camp is already under an injunction prohibiting construction and infrastructure expansion. This injunction is set to expire today, Aug. 21.)
The county ordinance has never been applied or tested in court. During the debate preceding its passage, opponents argued that it was unconstitutional on its face. Nonetheless, the Collier County Board of Commissioners passed it.
Environmental lawsuit
A different lawsuit filed by Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida is currently ongoing and has venue issues similar to the one ruled on by Judge Ruiz.
That lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Miami on June 27. It named the heads of the US Department of Homeland Security, its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Miami-Dade County as defendants.
A hurricane hits Alligator Alcatraz. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Aug. 4, 2025 by David Silverberg
A draft hurricane evacuation plan for the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in the Everglades released by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is so heavily redacted that the public and relevant officials cannot determine its effectiveness or use it for planning purposes.
(The full document is available for viewing and download at the end of this posting.)
“We can’t go by just blacked-out information in a 30-page document and just trust the DeSantis administration,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-25-Fla.) told CBS News Miami in an interview. “This is what is unacceptable. We absolutely need to have a clear, written, confirmed plan in hand from the Division of Emergency Management and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], who are responsible for these detainees at the end of the day.”
“The 33-page draft plan appears to detail alternate facilities that could be used in an evacuation, procedures for detainee transportation and other measures that would be enacted in the event of a powerful storm or other emergency,” stated state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42-Orlando) in a Facebook posting. “But specific details are a secret. Officials blacked out almost all of the pages, citing exemptions in the state’s public records law that allow information about ‘tactical operations’ during emergencies to be shielded from disclosure.”
DeSantis released the draft “South Florida Detention Facility Continuity of Operations Plan” on Wednesday, July 30 in response to a report in The Miami Herald newspaper the same day that Alligator Alcatraz lacked an evacuation plan in the event of a major weather event.
“Legacy media made a mistake by concocting a false narrative that can so easily be disproven…” he posted on X. “Failed drive-by attempt…”
He released the draft to Florida’s Voice Radio, a conservative media platform, which headlined its X posting, “WRONG AGAIN! The Miami Herald reports FAKE NEWS that @GovRonDeSantis, @KevinGuthrieFL and @FLSERT have no “formal hurricane plan” for Alligator Alcatraz. Here it is.”
The Voice then posted two pages of the plan, the cover and a summary sheet. The full 33-page plan was then released to media outlets with extensive redactions. (The plan refers to Alligator Alcatraz as the South Florida Detention Facility (SFDF), its bureaucratic designation.)
The evacuation plan was not posted to any official state website that this author could determine. Since it is still a draft—essentially, the concept of plan—The Miami Herald was technically correct that Alligator Alcatraz does not have an evacuation plan.
Commentary: The hidden dangers of hiding
Because details of the plan remain secret, emergency managers, law enforcement, medical personnel and local officials cannot take it into account when they make their own hurricane plans should an evacuation be necessary, nor can they coordinate their efforts with those of authorities, either state or federal, at Alligator Alcatraz.
This is particularly acute for officials and law enforcement officers in Collier and Miami-Dade counties, where Alligator Alcatraz sits astride their mutual borders.
There is a historic precedent for a plan’s secrecy causing extreme harm during an emergency.
In 1906 the emergency plans for the city of San Francisco resided in the mind of one man: Fire Chief Dennis Sullivan, who never shared them with anyone. Sullivan was incapacitated in the first shock of the earthquake that occurred in the early hours of April 18. Living on the top story of one of the city’s firehouses, he fell through the floor into the basement when the building broke apart, getting severely scalded by a broken radiator when he hit the bottom.
Sullivan never recovered from his injuries, dying three days later. As a result, first responders and officials had no guidance or direction in their response, which contributed to the city’s extensive damage when it was ravaged by fire.
As the 2012 book Masters of Disaster: The Political and Leadership Lessons of America’s Greatest Disasters by this author states: “…A critical lesson from the San Francisco earthquake and fire is that a plan is only as good as the people who know it. Disaster plans have to be known in advance by key decisionmakers and shared among those people who will implement them. They cannot rely entirely on a single individual and ultimately, they cannot be kept secret.”
Alligator Alcatraz has been so hastily thrown together and poorly conceived that nothing about it—not its detention, inmate processing, housing, food, shelter, or evacuation plan—can be judged at face value as acceptable.
Further, its secrecy in all aspects, whether the refusal to allow unannounced inspections, the difficulties of attorneys to meet their clients (currently the subject of a lawsuit), the blindsiding of local officials, and now the covertness of its evacuation plan make everything about it suspect. As an unfinalized draft, there is no telling which officials have input into the final product. Even then, if this is the final plan, its secrecy to all but a few officials renders it ineffective.
If Alligator Alcatraz is in all respects legal and proper, as DeSantis contends, it should be open to inspection, visits, detainee access, due process, public scrutiny, press examination and all the other legal standards of incarceration that govern correctional facilities in the United States.
And an evacuation plan that’s secret to all but a few is no plan at all.
Click on the button below to read and download the full “South Florida Detention Facility Continuity of Operations Plan” with redactions.
The first detainees arrive by van at Alligator Alcatraz, July 2025. (Image: WINK News)
The first detainees arrive by bus at Dachau Concentration Camp, March 1933. (Photo: Bavarian State Archives)
July 21, 2025 by David Silverberg
“Alligator Alcatraz” is now an established fact in Southwest Florida.
The detention and deportation camp was hastily thrown up in eight days before any opposition could effectively coalesce and blessed by a visit from President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on its opening day, July 1st.
Detainees are being held. Opposition is building.
(Alligator Alcatraz has also attracted other names: Alligator Auschwitz, Gator Gulag, and Gator GITMO, for example. It could also be called the Collier County Concentration Camp. However, this article will use its official designation.)
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking at the camp’s opening, the idea for the facility came from her general counsel, James Percival, a Floridian, who called DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier.
As she recounted it, Percival said: “Hey, what do you think about partnering with us on a detention facility that we could put in place that would allow us to bring individuals there?”
James Percival. (Photo: DHS)
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier at the site. (Image: AG Office)
DeSantis and Uthmeier agreed and Alligator Alcatraz was immediately launched.
In its establishment and operations, Alligator Alcatraz bears eerie similarities to the first Nazi concentration camp established in Bavaria, Germany near the town of Dachau (pronounced daa-kau, or ˈdɑːxaʊ/, /-kaʊ/ with a guttural chau in the middle).
The history of Dachau Concentration Camp (its official name) also provides a look into the course of events that Alligator Alcatraz could take.
But Alligator Alcatraz is only 20 days old as of this writing. It may still be stopped or closed.
This essay will look at the lessons of the past, the present dynamics surrounding it and possible futures.
Echoes of the past
Make no mistake: Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp. It concentrates people into a single location for detention and processing.
The term “concentration camp” came to be synonymous with murder and extermination after the German camps were liberated by allied forces during World War II. But it didn’t originate with the Nazis and it didn’t initially mean automatic death for those held.
In fact, the term “concentration camp” is British. In 1900, when British forces were locked in a guerrilla war with South African Boers, the British commander, Gen. Herbert Kitchener, conceived of “camps of concentration” for the Boer population. Mostly women and children were herded into these camps to keep them separate and unable to support the guerrillas in the field.
A British concentration camp during the Boer War. (Photo: UK National Archives)
While not intended as death camps per se, death was nonetheless the result, with detainees being subject to starvation, disease and abuse. A series of reports and agitation by British activists brought the abuses to light over time. Despite much opposition from politicians who dismissed the reports as what would be called “fake news” today, the population and government in Britain turned against the camps and their abuses and they were ultimately disestablished.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 they decided to follow the British model and sought new places to hold opponents, dissidents and dissenters. They settled on the town of Dachau in Bavaria for the first of their camps of concentration.
There are striking similarities between the founding, development and expansion of Alligator Alcatraz and Dachau.
Abandoned facilities:
In the words of Uthmeier, Alligator Alcatraz is on the “virtually abandoned” site of a proposed Jetport whose sole runway was designated the Dade County Training and Transition Airport (even though two-thirds of it is in Collier County).
Dachau Concentration Camp was established on the site of an abandoned munitions factory.
Intended for undesirables:
Uthmeier, when announcing the idea of Alligator Alcatraz in a June 19 X posting stated that the camp was intended for “criminal aliens.” On June 30 Noem stated: “Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration.” In his remarks after touring the facility on July 1, President Donald Trump said it would hold “some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
On March 21, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Voelkischer Beobachterannounced the opening of the Dachau Concentration Camp, stating: “All Communists and – as far as it is necessary – functionaries of the Reichsbanner [a pro-democracy paramilitary group] and the Social Democrats who endanger the security of the state will be incarcerated here. This is being done because it is impossible in the long run to accommodate these functionaries in the prisons and it constitutes a heavy burden on the state apparatus. It has been proven impossible to leave these people in liberty as they continue to incite and to cause disorder. These measures have to be used in the interest of the state security and without regard for petty considerations.” This later expanded to include Jews, Romany and prisoners, both civilian and military, from every country conquered by the Nazis.
Increasing the initial estimated number of internees:
In his initial X posting, Uthmeier estimated that Alligator Alcatraz “could house as many as a thousand criminal aliens.” That estimate was rapidly increased to 3,000 and then 5,000.
In 1933 the Voelkischer Beobachter announced that the Dachau Concentration Camp would have “a capacity of 5,000 people.” Over time, however, the numbers increased as the Nazis shipped in more people and the camp expanded. Ultimately, one estimate is that 200,000 people were sent to Dachau during its 12 years of operation.
