By Diane Roberts
Floridians are big mad.
Not all 20-odd million of us, of course: We tend to be politically soporific, occasionally becoming passionate over potholes or maybe a too-short grouper fishing season, but preferring to keep reality at arm’s length.
Still, something is changing. People are angry, auto-calling their representatives, making signs, demonstrating and showing up at town halls.
MAGAs will tell you these are nothing but a bunch of disgruntled Democrats, but I’ll bet cash money a good number of those veterans protesting silently outside Tallahassee City Hall last week usually vote Republican.
And I’ll bet a decent number, frightened and frustrated over President Musk’s scorched-earth attacks on the Department of Education, NOAA, USAID, etc. (it’s a terrifyingly long list), didn’t vote at all in 2024.
I overheard a couple of them talking about it during a recent town hall in Tallahassee. They both said they didn’t like either candidate: Harris was too pro-Israel, Trump was good at business (highly debatable) but a terrible person, and until now they never really thought it mattered who got elected.
Now they know.
The town hall was organized by the Democratic Party of Leon County, hoping to get our congressman to come and talk to us, his constituents.
Rep. Neal Dunn was invited. He never even responded. He certainly didn’t show up.
Republicans 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.
Maybe they’re huddled together in an undisclosed location.
I doubt anyone expected to see either of our senators: Ashley Moody remains a MAGA acolyte, while Rick Scott held a telephone town hall once, but that was back during the pandemic.
Invisibility
Lawmaker invisibility hasn’t stopped constituents from arranging meetings and imploring these politicians — who allegedly work for them — to come and listen.
Tampa Bay voters put on a town hall in Clearwater on March 15 in Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s district.
She was, unsurprisingly, absent. Undeterred, a large crowd addressed a cut-out of her.
Some told the cardboard Luna they feared DOGE would wreck Social Security.
One lady, whose husband was fired from the U.S. Geological Survey in DOGE’s senseless purges, said, “I’ve called and I have emailed and heard nothing from you.”
Maybe Luna’s too busy lobbying to carve Trump’s face on Mt. Rushmore.
Luna doesn’t support Ukraine, and pitched a little hissy fit when Democrats waved the blue and yellow flag in the House, snapping, “Put those damn flags away!”
But by God, she’s determined to get to the bottom of the great JFK assassination cover-up, demanding the doctors who treated JFK in Dallas and members of the Warren Commission who investigated it appear before Congress.
Unfortunately for her and for the CIA/Cuba/KGB/Space Aliens conspiracy theorists, all those people are quite dead.
No-show
Neal Dunn, last week’s no-show, is a urologist from Panama City and is, like Luna, one of the state’s least impressive members of Congress.
He’s done absolutely nothing of note, unless you count his proposed resolution to “Protect American Businesses from Onerous Refrigeration Regulations.”
You’d think he might have bothered to attend a room of 500+ voters, eager to hear from him.
It wouldn’t have been much of an inconvenience, either: According to his website, he was in Tallahassee that morning, hosting an event for young people who might want to attend one of the service academies.
That event ended at 11 a.m.; the town hall started at 11 a.m.; the distance from City Hall to the American Legion Hall is 1.8 miles.
It would have taken him a solid five or six minutes to drive there.
Concerns
The standing-room-only audience created a list of what they’d like to talk about: the unelected Musk, DOGE’s trashing of government services, Ukraine, health care, reproductive rights, our endangered planet, our endangered entitlement programs, and our endangered democracy.
A panel of worthies, including a county commissioner, a city commissioner, legendary activist Karen Woodall, and former Democratic congressman Alan Boyd, tried to address people’s issues.
It wasn’t smooth sailing.
Many were thoroughly annoyed with the good souls on the panel as well as the minority party in Washington.
Democrats are good at lamenting, hand-wringing, and doom-predicting — all reasonable responses to the atrocities visited upon the country by President Musk and his henchpersons.
They just don’t seem to have much in the way of answers.
One guy stood up and yelled, “What’s the solution? I think we know the problem!”
Attack on universities
Sentient Americans understand the United States is being dismantled, hurled into a Dumpster, and set on fire.
Rep. Dunn’s district contains six institutions of higher education. All receive federal funds.
If DOGE gets its way and slashes the budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, what will become of research at FSU, FAMU, and other colleges and universities?
FSU alone could lose $65 million.
That would be a direct hit on the College of Medicine, all the science departments, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — the largest and most important magnet lab in the world.
It conducts experiments in (among other things) superconductivity, critical to efficient and sustainable energy sources.
If that money goes away, it won’t just be scientific research that suffers: There will be a knock-on effect, harming the whole university.
