Seven U.S. Senate Democrats and one independent joined Republicans on Sunday night in advancing legislation to reopen the government and temporarily keep it afloat until the end of January, after a record-breaking shutdown that began Oct. 1.
National Politics
Trump and Congress Continue to Be Paid
Some members of Congress are asking for their salaries to be withheld during the government shutdown, while federal workers on Friday missed their first full paycheck since many operations closed on Oct. 1. With no movement toward a deal to end the shutdown, the House remained on a prolonged break from Capitol Hill, the Senate left for its usual long weekend and President Donald Trump prepared to depart for a trip to China, where he will likely focus much more on foreign policy and tariffs than the funding lapse.
About 750,000 Federal Workers Will Be Furloughed in Shutdown
A government shutdown could have significant economic consequences, though an analysis released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it’s difficult to pinpoint ramifications without knowing the length of a funding lapse or how exactly the Trump administration will try to reshape the federal workforce. Director Phillip L. Swagel wrote in a four-page letter the agency projects about 750,000 federal workers would be furloughed, leading to a $400 million impact per day.
Looking Beyond the Turning Point of Charlie Kirk’s Death to the Soil We’re Tilling for the Next Generation
Charlie Kirk’s assassination feels like more than another entry in America’s long and tragic list of political violence. It feels like a hinge point, writes former School Board member Colleen Conklin. But history suggests scars can be the beginning of strength. If the pattern holds, today’s youth may yet rise to become the next Greatest Generation. Now is the time to cultivate compassion stronger than ideology, courage rooted in empathy, the ability to separate people from their ideas. What then grows could astonish us.
Randy Fine Wants to Federalize Princess Place, Pellicer Creek and 4.2% of Florida for ‘Massive Increase’ in Tourism
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, whose district includes Flagler County, wants to federalize Pellicer Creek, Princess Place, Crescent Lake, Lake Disston and Haw Creek Preserve, all of which are in Flagler County in whole or in part. In all, he wants to federalize 1.8 million acres or 2,800 square miles of Florida land–4.2 percent of the state’s land mass–between Jacksonville, Gainesville Orlando and Daytona Beach into what he would call Florida Springs National Park.
Ashley Moody Supports Using Warships to Stem Venezuelan Drug Trade
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody is throwing her support behind President Donald Trump and his move to stem the flow of drugs coming to America from Venezuela. Moody said she is backing Trump’s decision to send U.S. warships to the waters around Venezuela to block the drug trade, particularly fentanyl, from reaching the shores of the United States. The Republican said Trump and the passage of the HALT Fentanyl Act are already starting to reverse the surge in drug overdose deaths in America.
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine Tells Palm Coast During Sewer Plant Visit: Utility Infrastructure Is Primarily Your Responsibility
U.S. Rep Randy Fine, on a whirlwind tour of Flagler County that included an ATV trip along its battered beaches and an afternoon meet-and-greet at the Chamber of Commerce, this morning visited what has become a necessary stop in Palm Coast’s infrastructure calvary: the sloshing tanks and purifying basins of Waste Water Treatment 1. Costly as the expansion and modernization of the plant is to Palm Coast, he said utility infrastructure is primarily the city’s responsibility, not the federal government’s.
The Eugenics of the Big Beautiful Bill
Withdrawing or making Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage more restrictive will cost 51,000 lives a year by 2034. It’s one way to reduce the government’s liability for lives on the dole. It is eugenics by other means.
Florida’s Attorney General Defies Long Guns Ban for Under-21
James Uthmeier, appointed to serve as the state’s attorney general by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year, announced in March that he and the governor believe the law is unconstitutional, saying that if “the NRA decides to seek further review at SCOTUS, I am directing my office not to defend this law.”
Administration Releasing Billions in Federal Education Funding
To Flagler County Schools’ relief, the Trump administration said Friday it’ll soon release billions in Education Department funding that has been frozen for weeks, delaying disbursements to K-12 schools throughout the country. The funding — which goes toward migrant education, English-language learning and other programs — was supposed to go out before July 1, but the administration informed schools just one day before that it was instead holding onto $6.8 billion while staff conducted a review. Members of both parties in Congress objected to the move.
ICE Arrests in Florida of Migrants Without Criminal Records Surged 450% in June
Since the start of the second Trump administration, ICE has carried out more than 10,818 arrests in Florida, up from 3,496 in the same period last year. But in June, the largest share of arrests, 36%, were of people the federal government labeled as having no criminal history in the country, a 457% increase from June 2024.