Inspections and subject to law:
On Thursday, July 3, after the first group of detainees arrived at Alligator Alcatraz, five state Democratic lawmakers tried to visit the facility but were turned away, ostensibly on safety grounds. They filed a lawsuit to force entry, arguing that the denial violated state law.
Two days after its opening, state Sens. Shevrin Jones (D-35-Miami Gardens), Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-17-Orlando), Reps. Anna Eskamani (D-42-Orlando), Michele Rayner (D-62-St. Petersburg), and Angie Nixon (D-13-Jacksonville), attempt to gain access to Alligator Alcatraz but are turned away by state authorities. (Photo: Office of Rep. Anna Eskamani)
On Saturday, July 13, state officials allowed a carefully controlled visit by federal and state lawmakers of both parties. Press was excluded, visitors were not allowed to talk to prisoners and phones and cameras were prohibited. As might be expected, reactions were widely at variance, with Democrats like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-25-Fla.) calling it “really disturbing, vile conditions” and state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-11-Spring Hill) saying that Democratic rhetoric “did not match the reality.” (Ingoglia was subsequently named state Chief Financial Officer by DeSantis.)
At the start of its operations, Dachau Concentration Camp too was subject to Bavarian law and outside inspection.
Initially, Dachau was not advertised as a murder camp and when reports of prisoner deaths began emerging a month after its opening, Bavarian officials investigated.
Josef Hartinger, an investigator from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, accompanied by medical examiner Moritz Flamm, visited the camp. Hartinger discovered that three Jewish prisoners had been shot, allegedly for attempting to escape but with wounds indicating executions.
In the following months and subsequent visits—and more deaths, including the suicide of a guard—Hartinger built a case against the camp commandant and his staff. He recommended a prosecution and the murders stopped, at least temporarily.
However, when the case was sent for prosecution and trial, higher authorities declined to pursue it. Hartinger was transferred to a provincial position and survived the war, dying in 1984. Flamm, however, was fired and after two attempts on his life, died under suspicious circumstances in a mental institution in 1934.
These were not the only outside inspections of Dachau Concentration Camp. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross were granted access in 1935 and 1938. They documented the harsh conditions but with a Nazi-sympathetic vice president, the Committee issued a statement after the second inspection that the camp “is a model of its kind in terms of the way it is built and managed.”
Analysis: Possible futures
Opponents of Alligator Alcatraz protest at the site on June 22. (Photo: Andrea Melendez/WGCU)
If Alligator Alcatraz follows the same course as Dachau Concentration Camp, in the days ahead it will expand to hold many more detainees, who will arrive in growing numbers, likely well in excess of the 5,000 projected now. Access to the facility for lawmakers, lawyers and outsiders of all sorts will be progressively limited. Conditions will steadily deteriorate for prisoners and abuses will multiply. There will certainly be deaths, whether from neglect, sickness or mistreatment, deliberate or otherwise. No doubt authorities will try to cover these up.
Further, it will serve as a model for similar concentration camps that other states are already considering establishing.
Most of all, Alligator Alcatraz will increasingly become a permanent facility, instead of the “temporary detention facility” Uthmeier initially promoted.
Opponents of Alligator Alcatraz mobilized against the camp immediately after its announcement. On June 22 they protested outside the entrance along Route 41 on environmental grounds, led in part by Betty Osceola, a longstanding environmental activist and member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose sacred lands are close to the camp.
Also lending his voice against the camp is Clyde Butcher, a renowned local photographer specializing in images of the Everglades.
On June 27 the organizations Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against a variety of federal and state individuals and agencies for violating land use and environmental laws. This has now been joined by the Miccosukee Tribe. Although the lawsuit failed to prevent the opening of the camp, it is nonetheless ongoing in US District Court.
Opposition to the camp is building. No doubt one reason state officials and contractors rushed it to completion in eight days was to outrace expected opposition.
Every day new opponents appear as the magnitude, impact and intent of the facility becomes apparent.
Faith leaders are now joining the chorus of opposition.
Op-eds and similar denunciations are mounting and the rest of the world is awakening to what Alligator Alcatraz really means.
The goal of the opposition at the moment is to either shut down and/or roll back the facility. As Wasserman Schultz put it following her visit: “There are really disturbing, vile conditions and this place needs to be shut the hell down.”
What are the prospects for closure or rollback?
The environmental lawsuit
Lawsuits take time and the DeSantis administration will no doubt follow the Trump model of delaying any proceeding on any basis for as long as possible. State Attorney General Uthmeier is in charge of the state’s defense and as the face of Alligator Alcatraz he will no doubt vigorously defend it.
Moreover, given that he has already been held in contempt for defying a judge’s order, there’s no assurance that any court ruling would be obeyed or have any effect. Also, given the backing of Trump and DeSantis, a conservative, majority DeSantis-appointed Florida Supreme Court, and a US Supreme Court majority that seems to actively favor a Trump dictatorship, the prospects for judicial relief are dim.
That said, the lawsuit has merit on the facts and law. But it will take time to adjudicate. Meanwhile, detainees will be subject to camp conditions and will be deported, no doubt with questionable due process.
Forces of nature
On the day it opened a seasonal rainstorm flooded the Alligator Alcatraz reception area, as though a precursor of things to come.
Water covers the floor of the tent where officials spoke for the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. (Photos: TikTok via AnnaforFlorida)Water on the floor of the detention area of Alligator Alcatraz.
Alligator Alcatraz opened in the midst of Southwest Florida’s wet season when daily afternoon thunderstorms drench the region. More ominously, it is hurricane season, which runs until Nov. 30.
Supposedly, Alligator Alcatraz is built to withstand a Category 2 hurricane (winds of 96 to 110 miles per hour). At the very least that seems questionable. Moreover, the area is subject to much more powerful hurricanes.
There is a precedent for a severe hurricane wreaking havoc on temporary camps in Florida. On Labor Day 1935 a powerful hurricane, later estimated to be a Category 5, struck three Works Progress Administration camps in the Florida keys housing World War I veterans. Some 259 veterans were killed, part of the 400 to 500 people who lost their lives overall. (An excellent account of this is in the book Storm of the Century by Willie Dye, available at the Collier County Public Library.)
There is the very real possibility that Mother Nature herself could wipe Alligator Alcatraz off the face of the earth. It needs to be noted, though, just how awful this possibility is: it could kill the people at the facility, whether guards or prisoners. There is the horrifying prospect of prisoners handcuffed to their beds being helplessly ripped into the air and flung against debris or into the waters surrounding the camp.
Given personnel and budget cuts to the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, there is also no guarantee that Alligator Alcatraz administrators would get accurate warnings with time to prepare—or that they would even make adequate preparations if they were warned.
Cost, crime and corruption
Alligator Alcatraz is expected to cost $450 million to run in its first year, which will be reimbursed at least in part by the federal government.
It is increasingly apparent that the initial phase of Alligator Alcatraz was built using sweetheart deals and favored contractors.
As detailed by The Florida Trident investigative news organization, a primary contractor for Alligator Alcatraz is IRG Global Emergency Management, a company only formed in February. It is an offshoot of Access Restoration Services US, Inc., which has been a major campaign donor to DeSantis and won $108 million in state contracts, mostly awarded by the governor’s office.
Could the cost of Alligator Alcatraz or potential crimes associated with its building lead to its shutdown?
This is highly unlikely in Florida where the chief law enforcement officer and prosecutor is Attorney General James Uthmeier and the Chief Financial Officer is Blaise Ingoglia.
They and DeSantis are clearly focused on implementing Trump’s anti-foreigner agenda, not enforcing state contracting laws—and especially not when it comes to their pet project. Nor can any relief or resistance be expected from the state legislature, which is out of session and when in session sought to implement Trump’s program more forcefully than the governor. Nor is there likely to be relief from the US Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Floridian who appears to see her primary role as Trump’s personal attorney.
Analysis: Politics and principle
President Donald Trump speaks at the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. (Image: YouTube)
Despite the obstacles to shutting down or curbing Alligator Alcatraz by the powers that be, one principle seems to stand out:
Alligator Alcatraz will be closed when it becomes more of a political liability than a political asset.
To appreciate this, one must weigh the facility’s role in the Trump anti-migrant agenda and its political usefulness to Trump, DeSantis, Uthmeier and the rest of the regime.
Trump’s anti-migrant crusade is based on his perception, both genuinely held and vigorously propagated, that undocumented migration constitutes an invasion by immigrants who are “poisoning the blood” of America.
As he put it in his remarks at the Alligator Alcatraz unveiling:
“In the four years before I took office, Joe Biden allowed 21 million people, that’s a minimum—I think it was much higher than that—illegal aliens to invade our country. He invaded our country just like a military would invade. It’s tougher because they don’t wear uniforms. You don’t know who they are, more than the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia combined. That’s what came into our country. From prisons, from mental institutions, from street gangs, drug dealers. It’s disgusting. This enormous country-destroying invasion has swamped communities nationwide with massive crime, crippling costs, and burdens far beyond what any nation could withstand. No nation could withstand what we did.”
(The figures cited by Trump are erroneous. Credible estimates of undocumented migrants in the United States have never exceeded 12 million. [To the degree that Trump was quoting any kind of source for his figures, he might have transposed the numbers 1 and 2.])
Trump’s rhetoric is strongly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s attitude toward outsiders and Jews, as expressed in a Jan. 30, 1939 speech:
“For hundreds of years Germany was good enough to receive these elements, although they possessed nothing except infectious political and physical diseases. What they possess today, they have by a very large extent gained at the cost of the less astute German nation by the most reprehensible manipulations.”
So Trump, DeSantis, Uthmeier and Noem see themselves as part of a great crusade against an alien invasion and Alligator Alcatraz is a key asset in combatting it, a means of instilling fear, punishing detainees—all of whom they characterize as “the worst of the worst” —and inducing self-deportation. It is similar to the Nazis’ early efforts to make Germany “Judenfrei,” Jew-free, before they decided on a “Final Solution” to kill them.
On a partisan basis, Trump appears to be seeking to re-engineer American demographics to eliminate Hispanics both as a population and as an element of Democratic Party strength—and Alligator Alcatraz serves that purpose as well.
However, Alligator Alcatraz also serves more parochial, personal political ends for the participants—and provides them the opportunity for a bit of showmanship.
From its first unveiling, Alligator Alcatraz was characterized as political theater.
“What we saw in our inspection today was a political stunt, dangerous and wasteful,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-9-Fla.) after touring the facility on July 13. “One can’t help but understand and conclude that this is a total cruel political stunt meant to have a spectacle of political theater and it’s wasting taxpayer dollars and putting our ICE agents, our troops and ICE detainees in jeopardy.”
For DeSantis, Alligator Alcatraz is an asset because it’s a way to show the depth of his commitment to Trump’s anti-foreigner agenda and bring himself back into the president’s good graces, which he lost when he ran for president himself in 2023. It is also in keeping with the anti-foreigner agenda that he has been promoting for the past two years of his governorship. As his rhetoric attests, DeSantis is determined to keep Florida in the front ranks of anti-foreigner, anti-migrant sentiment and activism.
Alligator Alcatraz certainly seemed to have played this role on July 1 when Trump visited for the opening.
“Well, I’d like to just thank everybody for the incredible job they’ve done,” Trump said in leading off his remarks. “I love the state. As you know, Ron and I have had a really great relationship for a long time. We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long. It didn’t last long and we have a lot of respect for each other.”
For at least those few minutes the Trump-DeSantis rift seemed healed. Whether the relationship remains so will be seen in the days ahead but Alligator Alcatraz played its role as a political asset for Ron DeSantis on that day.
Trump also showered praise on Uthmeier when he did his shout-outs to local politicians: “I want to thank Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. Where is James? Where is he?” Trump found Uthmeier in the crowd. “You do a very good job. I hear good things. I hear good things about you from Ron, too. No, you really do. He’s even a good-looking guy. That guy’s got a future, huh? Good job, James. I hear you did really, really fantastic. Worked hard. You’re like in the construction business for a few days, right? Huh? Congratulations, uh, for all the hard work and to make this facility possible. It’s amazing.”
So Alligator Alcatraz served as an asset for Uthmeier. It brought him to Trump’s attention and gave him a leading role in the anti-migrant movement. If the anti-migrant base remains cohesive and dominant in Florida, it will be an achievement for Uthmeier that will burnish his future prospects whether political or private. It also enhances his role in Trump’s anti-migrant movement and demonstrates his belief in it, whether his belief is genuine or is just for show.
These are powerful reasons for these people to support, sustain and expand Alligator Alcatraz. Those reasons overshadow all the citizen protests, the environmental damage, the religious condemnation, the public disapproval, the historic precedents and any ethical considerations.
Certainly these people are not moved by the suffering of those being held in the facility whom they, along with Trump, seem to regard as subhuman (or untermenschen, in German parlance). Nor do reports of detentions lacking criminal charges and inclusion of legally documented immigrants appear to make any impression on them.
As with Dachau, reports are already seeping out of abysmal conditions at Alligator Alcatraz. There are accounts of excessive heat, overcrowding, overflowing backed-up toilets, short supplies of drinking water, bug-infested inadequate or substandard food, personal uncleanliness, leaking tents, flooded floors and persistent, pervasive swarms of mosquitoes. Even guards are already quitting or being fired and speaking anonymously to the media about the conditions.
A lawsuit filed on July 16 by detainees, their lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans for Immigrant Justice charges that detainees have been denied access to their lawyers.
“The government has banned in-person legal visitation, any confidential phone or video communication, and confidential exchange of written documents,” according to an ACLU statement. “These restrictions violate the First and Fifth Amendment rights of people being detained, as well as the First Amendment rights of legal service organizations and law firms with clients held at the facility.”
While ostensibly for foreign, criminal migrants, US citizens appear to be imprisoned as well. A 15-year old without a criminal record was held there for three days before being released. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-10-Fla.) said that during his tour of the facility one detainee called out: “I’m an American citizen!”
Far from responding to the allegations and complaints, DeSantis, Uthmeier and camp supporters are boasting about the camp and publicly displaying their supposed toughness and ruthlessness, in imitation of Trump’s approach. Meanwhile, vendors are gleefully exploiting the camp, selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise.
Clearly, these people will not be moved by any appeal to humanity, principle, religion, morality or law. So it is only when they perceive that Alligator Alcatraz is harming their political ambitions more than helping them that they will take any action to either alleviate conditions or close the facility altogether.
What form political harm to them takes remains to be seen. One way might be if Alligator Alcatraz becomes a liability in the midterm elections, presuming that these are free, fair and held as scheduled. But for any kind of effective counterpressure to be applied, opponents must coalesce, unite, focus and act effectively.
Another form of pressure might be economic harm to the state of Florida—and specifically Southwest Florida—if tourists boycott its attractions and other countries impose sanctions based on violations of human rights.
Never again?
An American soldier feeds inmates following Dachau’s liberation. (Photo: US National Guard)
American troops liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945. What they found horrified and shocked them—and the world. Dachau had gone from a detention camp to a mass extermination camp. Corpses were everywhere. Typhus was rampant. Survivors were starving. One American soldier said that at that moment he knew why he was fighting.
When confronted by the Americans, residents of the city of Dachau responded “Was könnten wir tun (What could we do?)?”
It was a response that didn’t sit well with Army Col. William Quinn, who wrote the official US Army report on the camp’s liberation. However, Quinn noted: “If one is to attempt the tremendous task and accept the terrific responsibility of judging a whole town, assessing it en masse as to the collective guilt or innocence of all of its inhabitants for this most hideous of crimes, one would do well to remember the fearsome shadow that hangs over everyone in a state in which crime has been incorporated and called the government.”
It’s an observation that rings hideously true today. Anyone accepting, countenancing or promoting these kinds facilities becomes complicit in their crimes—and that fact shows why individual acts of protest and opposition are so important.
From the revelations of Dachau and the other Nazi concentration camps the world resolved that the kind of criminality and brutality practiced there should never be repeated. Until now it was a basic tenet of Americanism that there should never be concentration camps on American soil, nor were any ever before proposed.
Since the liberation of the Nazi camps and the defeat of Fascism, the civilized world’s watchwords have been: “Never Again.”
Now, with Alligator Alcatraz, Trump, Noem, DeSantis and Uthmeier are saying: “Again.”
It’s up to the people of the world, and especially the citizens of Florida, to resoundingly reply: “Never!”
“When elephants battle, the grass gets trampled”–African proverb. (Art: AI)
Feb. 6, 2025 by David Silverberg
Updated 4:40 pm with additional material.
Updated Feb. 10 with comment from John Meo.
Four prominent local Republican elected officials were condemned in absentia on Monday, Feb. 3, by the Collier County Republican Executive Committee (CCREC) for failing to support an anti-immigration bill favored by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
The CCREC voted further to censure the officials if they continued to support the legislative version of the bill in question, the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy (TRUMP) Act (CS/SB 2-B), which passed the both the Florida House and Senate on Jan. 28 in a special session.
None of those condemned were present when the resolution passed by a voice vote.
The condemnation was directed at State Sen. Kathleen Passidomo (R-28-Naples), former president of the Florida Senate, and state Reps. Lauren Melo (R-82-eastern Collier County), Yvette Benarroch (R-81-western Collier County) and Adam Botana (R-80-Lee and northern Collier counties).
The meeting was chaired by CCREC Chair John Meo. Lawyer Douglas Lewis projected both the TRUMP Act and the DeSantis bill version on a screen before the audience. The audience was asked for a show of hands on which legislation they favored. The DeSantis legislation was overwhelmingly favored by a voice vote at the end of the presentation. Meo called the vote unanimous but the group’s parliamentarian corrected him that there were dissenting voices.
At the outset of the meeting Michael Lyster, former chair of the CCREC, argued against proceeding with the agenda item, saying that it was premature and the resolution was improper. He argued that under the CCREC’s rules it cannot censure the party’s elected Republican officials. However, he was ignored.
All the officials were in the Florida capital of Tallahassee at the time and did not participate or have the opportunity to participate in person or remotely. There were no speakers presenting the officials’ side of the story.
The resolution
The Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) officially endorsed the TRUMP Act over DeSantis’ bill, which prompted the CCREC response.
A Republican Party of Florida flyer endorsing the TRUMP Act. Below, the CCREC’s response.
A CCREC flyer responding to the RPOF.
After its establishing clauses stating the current situation as it sees it, the CCREC resolution “formally expresses its displeasure with the Florida Legislature” and “fully supports” both DeSantis’ and Trump’s efforts to deport “criminal illegal aliens.”
It calls on the named Republican legislators to work with DeSantis but if they “fail to work with Governor DeSantis and fail to vote in favor of strong legislation and appropriations, on or before the end of March 2025” on legislation “acceptable to Governor DeSantis” [emphasis theirs], then the CCREC would hold a formal vote censuring the officials.
(Thanks to multiple sources, the full resolution is available at the conclusion of this article.)