Federal Funding for PBS and NPR Nears Fadeout
The U.S. House cleared legislation just after midnight Friday that will cancel $9 billion in previously approved spending for public broadcasting and foreign aid, marking only the second time in more than three decades Congress has approved a presidential rescissions request.
School Board’s Derek Barrs Glides Through Senate Committee Hearing’s Grandstanding Members Unscathed
Navigating a few ideologically choppy waters as senators dueled over deregulation and political interference, Flagler County School Board member Derek Barrs on Wednesday cleared the main hurdle to his presidential nomination to lead the Transportation Department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration as he appeared for a nomination hearing before the U.S. Senate Transportation Committee.
Lawmakers Describe ‘Disturbing, Vile Conditions’ at Everglades Migrant Prison
U.S. Democratic representatives characterized the state-run migrant prison in the Everglades as a cruel and wasteful political stunt following a guided tour Saturday. “There are really disturbing, vile conditions, and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The South Florida Democrat said 32 men slept in each of the cages with bed bunks and three sinks attached to the toilets. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced hundreds of people started arriving on July 2.
The Texas Flood Is a Preview of the Chaos to Come
The rapid onset of disruptive climate change — driven by the burning of oil, gasoline and coal — is making disasters like this one more common, more deadly and far more costly to Americans, even as the federal government is running away from the policies and research that might begin to address it.
As Texas Flood Death Toll Passes 50, Questions Arise Over Adequate Warnings and NWS Staffing
Catastrophic flooding that has claimed more than 50 lives in Texas came amid concerns about staffing levels at the NWS, after the Trump administration fired hundreds of meteorologists this year as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The NWS Austin/San Antonio office’s warning coordination meteorologist announced in April that he was retiring early due to the funding cuts, leading to speculation that vacancies could have impacted forecasters’ response.
DeSantis Seizes Land in Everglades to Open ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ Mass Migrant Detention Center
Florida started this week to build a temporary detention center in the Florida Everglades for undocumented immigrants arrested by state police and federal immigration authorities. Gov. Ron DeSantis is using emergency powers to take control of the facility after his administration offered to buy the land from the county. According to the governor’s office, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava offered what DeSantis’ office called an “unreasonable” price tag for the state to buy the county land, $190 million.
This Will Not End Well
We’ve been here before. It’s never ended well. It’s never ended, period. A few bunker-busters aren’t about to end it either, whether they have Fordow’s Mount Doom in the bag or not. The opposite always happens in the Middle East the moment Israel and the United States substitute barbarism for diplomacy. Always. There’s not been a single exception to the rule since 1956, the last time the United States intervened to stop Israeli aggression on a neighbor.
Four ‘No Kings’ Protests of Trump’s Authoritarian Swerve Draw Upward of 1,000 in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach
Demonstrators by the hundreds in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach this morning peacefully but loudly, festively and–for Flagler County–massively transformed major intersections, a bridge overpass and a 1,000-ft. stretch of State Road 100 in Palm Coast into the largest anti-Trump protests to date. The size of the protests surprised even organizers and frequent participants, two of whom, after attending every protest this year on State Road 100, said today’s was more than double any previous one.
Federal Funding Cut Could Close Hundreds of Planned Parenthood Clinics
If the budget reconciliation package before the U.S. Senate becomes law in the coming weeks, reproductive health advocates say the provision that would cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood clinics could serve as a backdoor nationwide abortion ban, eliminating access to 1 in 4 abortion providers.
Gutting USAID Is Musk’s Deadliest Legacy
By making disease-stemming drugs, clean water, and food available to millions, USAID has probably saved more lives worldwide than any entity in history. Since 2000, USAID’s programs have prevented the deaths of 58 million people from tuberculosis, 25 million from HIV/AIDS, and over 11 million from malaria. It’s given 70 million people access to safe drinking water and, working in concert with global vaccine initiatives, helped to nearly eradicate polio. All that is getting demolished.
Energy Association Warns Florida Could Lose Up to 21,800 Solar Jobs If President’s Tax Bill Is Enacted
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says Florida could lose potentially up to 21,800 solar and storage jobs if the current bill isn’t altered by the U.S. Senate before making its way to the president’s desk and signed into law.
GOP Bill Would Kick More Than 3 Million Off Food Stamps and Shift $14 Billion In Costs to States
The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats have argued the bill, which the House passed, 215-214 early Thursday without any Democrats in support, would cut programs for the needy to fund tax breaks for high earners.