Present at the meeting were Collier County commissioners Chris Hall (R-District 2), Dan Kowal (R-District 4), and William McDaniel (R-District 5), School Board members Jerry Rutherford (District 1) and Tim Moshier (District 5). Also attending was Chris Worrell, a Proud Boys member convicted of assaulting police officers with a chemical agent during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, who evaded police before being apprehended and incarcerated, and who was just pardoned by Trump.
According to attendees who requested anonymity, the whole event was rushed through, with presentation of the resolutions, debate and a vote taking place in the space of a half hour.
“The CCREC taking action to censure legislators before anything has been decided is totally not within their purview,” Diane de Parys, a former member of the CCREC and president of the Republican Women of SW Florida Federated, told The Paradise Progressive. “The role of the CCREC under the Republican Party of Florida is to get out the vote and taking positions on special session bills that have not been decided is totally wrong in my opinion.”
“Heated, political discourse is to be expected in these challenging times. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the CCREC disagreeing with how an elected official voted,” noted former Republican county commissioner Penny Taylor in a publicly distributed email. “But leadership who ignore the basic [tenets] of fairness such as giving a man or woman his or her day in court before passing judgement … that leadership is reckless and needs to be questioned.”
“Everyone knew it was going on,” Meo told The Paradise Progressive in a Saturday, Feb., 8th phone call. “Everyone got notice 24 hours beforehand and as far as the number of people complaining, there were very few; not more than two or three.”
The legislators named were able to join remotely. “They had input,” he said. “They could have Zoomed in.” He said he spoke to Melo and Benarroch the week before the meeting. He made the point that the presentation took 35 minutes and was very detailed regarding the dueling bills.
Meo said that there had not been any critical feedback since the meeting and that the majority of Republicans “have been very supportive.”
He also reiterated his support for the substance of the resolution. “We’re in a virtual war with criminal illegals where they’re taking over hotels in cities,” he said. He also hoped that DeSantis, as head of the Florida Republican Party would work out a compromise with legislative leaders but “stay strong” because one thing he cannot abide is having immigration enforcement in the office of Commissioner of Agriculture.
Comment was also requested from Passidomo, Melo, Benarroche, and Botana but no response had been received as of posting time. (This report will be updated if responses are received.)
The context
The CCREC vote comes amidst a dispute between DeSantis and the legislature over the best means of cracking down on undocumented migrants in Florida.
On Jan. 13, DeSantis called for a special session of the legislature in order to pass 10 measures against undocumented migrants, among other proposals. The governor’s bill would:
Mandate maximum participation in the 287(g) deportation program, with penalties for non-compliance, including suspension of officials;
Establish a state crime for entering the U.S. illegally and a process for self-deportation;
Appoint a dedicated officer to oversee coordination with federal authorities and the Unauthorized Alien Transport Program (UATP);
Expand UATP to detain and facilitate the deportation of illegal aliens from the U.S.;
Broaden the legal definition of gang-related activities to include more groups of dangerous illegal aliens;
Repeal in-state college tuition for illegal immigrant students;
Require voter registration affirmation of U.S. citizenship and Florida residency;
Increase penalties for unauthorized aliens committing voter fraud or providing false voter registration information;
Mandate identity verification for foreign remittance transfers; and
Create a rebuttable presumption that illegal aliens are flight risks and deny bail.
Florida state Senate President Sen. Ben Albritton (R-56-DeSoto and Hardee counties) and Speaker of the House Rep. Daniel Perez (R-116-Miami-Dade County) pushed back against DeSantis’ special session call, labeling it “premature.”
In a memorandum issued within hours of DeSantis’ call, the two stated: “It is completely irresponsible to get out ahead of any announcements President Trump will make, especially when uninformed or ill-timed state action could potentially impair or impede the success of President Trump’s forthcoming efforts to end illegal immigration, close our borders, and protect the sovereignty of our nation.”
The dispute became personal as DeSantis accused Albritton and Perez of “theatrics” and called them “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) and said their bill “gutted all the enforcement provisions” in his bill.
“This is really the SWAMP Act,” he scoffed and complained the bill, “takes power away from me … the power that I’m currently exercising now.”
After an initial standoff, the legislative leaders convened the governor’s special session on Jan. 28 but then immediately adjourned it, without passing any legislation. Then, the same day, they convened their own session and passed the TRUMP Act.
The major difference between the governor’s proposal and the legislature’s bill was that authority for enforcement was put in the hands of the Commissioner of Agriculture, in this case Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.
Albritton and Perez slapped back with a letter issued the same day: “The Legislature will not act in a disingenuous or dishonorable way by attacking anyone, especially our law enforcement. Unlike others, the Legislature is not interested in misleading or attacking Floridians, especially Florida law enforcement. Our number one goal is to work together with President Trump. Anyone that says anything otherwise is not reading the bill, not reading executive orders, or just not telling the truth.”
DeSantis threatened to act politically against legislators who voted for the TRUMP Act by using funding from his Florida Freedom Fund Political Action Committee to oppose them in primaries.
“The FL Freedom Fund was instrumental in raising huge sums of $ to defeat Amendments 3 and 4 in 2024,” he posted on X on Jan. 30. “For the 2026 cycle, the FFF will raise even more resources (1) to ensure support for a strong conservative gubernatorial candidate and (2) to support strong conservative candidates in legislative primaries. We need to elect strong leaders who will build off FL’s success and who will deliver on the promises made to voters.”
He stated he would veto the legislation when it came to his desk.
As of this writing, there are indications that the two sides were in discussions and might find an accommodation.
“We’ve had great discussions. I think we’re going to land the plane,” DeSantis said on Feb. 3.
Analysis: Impact
Locally, it’s unclear how much weight the CCREC condemnation or censure will have in local Republican politics or how much influence it will have with local Republican lawmakers. However, it yet again displays a streak of authoritarianism that has long been associated with the CCREC and with those local Republican activists who repeatedly use threats to intimidate officials into surrendering to their demands.
And it also bears noting the real losers in all these disputes: migrants and immigrants of all legal status whose labor provides the products, services and assistance that keeps the local, state and national economies working and prosperous.
A storm breaks over the Everglades. (Photo: US Park Service)
Jan. 3, 2025 by David Silverberg
While national-level elections are not scheduled for 2025, there will be some significant elections—especially in Florida.
Two members of Congress need to be replaced: Matt Gaetz resigned his position in Congress in December, so a special election will be held in the 1st Congressional District in the Panhandle to replace him.
In the 6th Congressional District in northern Florida, an election will be held to replace Rep. Michael Waltz (R-6-Fla.), who was nominated to be National Security Advisor and is scheduled to leave the House of Representatives on Jan. 20. A special election will be held to replace him.
While Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will be leaving the Senate to become Secretary of State if confirmed, a replacement will be appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to fill out the remaining four years of his term, which ends on Jan. 3, 2029.
It is not too early to speculate about DeSantis’ own succession. His term ends in 2026 and he cannot run again so the big question will be who will succeed him.
As the year dawns, two of the leading contenders being mentioned are Gaetz and Southwest Florida Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.). (More about this in a future posting.)
A bombshell House Ethics Committee report released on Dec. 23 stated that Gaetz regularly paid for sex, underage and otherwise, and possessed and used illegal drugs.
In the past this would have disqualified any candidate. However, in the Trump era these standards may not hold. It is also possible that Trump will pardon Gaetz for any misdeeds given the former congressman’s past loud loyalty to the President-Elect.
But any discussion of the gubernatorial race is just early speculation and by 2026 a whole new cast of contenders is likely to emerge, many with statewide name recognition.
Otherwise, across the country, the major contests will be gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
As of now, there are no local elections scheduled for Southwest Florida.
Southwest Florida investigations
Just because there are no elections scheduled hardly means that there won’t be significant political developments.
As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.
In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.
No information has been publicly revealed following the search and Oakes himself told the Naples Daily News only that “We’re looking into it, but everything’s good.”
However, the federal agencies involved in the search, as reported in local media, provide clues to the nature of the investigation. The presence of Internal Revenue Service agents indicates a tax-related inquiry.
Secret Service agents were on site. While the public largely knows the Secret Service for its protective mission, it is often forgotten that it conducts financial investigations too. The Secret Service was founded during the Civil War to fight counterfeiting and was under the authority of the Treasury Department for most of its history. (It is now part of the Department of Homeland Security.) The presence of Secret Service agents is an indicator of a financial-related investigation but also a possible homeland security or counter-terrorism query.
Also present were Department of Defense (DoD) agents and in particular the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), which investigates all forms of crime against the Department including fraud, contracting violations, terrorism, and cybercrime. The presence of DCIS agents indicate that the search may be related to Oakes’ federal contracting. While in the past he had lucrative contracts with the Defense Logistics Agency, which oversees supplies and contracting for the military, Oakes told The Paradise Progressive in 2022 that he had sold off those units. He also has a contract with the Justice Department to provide food to the federal Coleman Correctional Facility in Coleman, Florida.
Additionally, the well-documented presence of a DCIS firearms instructor indicates that federal agents may have been wary of Oakes’ reported 3,000 guns. (Interestingly, Florida Highway Patrol officers were present but Collier County deputies weren’t mentioned in the news accounts.)
As with all investigations, Oakes is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This may or may not involve the convening of a grand jury to hand down indictments if probable cause for prosecution is found.
In the meanwhile, the public will have to await any announcements from the agencies involved in the investigation if prosecution is pursued—or dropped.
An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.
However, another potential outcome is that given Oakes’ longstanding, outspoken and deep loyalty to Donald Trump, he could be pre-emptively pardoned by the president for any wrongdoing, or, if charged, tried and found guilty, pardoned after the court proceeding.
In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.
On Dec. 3 a grand jury convened in Tampa to consider potential charges against the sheriff. The accusations stemmed from allegations made by an electoral opponent, Mike Hollow, in his race against Marceno. Hollow quoted Ken Romano, a contract employee, that he received a “no-work” contract and kicked back money to Marceno’s father. Hollow provided a video of Romano making the allegations.
As of this writing, no word has been heard from the grand jury but if indictments are handed down it will be a major political story for Southwest Florida this year.
Also, the executive branch will be stocked with Floridians. Some must be confirmed by the Senate but others are presidential appointments. In addition to Rubio at State, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi has been nominated as US Attorney General subject to Senate approval.
In the executive branch, Florida political operative Susan “Susie” Wiles has been named White House Chief of Staff and Palm Beach resident Taylor Budowich has been named Deputy Chief of Staff. As mentioned previously, Waltz has been tapped as National Security Advisor. Janette Nesheiwat, Waltz’s wife, was nominated for Surgeon General; Mehmet Oz, the television doctor and a resident of Palm Beach, has been named Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Todd Blanche of Palm Beach has been nominated for Deputy Attorney General.
Other Floridians appointed are David Weldon as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jared Isaacman as Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the National Institutes of Health; Paul Atkins of Tampa as Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission; Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., and a Floridian, as ambassador to Greece; Daniel Newlin, an attorney, as ambassador to Colombia; and Peter Lamelas, a Trump donor and doctor who helped found MD Now Urgent Care that serves Florida, as ambassador to Argentina. And Naples resident Callista Gingrich has been named ambassador to Switzerland.
The key qualification for all these nominations, of course, is loyalty to Donald Trump.
The big question in the year ahead will be whether—and in what way—all these Floridians favor the state over the rest of the country when it comes to resources, benefits and federal aid, especially if there are disasters or crises like epidemics.
One person who is clearly out of favor and likely to stay out of favor is DeSantis. The governor’s unforgiveable sin was to actually run against Trump for the presidential nomination in 2023. Trump forgives or overlooks a lot of transgressions (after all, his own vice president once called him “an American Hitler”) but primarying the king was beyond redemption. There were reports that DeSantis was briefly being considered for Secretary of Defense but those went nowhere.
The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.
Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks. Not only will Republicans dominate the legislature for the next two years but their majority has grown with the defections of two state House members elected as Democrats. State Rep. Susan Valdes (R-64-Tampa) and Hillary Cassel (R-101-Hollywood) have both declared themselves Republicans, with Valdes being rewarded with a second-place slot on the House Budget Committee. While both lawmakers gave different justifications for their defections, the fact is that they likely could see no way to get anything done other than as Republicans.
That legislature will likely follow a Trumpist-DeSantis anti-“woke” program, although probably with less extremism and zealotry than in the 2023 session. Then, DeSantis looked like he might become president based on an anti-woke culture war and legislators wanted to get on his right side with ever more outlandish and sometimes bizarre proposals.
Presumably that won’t be the case this time unless they aspire to favors from the Trump regime in Washington, DC. There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis “line,” whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.
Florida shows all the symptoms of a one-party state. Democrats have been crushed twice in two consecutive elections. Despite the Herculean efforts of Democratic Party Chair Nicole “Nikki” Fried and her success in getting Democrats to contest all open seats in 2024, Democrats lost nearly every race they pursued. They are an even smaller minority in the state legislature than before. The state Party shows little signs of recovery—or even life.
Also defeated were two major constitutional amendments, Amendment 3 to legalize recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 to protect the right to abortion. Neither received the 60 percent vote they required to become part of the state constitution.
The consequence of Florida’s abortion ban has already manifested itself in Collier County, with installation of a “baby box,” a medieval contraption that allows mothers to anonymously abandon unwanted infants. In the current version approved by the Board of Commissioners in October, babies can be turned over at Medical Services Station 76 near the intersection of Vanderbilt Beach Road and Logan Boulevard in Naples. At least, unlike Texas, mothers aren’t tossing infants into dumpsters—yet.
Not only did the defeat of Amendment 4 mean that Florida women cannot have abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, it deflated the perception of pro-choice women as a powerful voting bloc with momentum that needed to be respected, or at least considered in decisionmaking. Anti-choice groups and activists are now likely to push for a total ban on abortions and may well get it.
Politically, Amendment 4’s defeat broke an important element of the Democratic coalition in Florida. Democrats were counting on women, minorities, the young, Hispanics, unions and working class voters to take them to victory. Instead they were defeated by MAGAs, billionaires, hostile propaganda and an undeniably impressive Republican registration drive.
It’s hard to see a new majority Democratic coalition coming together in Florida or elsewhere that would propel the Party to future victories, especially given the voter suppression and MAGAism that will likely reign, especially if Trump refuses to step down in 2028 or if the 2026 elections are rigged, as they are now likely to be.
America is now likely to become Florida, as DeSantis proposed in his presidential campaign. The politics and culture Americans will find emanating from the Sunshine State will be sclerotic, hypocritical, repressive, regressive and corrupt. All that will be lacking will be the humidity and hurricanes.
At the grassroots
So how will all this manifest itself in the daily lives of Southwest Floridians?
Every indication is that inflation will soar. Whether from tariffs and trade wars or a drastic reduction of the migrant workforce that makes the local economy work, every policy proposal from Trump to date leads to higher prices and fewer goods.
The general perception is that Trump won the election based on the economy and unhappiness with inflation under President Joe Biden. But Biden, along with the Federal Reserve, steadily brought prices down after the highs of Trump’s first term and the COVID pandemic.
But now, as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and “far left Marxist radicals” for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.
The climate change constant
Another impact will come from the skies. Mother Nature doesn’t abide by human politics.
Southwest Florida is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as last year’s experience of hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton showed. Its towns, cities and counties are especially dependent on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster preparation and recovery and the predictions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for accurate forecasting and warnings. Along the coasts homeowners rely on the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to insure their homes and property.
How has the state government of Florida reacted to the climate change challenge?
Nationally, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and once tried to change the course of a hurricane with a Sharpie. He took the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords in 2017. President Joe Biden put it back in 2021 and is likely to take it out again.
So, when the hurricanes hit—as they surely will—Southwest Floridians will likely see slower and less effective debris removal, higher taxes and fees as communities try to recover without federal help, and fewer and likely less reliable warnings of approaching storms and dangers.
Stratification
All this appears certain to have a heavy financial impact. Indeed, in Southwest Florida society will likely divide much more starkly into an upper class that can afford to live or own property along a dangerous coast because it can self-insure (without the benefit of NFIP) and pay for rebuilding after disasters without federal aid.
The losers, of course, both nationally and in Southwest Florida, will be members of the middle class and retirees, who have been supported by government policies, especially tax policies, since the New Deal of the 1930s.
But now, the Trump regime is likely to skew taxes to favor billionaires and the extremely wealthy while shifting the burden to a middle class that is likely to decline given Republican and Trumpist assaults on it.
This will probably be especially felt in Southwest Florida. Far from the relatively warm, inexpensive, retiree haven it has been in the past, it will now likely stratify as the costs of living, insurance, property, and climate change damage make it unaffordable for anyone other than the ultra-rich.
This will become even more pronounced if social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are altered, restricted or eliminated altogether. A significant number of less wealthy Southwest Floridians rely on these programs.
In a town hall meeting in November, Elon Musk, who appears to be Trump’s foremost advisor, stated that: “We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
“Hardship” can be very hard on the non-rich and just how “temporary” it will be is anyone’s guess. As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said: “In the long run, we are all dead.”
Who will serve the ultra-rich who remain? Many low-wage workers will be gone, caught and removed in anti-immigrant roundups and detentions. Perhaps some who remain will continue living in affordable localities distant from the wealthy enclaves they serve. So the region will continue to see ever more distant commutes and congested roads as the people who can least afford it travel longer and further to jobs serving ever smaller and more concentrated enclaves of wealth.
This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).
The possibility exists that all the medical measures that have improved life over the past two centuries—everything from vaccines to public sanitation—will be turned back or abandoned in the coming year and in the ensuing years of the Trump regime. The whole elaborately constructed public edifice that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect against epidemics and outbreaks, the Food and Drug Administration to ensure food and medicinal purity and safety, and the National Institutes of Health for research and cures, will likely be reduced or eliminated, leaving Americans and the world vulnerable to diseases that are either entirely new or were nearly eradicated.
Another example of the war on public health, if a relatively minor one, is the effort to eliminate fluoridation to prevent tooth decay. Once a nationally accepted public health measure, in the last year it was removed in Collier County and then the City of Naples. Ladapo issued a statewide warning against fluoridation in November. Kennedy has stated it should end nationally and Trump has said he’s “okay” with that.
Hunkering down
No matter what happens nationally, Southwest Floridians will feel the reverberations at home, at the supermarket and in their tax bills.
For now, Southwest Florida still has its beaches and tourist attractions. Its vestigial democratic institutions continue to function. The law still applies to everyone other than the president, providing a form of order. And given the arctic blasts of the north, the tornadoes, sea level rise and flooding, for most of the year it still has the best climate in the country when there are no hurricanes.
Many political storms are headed toward Southwest Florida this year. But just as Southwest Floridians have learned to stock up and hunker down when the skies darken and the wind starts blowing, they can do the same politically. Those who value their Constitution, the inalienable rights endowed by their Creator, and the country they made great through lifetimes of labor and service, need to continue their efforts to ensure that freedom and democracy survive until the storm passes and they can nurture the light to fullness again.