Randy Fine Calls 1 Million Gazans Incestuous ‘Idiots’ as He Slightly Walks Back ‘Nuke’ Comment
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, whose district includes all of Flagler County, attacked people who accused him of wanting to “nuke” Gaza as idiots and said those are probably from Gaza, where he claimed half the population is incestuously married and therefore prone to being idiots. He also accused Tucker Carlson–who suggested that Fine should seek help–of taking “Muslim terrorist money” and of being bought off by Qatar.
Why the Far Right Fabricated the Myth of a Migrant ‘Invasion’
The current administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.
NOAA Cuts Are Putting Our Coastal Communities At Risk
For Americans on the Gulf or Atlantic coasts, the daily weather forecast always comes with a constant thrum of worry — any small disturbance in the Atlantic has the potential to evolve into a major storm. And as hurricane season gets underway, the palace intrigue, staffing cuts at NOAA, and general upheaval of national leadership could have dire effects for people on these coasts.
Mike Waltz Out as National Security Adviser, In as UN Ambassador
Mike Waltz, a former Florida congressman [who represented Flagler County] and became known for sharing U.S. plans to strike Yemen on a Signal group chat, was out as White House national security adviser on Thursday. President Donald Trump announced he will instead nominate Waltz to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position that requires U.S. Senate confirmation.
Bill Changing Gulf of Mexico’s Name in All Florida Documents and Textbooks Goes to DeSantis
The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill that would change dozens of state laws to carry out President Donald Trump’s directive that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America. The Senate also gave a final sign-off to a bill that would require the name change to start being reflected in materials at state agencies and schools.
Florida’s No-Show Republicans Are Hiding From Voters’ Anger
Something is changing. People are angry, auto-calling their representatives, making signs, demonstrating and showing up at town halls. But Republican representatives don’t show up, not any more. They don’t like getting booed. They don’t like facing outraged citizens. A few tried holding town halls. Did not go well. But hey, at least they actually held town halls. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of Florida Republicans.
Judge Orders Return of Maryland Man Wrongly Deported to El Salvador Prison
A federal judge in Maryland Friday ordered the Trump administration to return a national from El Salvador by April 7 who was erroneously deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, despite an order blocking such removal. Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on social media, without evidence, that Abrego Garcia was a convicted member of the MS-13 gang and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt this week echoed Vance.
Trump Targets China, U.S. Allies and Others with Sweeping and Steep New Tariffs
The president unveiled a baseline 10% levy on all international imports, plus what he described as additional “kind” and “discounted” tariff rates that will increase but not match the rates other countries apply to American imports. The levies, effective at midnight, will hit U.S. industries from agriculture to manufacturing to fashion. U.S. tariffs will reach 34% on imports from China, 46% on products from Vietnam and 20% on European Union imports, including beer and wine.
Trump Names Derek Barrs to Transportation Department Post; He Will Leave Flagler School Board
Less than five months after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to a Flagler County School Board seat, where his presence helped restore a level of stability that had been lacking for two years, Derek Barrs will almost certainly leave the board for an appointment as administrator to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Is Mike Waltz Out of His Depth? Ex-Flagler Congressman May Have Violated Espionage Act with Leak
Mike Waltz, the former congressman representing Flagler County and the 6th Congressional District, whom Donald Trump tapped as his national security adviser, is at the center of the gravest scandal facing an administration embroiled in controversies since its first day, 64 days ago. Waltz may have violated provisions of the Espionage Act that control national defense information.
Stetson Survey Finds Puerto Rico and D.C. Get Statehood Support, Canada and Greenland Do Not
With the current debate over U.S. expansion, a new survey by the Center for Public Opinion Research (CPOR) at Stetson University finds that Americans remain deeply divided on the prospect of adding a 51st state if it’s not Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C.
State of the Monarch
If there are any limits to a president’s power, it wasn’t evident from Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025. When the Constitution was written, many people – from those who drafted the document to those who read it – believed that endowing the president with such powers was dangerous. The danger is here.
Project 2025 Is Trump’s Blueprint for Ending Health Care As We Know It
The rapid-fire adoption of many of Project 2025’s objectives indicates that Trump acolytes — many of its contributors were veterans of his first term, and some have joined his second administration — have for years quietly laid the groundwork to disrupt the national health system. That runs counter to Trump’s insistence on the campaign trail, after Democrats made Project 2025 a potent attack line, that he was ignorant of the document.
Florida Court Clears Way for Trump Lawsuit Against Pulitzer Board Over Russian Interference Articles
A Florida appeals court Wednesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to pursue a defamation lawsuit against Pulitzer Prize board members in a dispute rooted in the organization awarding a prize to The New York Times and The Washington Post for reporting about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Federal Judge Blocks ‘Catastrophic’ Cut to NIH Grants
A federal judge on Monday blocked the National Institutes of Health from changing the percentage that universities and medical schools pay in facilities and administrative costs, blocking a decision that was rebuked by academic institutions throughout the country and members of Congress. Judge Angel Kelley of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts entered the brief, two-page order, which “shall remain in effect until further order of this Court.” Kelley set an in-person hearing date for Feb. 21.