What could be more Southwest Floridian than looking to the future through a crystal ball on the beach?
Dec. 30, 2024 by David Silverberg
The end of 2024 has come and with it the usual lazy media roundups looking back at the events of the year.
Far more productive and important are looks ahead, although these are necessarily speculative—and they will be coming in these pages. But first, it seems sensible to see how well The Paradise Progressive was able to foresee the events of 2024, one of the most momentous years in American history.
In the past, we’ve graded our projections on an A through F scale. This year, though, we’ll grade some of the key ones as “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
Prophetic: “It will be an interesting year but not a fun one. Indeed, it will be dangerous, stressful and frightening.”
Well, that was certainly true. Not much further explanation is needed there.
Prophetic: “…the outcome of the 2024 presidential election will determine whether America stays a democracy or becomes a dictatorship.”
While this remains to be seen, all indications are that America is heading in a dictatorial direction under Donald Trump.
Prophetic: “Throughout the year expect court rulings to drop like bombs, with Supreme Court rulings making the biggest explosions of all.”
This was certainly the case. In January, in a civil case first brought by writer E. Jean Carroll in 2023, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages for defamation. On May 30 in the New York falsified business records case, Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies, a verdict that seemed a major blow to his presidential candidacy. However, in a decision announced on July 1 in the case of Trump vs. United States, the Supreme Court granted presidents—i.e., Trump—immunity for “official acts,” a decision that now hands him virtually unchecked power.
Prophetic: “If he wins he becomes dictator, he pardons everyone who committed a crime on his behalf, and he attains absolute, unrestricted power. If he loses, he forfeits his life, his fortune and his own freedom.”
The situation is certainly set up for this prophecy to be fulfilled and the likelihood is that he will evade justice altogether once he takes the presidency.
Pathetic: At the outset of the year, a movie called Civil War, which imagined armed domestic conflict in the United States, was being promoted and threatened to “encourage those thinking of civil war and political violence to actually take up arms and make this fiction real.”
Civil War was released in April and while garnering $126 million at the box office, essentially sank like a stone, making little to no impression across the country. In its 2023 promotions, it was unclear whether the movie’s villain was President Joe Biden or not. Once released, however, the movie posited a revolt against a president who had overstayed his two terms and was clearly Trump. But the movie’s fictional California forces and especially the “Florida coalition,” that took up arms in revolt was wildly off the mark. Overall, this movie didn’t seem to have any impact at all on the election or domestic politics.
Prophetic: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) presidential candidacy would be “do or die” in New Hampshire and “that is likely to fall on the ‘die’ side of the equation.”
Indeed, DeSantis dropped his bid on Jan. 21, just before the New Hampshire primary after falling steadily in the polls.
Prophetic: “The Republicans will be throwing everything they can at Biden, like a baseless impeachment proceeding that is unlikely to go anywhere, and attacking him through his son, Hunter.”
That certainly came to pass. Hunter Biden was found guilty of firearms-related felonies in June and pled guilty to tax charges in September. However, by then his father had dropped out of the race and Hunter’s crimes had no political impact. Ultimately, he was pardoned by his father on Dec. 1.
More relevantly, Republicans in the House of Representatives continued a feeble effort to impeach Biden. However, without an actual crime, this blatantly partisan payback scheme went nowhere.
Pathetic: “Biden would also likely crush Trump in any one-to-one debate.”
This was one of the biggest surprises of the year. On June 26, Biden proved weak, incapable and almost senile in his debate with Trump. It was probably the most consequential debate in American history and led to Biden dropping his re-election bid on July 21 in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Prophetic: “The possibility of one—or even both—of the candidates dropping out or dropping dead must be considered.”
Biden dropped out and Trump was nearly felled by an assassin’s bullet on July 13.
Prophetic: “If either man falls the entire political calculation will fundamentally change.”
That’s exactly what happened when Biden dropped out and Harris took his place.
Prophetic: “In Florida questions that loom for 2024 are: will pro-choicers get their amendment on the ballot? Can the DeSantis administration suppress it through the courts? Will Florida officials invalidate the signatures? And if it is on the ballot, will it receive the 60 percent approval from voters to pass?”
Pro-choicers got Amendment 4 guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion on the ballot and sure enough, the DeSantis administration tried to suppress it through the courts and invalidate the signatures. Ultimately, it failed to get the 60 percent of votes needed to pass.
Prophetic: On the war in Ukraine, “there’s no end in sight right now and the war seems set to continue in its current state for at least another year.”
Indeed, the war continues and The Paradise Progressive was further prophetic when it noted that as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin was alive, “the course of Russian policy and warmaking will likely remain as it has since the invasion.”
Prophetic: On the war in Gaza: “All Hamas has to do in the year ahead to win its war is simply survive since [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu set the Israeli war goal as destroying it. Israel seems unlikely to achieve its goal before the year is out.”
Even with the death of its leader, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas fights on and the war in Gaza is active. But as was also predicted: “If all other factors remain the same Netanyahu will continue Israel’s current course no matter how long it takes or what it costs in blood, treasure, or prestige.” That was certainly prophetic.
Prophetic: Continuation of the war meant the possibility that “yet another front opens or a third major war suddenly breaks out somewhere during the year.”
Israel pre-emptively opened another front against Hezbollah in Lebanon and conducted a virtually separate war there. Then, suddenly in December, in Syria the regime of President Bashar al Assad fell to rebels.
Pathetic: “Given the tensions, stakes and desperation in so many theaters there will undoubtedly be terror and mass casualty events in the United States this year, some of them severe.”
This did not come to pass, in large part thanks to the vigilance and professionalism of federal counter-terror agencies and personnel.
Prophetic: “There may be efforts to stop voting or scare people away from polling places.”
Prophetic: “Some lone shooters, random crazies and violent extremists will get through.”
That’s what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, although Ryan Wesley Routh’s staking out of a sniper position on the Trump golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sept. 15 was caught before any shots were fired.
Prophetic: “As Russia has interfered in US elections ever since 2016, so it can be expected to attempt to interfere in the 2024 election.”
As noted previously, there are suspicions of Russian interference in the election and the Putin government seemed to reference these in November when Nikolai Patrushev, a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Security Council told a Russian newspaper that “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
However, with Trump declared the winner, the disbanding of the cases against him and the dropping of investigations by prosecutor Jack Smith, the American people may never know the full extent and nature of Russian intervention in America’s 2024 election—and the public will certainly not learn it from any official body of the US government under a Trump administration.
Pathetic: “Migrant flows to the US southern border are already at record levels. They will likely skyrocket as the year proceeds.”
Instead, the exact opposite occurred; border apprehensions and encounters with US authorities fell sharply. As a Pew Research Center analysis put it on Oct. 1: “After reaching a record high at the end of 2023, the monthly number of U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico has plummeted so far in 2024.”
According to the Pew analysis, the Border Patrol recorded 58,038 encounters with migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2024, a 77 percent decline from 249,741 encounters in December 2023, the most ever recorded in a single month.
And why this sudden plummet in crossings and encounters? “The decline in encounters has come amid policy changes on both sides of the border,” stated Pew. “Authorities in Mexico have stepped up enforcement to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border. And U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June that makes it much more difficult for migrants who enter the U.S. without legal permission to seek asylum and remain in the country.”
So Biden administration changes made a big difference in border crossings but not in time or with the fanfare to stave off wild Republican charges that the border was “open” and unpoliced.
Prophetic: “…The surge at the border will no doubt be a major headache and vulnerability for Biden this year.”
While there was no surge, it was still a headache—but largely because Trump prevented consideration and passage of a bipartisan border security bill that addressed many of the problems. As the article predicted, he and Republicans “can be expected to exploit the situation to the full,” which they did.
Prophetic: “There is virtually no prospect for any real progress being made on immigration or border security in 2024.” Further, “the prospects for the year ahead are for Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants to keep getting uglier, Republican exploitation of the situation to increase and get more apocalyptic, numbers of migrants and their suffering at the border to keep growing, strains on border security mechanisms to keep expanding and the rewards of finding practical consensus solutions to stay elusive.”
Collier County, Fla., faced critical elections for its Board of Commissioners and School Board in 2024.
But the biggest surprise came in June when Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the outspokenly conservative and pro-Trump farmer, grocer, activist and major Collier County power broker, missed the deadline to file his candidacy papers for State Committeeman and lost his official position on the Collier County Republican Executive Committee. The Paradise Progressive certainly did not foresee that.
Prophetic: “So going into 2024, Collier County voters are faced with seasoned candidates with experience, knowledge and proven competence in their fields or unseasoned MAGA amateurs running on grievances, conspiracies and blind belief.”
Ironically enough, in the Aug. 20 party primary, Collier County Republicans rejected, as one piece of campaign literature put it, “angry, inexperienced individuals” for critical positions in county government and instead voted for seasoned, proven candidates. In particular, Melissa Blazier retained her position as Supervisor of Elections, despite two challengers.
At least in this corner of Florida, as prophetically predicted, the result was “a county that is run on behalf of its residents with effectiveness, efficiency and integrity.”
Summing up
By and large, when it came to broad trends, The Paradise Progressive’s projections for 2024 were strikingly prophetic.
But lest that seem too self-congratulatory, it must be pointed out that it made no firm predictions on outcomes: it never stated who would win at the ballot box, whether locally or nationally, or which side would win the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, or how the Florida constitutional amendments would turn out.
Further, it did not foresee the dramatic, abrupt turns of the year in domestic politics: Biden’s dropping out; Trump’s near-assassination; the Harris candidacy.
Locally, some of the biggest unforeseen developments were Alfie Oakes’ disqualification from Republican Party candidacy; the massive search of his properties by federal law enforcement agencies on Nov. 7; and, in Lee County, the allegations and investigation into corruption by Sheriff Carmine Marceno.
The consequences from these events will play out in 2025.
Indeed, what will 2025 bring the nation, the world and especially Southwest Florida? Informed and humbled by its record from 2024, The Paradise Progressive will be looking ahead at likely developments in days to come.
And that, at least, is a prophecy on which you can count.
The 2024 early vote as a share of total 2020 turnout in the United States. (Source: Associated Press and The Washington Post.)
Oct. 27, 2024 by David Silverberg
The only poll that matters is now under way. People are actually voting—and voting in large numbers.
All the relentless polling reported in the media and private polling firms to date was relevant in its time to measure movement, trends and indications in the electorate. Based on those results, campaigns could adjust their approaches, pundits could calibrate their punditry, pollsters could get attention, media outlets had an easy source of headlines and the public could get some indication of voter sentiment.
But with ballots being cast the guesses and projections of the pollsters are now largely irrelevant, although not entirely, because there may still be some undecideds and non-voters yet to be swayed. But it’s safe to say that the majority of Americans have likely made up their minds. A poll one way or another is not going to significantly indicate the outcome.
All the media attention has been on swing states and Florida is largely being overlooked.
But after a week of in-person voting, Southwest Florida supervisors of elections are reporting high turnout.
The turnout gives some indication of the ultimate results because the supervisors report the vote by registered voters. In past elections, people have tended to vote their registrations.
But though the numbers of registered votes are available, the actual tally will not be known until the results are announced on Election Day, Nov. 5. People may vote outside their registered party, which is a strong possibility this year.
These statistics also give no indication of the likely results of any of the ballot amendments or other down-ballot races.
Nonetheless, here is what is available from Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties as of Sunday night. All figures are provided by supervisors of election offices, which are required by state law to provide these figures. Complete, real-time results can be seen on the supervisors’ webpages and links are provided for each county.
As of 8:10 pm, Sunday night, Oct. 27, 41.56 percent of Collier County’s 264,077 eligible voters (109,739 voters) had cast their ballots.
Of these, 51.03 percent were cast by mail and 48.91 percent were cast in-person.
The large majority, 58.91 percent, were cast by registered Republicans. Registered Democrats counted for 20.84 percent of the votes and non-party affiliated (NPAs) counted for 18.35 percent. Other voters (different parties) accounted for only 1.9 percent of the votes cast.
Voting totals by party in Collier County.
This compares with a final turnout of 64.7 percent for the 2022 election and a 90.4 percent turnout for the 2020 election. This year’s turnout seems on a pace to match or exceed that extremely high turnout for the previous presidential election.
As of 8:20 pm, Sunday night, Oct. 27, 42.07 percent of Lee County’s eligible voters (490,412 voters) had cast their ballots.
Of these, 61.21 percent were cast by mail and 38.75 percent were cast in-person.
The large majority, 52.89 percent, were cast by registered Republicans. Registered Democrats counted for 24.05 percent of the votes and non-party affiliated (NPAs) counted for 20.95 percent. Other voters (different parties) accounted for only 2.11 percent of the votes cast.
Voting totals by party in Lee County.
This compares with a final turnout of 50.75 percent for the 2022 general election and an 81.1 percent turnout for the 2020 general election. This year’s turnout seems on a pace to match or exceed that extremely high turnout for the previous presidential election.
As of 8:40 pm, Sunday night, Oct. 27, 39.97 percent of Charlotte County’s eligible voters (155,093 voters) had cast their ballots.
Of these, 53.08 percent were cast by mail and 46.85 percent were cast in-person.
The large majority, 53.98 percent, were cast by registered Republicans. Registered Democrats counted for 24.40 percent of the votes and non-party affiliated (NPAs) counted for 18.8 percent. Other voters (different parties) accounted for only 2.82 percent of the votes cast.
Voting totals by party in Charlotte County.
This compares with a final turnout of 60.61 percent for the 2022 general election and a 77.22 percent turnout for the 2020 general election. This year’s turnout seems on a pace to match or exceed that extremely high turnout for the previous presidential election.
Florida in the nation
According to figures from the Associated Press and The Washington Post, as of Sunday, Oct. 27 at 5:55 pm, in the entire country, 26 percent of the number of people who cast ballots in the last presidential election had voted early in this one.
Florida ranked seventh among the states at 39 percent. Georgia was first, with 56 percent.
The 2024 early vote as a share of total 2020 turnout. Not all states are shown. (Source: Associated Press and The Washington Post.)
Early in-person voting in Collier and Lee counties continues until Nov. 2 and in Charlotte County until Nov. 3. The locations of early in-person polling places are available on the supervisors’ websites.
The author addresses the Democracy Under Siege forum in Naples, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2024.
Oct. 17, 2024 by David Silverberg
On Oct. 5, 2024 Southwest Floridians gathered for a forum titled “Democracy Under Siege: The Fascist Threat to Florida and What To Do About It.”
The forum, held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples in Naples, Fla., was sponsored by Floridians for Democracy, The Lincoln Project, Florida Veterans for Common Sense, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Choose Democracy, and The Paradise Progressive.
Speakers were Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, who joined the gathering remotely; Dale Anderson, a Sarasota-based pro-democracy activist and advisor to Choose Democracy Now; and David Silverberg, founder and author of The Paradise Progressive blog.
It focuses on the threat to democracy in Collier County, Fla., the greater danger of “fasco-Trumpism,” ways individuals can defend democracy, and the importance of elections in general and this year’s election in particular.
Thank you very much for that. My name is David Silverberg and I want to talk about here in Collier County and what’s been going on.
First of all, I’m going to take a little quibble: We don’t have Fascism as it was defined in Europe; we do not have a Fascist Party by that name here in Florida. We don’t have a movement that’s Fascist with a capital “F.”
What we have is a lot of fascistic development both here in Florida and here in Collier County, I’m sorry to say, but I’m going to really draw that distinction.
And I’m also going to use a term called “fasco-Trumpism” because, you know, it’s fascistic and we know that when we say fascism we mean it in a generic sense: it’s authoritarian, it’s dictatorial, it’s oppressive, and, of course, we have Donald Trump who has unleashed all this in the world.
By the way, I googled “fasco-Trumpism” and it’s nowhere on Google so we’re hearing it here for the first time.
Here in Florida, we have “Trump-lite,” the man “where charisma goes to die” as Rick Wilson put it, Governor Ron DeSantis, who, by the way, as we all know is a total creature of Trump; he would not exist on the political stage if Trump had not endorsed him in his race for governor and got him through the primary and he is—as Dale very ably showed—is trying to coordinate across the state, its culture, its society, this anti-woke fasco-Trumpist culture.
But right here in Collier County we’ve had some disturbing trends and I’m sure you’ve all been following them and the chief evangelist for this is our very own Francis Alfred Oakes III, whom we all know as Alfie.
When you look at it the similarities between Alfie and Trump are really remarkable. They’re both businessmen, they’re both bombastic, they’re both mercurial, they’re both fanatical in their ways, they’re both fasco-Trumpists, MAGAs. Alfie once got a phone call from Trump and thinks he’s just about God.
And before I go further on Alfie—and it’s not entirely focused on Alfie—I want to make clear that I don’t hate this guy. I have met him. I did an article on him for a magazine called Mother Jones. He sat down with me, we had a two-hour interview, he was gracious, he was cordial, he was—I think—forthcoming and truthful where I think it was in his interest. If the guy stuck to food and groceries we all—and he—would be a whole lot better off.
But Alfie has his opinions and he is absolutely entitled to those opinions and he’s entitled to express those opinions. I support that. But we are entitled to respond and react to those opinions and to his actions—and it’s the actions that really count.
And one other thing, just to cover my backside—he is a public figure. Alfie is politically active, he is a state committeeman in the Collier County Republican Party, so his actions are subject to scrutiny, criticism and analysis.
Having said that, he has tried to impose a fasco-Trumpist ideology on Collier County and especially, on the Republican Party in Collier County.
He won as a state committeeman in 2020, he ousted a guy named Doug Rankin, he was riding on his defiance of COVID protocols in the midst of the panic and the pressures of the pandemic and he pretty much took control of the Republican Executive Committee here in Collier County, the REC, or, as I prefer to call it, the Wreck. And between the Wreck and his own political action committee, Citizens Awake Now, CANPAC, he succeeded in altering the political balance here in Collier County.
Now, in 2022 he put up three candidates for the school board and two candidates for the Collier County Commission and he won all his races, which was an achievement, if you want to use that word. But as a result, we have in Collier County a very fasco-Trumpist agenda and the Commission and the School Board have moved in that direction—although there are changes in the school board.
When you look at what our Board of Commissioners has passed, they passed a federal nullification law, the so-called Bill of Rights Sanctuary Ordinance, which says that Collier County has the right to nullify federal law, to not obey it if it considers it unconstitutional, which is really going to come back to bite this county, which I can go into detail later.
They’ve outlawed mask and public health mandates. They passed what was a very, very, very critical anti-public health resolution that got watered down but that anti-vaxx, anti-COVID, anti-mandate, anti-public health effort is very much promoted. Fortunately, the ordinance, the law, that has penalties that they passed, duplicated state law. State law says that you can’t have mask mandates anymore so this says the same thing so it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
Like Sarasota County, they withdrew the county from the American Library Association.