Federal Office on Violence Against Women Removes Grant Opportunities from Website
The Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) has removed from its website all information on current funding opportunities and directs visitors not to finalize any applications. This adds to the fear of nonprofits that work to help victims of gender-based violence [like Flagler County’s Family Life Center] that a major funding source may dry up.
A History of Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court
Birthright citizenship was explicitly added to the Constitution in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted following the Civil War. The United States is one of roughly 30 countries, including neighboring Canada and Mexico, that offer automatic citizenship to everyone born there. There is a “strong likelihood” that the challengers of a presidential executive order ending birthright citizenship “will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment” to the Constitution.
Trump Proposes a Crime Against Humanity in Gaza
Trump’s proposal to ethnic-cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, transfer them to Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries, and apparently annex Gaza’s 141 square miles (about the size of Palm Coast and the barrier island combined) to the United States, or at least rezone it as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” would be a crime against humanity on the scale of Stalin’s internal deportations and land expropriations of the 1930s and 40s.
Education Department Kills Biden’s Title IX Protections Against Gender-Based Discrimination
The U.S. Department of Education said Friday it is scrapping a Biden administration rule about gender-based discrimination in education programs. The department will use a previous rule about enforcement of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law that bars discrimination in education programs based on sex. In 2020, the Flagler County School Board revised a policy that added “gender identity” to the list of explicit protections in the school district’s anti-discrimination policy. That wording may now be in question.
How Aristotle Explains Trump’s Speeches
With half of the US electorate on his side, Trump’s chaotic speaking style is clearly no barrier to success. If his public appearances are indeed so shambolic, why do they continue to fire up his supporters, attract new ones–and give him the victory? Aristotle would have understood, and explained it this way.
Biden Commutes Nearly All Federal Death Sentences
President Joe Biden commuted the sentences on Monday of 37 death row inmates, citing his conscience as a force behind the decision. He also left the death sentences unchanged for three men charged with hate-motivated mass shootings and terrorism.
How Liberals Lost Comedy, and Helped Trump Win
Trump’s success with comedy is a result of the new relationship between digital media and the business of joking. For decades, liberals were thought to hold a monopoly on comedy. Moreover, there was little money to be made in comedy acts devoted to right-wing politics. Since 2016, however, a new crop of right-wing comedians has taken to digital platforms and algorithmically driven audience targeting in order to change this reality.
Why Americans Are Furious With Health Insurance CEOs
Over 8,000 Americans die every day, many unnecessarily. The United States still does not have in place a national health care system that guarantees everyone adequate medical attention. Some 25 percent of Americans have people in their family who have had to delay medical treatment for a serious illness because they couldn’t afford the care. Some 79 percent of America’s nurses, for their part, say they’re working in inadequately staffed health facilities.
Ex-Trump Adviser Michael Flynn Loses Defamation Suit Against Man Who Called Him ‘Putin Employee’
A state appeals court upheld a decision dismissing a defamation lawsuit that former Trump administration national-security adviser Michael Flynn filed against Rick Wilson, a political strategist and key player in the “Never Trump” movement. Wilson referred to Flynn in a 2022 tweet as “Putin employee Mike Flynn” and in 2023 retweeted “FYI, Mike Flynn is Q.”
Ron DeSantis Back-Up Defense Secretary If Hegseth Stumbles Out?
The President-elect’s stated commitment to Hegseth comes as Florida’s Governor is seen as a better bet on a prediction market. Ron DeSantis led the field Friday morning on Polymarket, but had fallen back by Saturday. Trump and DeSantis are attending the Dec. 15 Army-Navy football game, deepening the intrigue.
RFK Factor: An Unwelcome, Possible Return of Measles, Whooping Cough, and Worse
After backlash against public health interventions culminated in President-elect Donald Trump’s nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the country’s best-known anti-vaccine activist, as its top health official, infectious disease and public health experts and vaccine advocates say a confluence of factors could cause renewed, deadly epidemics of measles, whooping cough, and meningitis, or even polio.
Banning Birthright Citizenship Makes Newborns Criminals in Their Crib
Those who don’t like the idea that birth on American territory automatically grants you the gift of American citizenship have started to parse the words of the 14th Amendment. Conservative attempts to dismantle well over a century of constitutional precedent is dishonest, and untenable.