Then, last month, they passed an anti-Amendment 4 resolution. Now, that doesn’t have the force of law but it was a start, here in Collier County, of a movement to have counties come out against Amendment 4 and a woman’s right to choose and we saw it just passed again in Lee County, so it is moving along. I don’t know how many people it’s going to influence to go against Amendment 4 but they did that.
Then, weirdly—and I have to admit, I did not see this coming—they voted to end fluoridation in Collier County’s water. So now all the kids can get cavities and they can make more work for local dentists, and Alfie will protect his pineal gland, which he was worried about.
And, by the way, everybody who buys toothpaste has got to look for that fluoride because you’re not going to get it from the water in Collier County.
Let me also point out—and this came up in our interview—he says, Alfie, that he owns 3,000 guns, that he can arm every employee at Seed to Table and in 2022, he was addressing a group and he said, “I’m all in. We don’t want to talk about what that is”—meaning that if he didn’t like the way the 2022 elections came out he might launch an armed revolt, he said “but we have to be all in.”
Well, the ’22 elections came out very well for him so we all live under law and order.
Now, all this is very menacing and he was moving to further extend this in 2024 but something very, very interesting happened and it happened this past August on August 20.
There was a revolt! There was people who had enough of Alfie and Alfie fasco-Trumpism and MAGAism here in Collier County and the people who revolted were all the Republicans. The Republicans in their primary repudiated the Alfie-MAGAs for all the different offices that he was proposing.
Alfie didn’t care about anybody’s qualifications, in fact, I heard him once say in a speech, he said: “I don’t care what a person’s IQ is, or what their education is, all I need is some back and common sense.” So he’s looking for fellow fanatics and he had them up for two school board seats, he had them up for county commission—all three were incumbents but he really wanted to get rid of Burt Saunders in the 3rd District. And, of course, he wanted to get rid of Melissa Blazier as supervisor of elections; that was a very dangerous one, and the county assessor.
At that point he had reached a point where the Republicans said, “no!” Especially in the technical offices like Supervisor of Elections where expertise is really important and you have to know what you’re doing, even Republicans had had enough. And Collier County, and I hope you appreciate it, is a pretty well run county. This place functions and it functions very well. Maybe Steve Bannon will call it the “deep state” but I’ll call it the “deep county” and it works for us. And had he gotten these other people in, it would not have.
Now, there was one position that he did win, a lawyer, and she is now a committeeperson on the Wreck, and she was the one who drafted this anti-federal nullification law, which in 1821—1821!—in 2021 (it might as well be 1821!) when she did it in 2021, our own David Millstein characterized that law as “proposed by someone who doesn’t know constitutional law.”
But she won her election as state committeeperson.
So why is this revolt, this little revolt among the Wreck, so significant?
Well, I think it’s significant because it shows that there is a line, there is a point beyond which this kind of fasco-Trumpism becomes oppressive even to those people who adhere to these party principles—and these are the folks that Rick Wilson was talking about. These are people who still think, people who are thoughtful. They’re very conservative, I mean, have no doubt about that, but they know fascism when they see it and they didn’t want any part of it. And they responded with a fundamental American patriotism and belief in freedom and liberty and they expressed this at the voting booth and all those MAGA candidates lost.
And, by the way, Alfie got disqualified, of course, because he didn’t fill out his papers properly and so he is off the Wreck and Doug Rankin, who he deposed in 2020, is now going to be head of the Wreck. He’s a very conservative guy, he’s been a conservative Republican, I think, since the womb, but he is not Alfie’s Republican.
So, my hope is that the same kind of revulsion and the same kind of revolt and the same kind of discontent with this kind of fasco-Trumpism is abroad in the land. And Rick will get the percentage of Republicans who have had enough, they will vote for freedom and liberty but, you know, we have to remain vigilant.
Now I want to talk about the “what we do about it” part of this presentation.
Remember something: even after this election, as Rick Wilson pointed out, there are going to be attempts to negate what happens, to overturn the results, and Florida, Lord knows, has a record of passing constitutional amendments that the legislature and the governor then ignore. We’ve got to hold their feet to the fire.
But there are maybe three broad principles that we can follow.
One is vigilance. We’ve got to be on top over everything these people doing. As Dale mentioned, one effort that is truly fascist—and Fascist with a capital “F”—is the attempt to make this a one-party state. And there have been those attempts.
Christian Ziegler, who was chair of the Florida Republican Party before he got deposed in a sex scandal, once said that: “For the Republican Party of Florida the work continues as our job is not done until there are no more Democrats in Florida.”
This is not competition. This is extermination. And that is a very, very bad trend. There was one bill proposed last year that would have decertified the Democratic Party in Florida. It wasn’t serious. It didn’t advance but it shows a mentality and we have to be especially vigilant to that. We have to be a multiparty state because we’re a multiparty society.
Our media plays an essential role in this and I have to say that I have been disappointed by our local media, I don’t think they keep track of these people, they don’t emphasize the political threats that are out there to the degree I wish they would. This is why I started The Paradise Progressive blog, which I hope you’re familiar with, or will be familiar with afterwards. It’s trying to fill the gap that I see in our political reporting from our traditional media. We’ve got a good reporter in Dave Elias, who’s very active on NBC2 but he can’t do it alone. We all have to be our own monitors, own Minute-people to keep track of these kinds of loony ideas like getting rid of fluoride and do it when it’s coming up.
You know, they passed an anti-immigrant law last year. That law went through subcommittee, it went through committee, it went through the legislature in its entirety—and this is a statewide law—and then Ron DeSantis signed it into law and then suddenly the protests start.
I’m sorry, that’s not when you do it. You may be mad about the law but you’ve got to be active when it’s being formulated, when it’s on the table.
That brings us to the second pillar, which is response. You’ve got to respond. Be vigilant and when you see something bad you’ve got to respond.
Here in Collier County that means contacting our Board of Commissioners and even if they don’t listen, even if they vote against it, they need to know there are people who are watching what they do.
There have been statements in the Collier County Commission…[Commissioner] Chris Hall [R-District 2] once said, “something is out there,” he couldn’t understand why there was all this protest against it. It was because he put it out there! It was a loony law that he wanted to do and everybody saw what it was and they protested. And it does have effect. And that also applies to the congressional level and we can get into our congressman some other time.
But you’ve got to be vigilant, responsive and the third pillar is activism.
You’ve always got to be active, it doesn’t end with the election, it doesn’t start with the runup to the election; the day after the election we’re going to have to be active.
As Michelle Obama said to the Democratic National Convention: “Do something!”
Look, none of us are going to take up arms. I’m pretty sure that no matter what happens none of us are going to go out and shoot up a firehouse or something like that.
We all know what the traditional things are: making phone calls, canvassing—which, by the way, is a great exercise. It gets you to meet all your neighbors, talk to people. Writing postcards. All of these are democratic norms.
I want to add another challenge to everybody.
Since social media is now our preferred, most common use of communication, I want to challenge everybody here to reach out to ten people you have never met, never contacted, and don’t know and try to convince them to your point of view whatever that point of view is, if you think that’s important. Ten people you don’t know. You’ve got to get outside of your bubble. You’ve got to talk beyond your friends. Lord knows, there’s plenty of feeds and all sorts of things. There’s all these nice Chinese ladies who want to get to know me, I could talk to them.
You can reach out to people you’ve never talked to and never met and do it on social media. You can do it at home, you can do it at any hour, you can do it unprompted, when you’re relaxing or taking a bath or whatever. But try to reach out to people and that’s really important. It’s especially important for this election.
Now, all my recommendations are based on the premise that we will have a democracy; that our laws will function, that you can do these things, that it’s legal, that it’s protected.
If we lose democracy we lose everything. I think everybody in this room knows it.
Today, as Rick pointed out, is 30 days to the most important election of our lifetimes, of our children’s’ lifetimes and our grandkids’ lifetimes.
I don’t have a grandchild who’s ready to vote yet, but she will be affected by what we do here next month.
It brings up to me what I consider one of the most meaningful elections that ever occurred—and that occurred on September 11th, 2001. All of us in this room remember that day.
It was an election held in the back of an airplane, United Airlines Flight 93
We know what had happened. Al Qaeda hijackers had taken over that plane, killed the pilot and the co-pilot and there was one standing outside the cockpit threatening to blow up the plane with a bomb.
The passengers went into the back and they had to decide what to do. They knew that other planes had hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They didn’t know where they were headed.
And so what did they do? They took a vote. They held an election. They held an election because that’s what we as Americans do.
When we are faced with a decision, when we are faced with a course of action, we take a vote. There was one passenger, Todd Beamer, who said, “OK, let’s roll.” And they voted to try to take back that airplane.
Nobody said the vote was rigged. Nobody said that there had to be a hand count of ballots. Nobody said that there was a secret landslide that no one had seen. And nobody said that they weren’t going to accept the results of that vote. Because that’s not what Americans do, not what real, patriotic Americans do and that’s not what those passengers did on that airplane.
They took a vote, they acted on their decision.
Now, the plane crashed. They fought for that cockpit and ultimately it crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
But by their action they may have saved the United States Capitol. They may have saved the White House. Who knows how many American lives they saved?
Let me tell you, I was on the ground in Washington, DC on 9/11, my wife was working at home, my son was in a high school next to the CIA. We were all saved by those people—as a result of their election.
Now, today, we have hijackers again. We are the passengers in the back of that plane. And these people are trying to take that aircraft into darkness and dictatorship and disaster. And we have got to get control of that aircraft.
And on November 5th we will hold that election and I hope—and I hope that we will all work and I certainly intend to—to make sure that we get that airplane under control and we land it safely in a free democracy.
So, that is one month from today. Each of us has something to do.
The Paradise Progressive 