The best professors will leave; the best students won’t enroll; lots of people will be laid off.
What will happen to the hundreds of federal jobs at Tyndall Air Force Base at the western end of Rep. Dunn’s territory? How about the USDA Farm Service office in Madison at the eastern end?
Florida is home to 100,000 federal employees, most of them represented by Republicans.
How about DOGE’s decimating NOAA and the National Weather Service? Florida’s entire Democratic congressional delegation warned that this was a Very Bad Idea.
No Republicans signed onto their letter.
Remember Michael?
Maybe Dunn thinks Florida doesn’t need hurricane forecasters; maybe he’s forgotten what Hurricane Michael did to his district in 2018.
Without NWS it would have been even worse.
What would Dunn — or any of Florida’s senators and representatives— say to the 400 statewide who’ve lost their jobs with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? Or the untold numbers who’ll soon be sacked by the Veterans Administration?
Dunn is a veteran himself, but he’s pretty offhand about their concerns. It’s only 20 “in the region” (whatever than means — VA jobs, maybe?
“This is not a massacre,” he said.
Maybe not to him, but the veterans protesting outside his recent event at Gulf Coast State College weren’t impressed: “There’s nowhere in the Constitution that what is going on with DOGE and Elon Musk is appropriate,” one told WJHG TV.
That’s putting it mildly.
But the Constitution doesn’t seem to matter to DOGE, President Musk, Trump, or the Republican-controlled Congress.
Maybe it will mean something to the Supreme Court.
What do you say, Rep. Dunn?
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Jackson says
Soon they’ll need to isolate themselves entirely from voters. When that happens we’ll be taxed without representation (sound familiar?). For their own safety they will need to withdraw into some form of protection.
Pogo says
@Diane Roberts
Amen.
I’m a little surprised you didn’t mention public broadcasting and the arts and humanities among victims of the senseless, vicious, DOGE destruction; but, as you say, the list amounts to almost everything.
On this Sunday, as we careen towards Skid Row, well on the way to hell: the trump supporters, and other scum, trolling this site reminded me:
“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”
— Proverbs 26:11, King James Version
Lol says
This is written by a typical NPR reporter whose pay check use to come from the taxpayer. Stop your outrage and anyone who is crying is a Dem so let them cry. These cuts were needed as the government was never designed to be a business and the Dems made it this way thru years of abuse, waste and fraud. They are just getting caught and called out ! Don’t care about lost government jobs, in real life we get fired and move on to something else. Working from home and you wonder why they are getting rid of these jobs smh.
The party is over suck it up and take it ! Stop crying about social security also it was going to be broke in 10 years. Trump already said no changes for the current people but our kids they have to change it. Who cares about those money grubbing colleges with endowment’s, let them use there own money !!! There is no Dem movement as its the same whiners lining up and they learned nothing from the last election. Until the Dems come back center nothing will change ! Those protest don’t work in an era of social media they just look good on TV !!!
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Ah, so those famed alpha males are really just a punch of pussies, big surprise. The party of loudmouthed cowards.
Atwp says
Some voters think an African American woman, don’t have the stuff to run a country. Most voted for Trump, the reality is many know they made a mistake. I say to those people live with it, Trump is sending this country into a bad recession. They got what they voted for. Had Harris won the election, people who lost their jobs would still have a job. Trump’s bad decisions are hurting the world, am very glad Republicans are getting hurt too. Is Trump the President or Musk? Is Musk a human being?
Atwp says
Tennessee is flooding, has Trump, Vance or Musk went to visit their hurting and dying voters? Am sorry about the lost of life. By the way, FEMA will not be there to help the poor Republican voters. Time will show how much the Republican leaders like their voters.
Fred flinstone says
Well they have committed treason and opened concentration camps! Y’all feeling liberated yet? Lololol enjoy having the most corrupt and ignorant leader in history he not only steals money from kids cancer charities he eliminates funding for kids cancer research. It was the Christian thing to do. Great Depression 2.0 is gonna big for the oligarchs! While your kids may starve the billionaires will be able to buy entire cities and them hoarding even more money is what’s truly important in this place.
JimboXYZ says
Diane Roberts won’t own the fact that any of the disgruntled voters have been paying Biden-Harris inflation for 4 years. I can go buy anything in Palm Coast today & still not pay the ceiling of what Biden-Harris inflation ever was during the last year alone. Gasoline, eggs, groceries, healthcare, insurance for the car the house & whatever else. Gas was $ 3.30/gallon at the pumps for 87 octane. I was paying that & more under Biden-Harris just last year. There was even a point when it was closer to $ 4/gallon. The $5.80/dozen eggs, that was happening under Biden-Harris post Nov 2024 election day. And we’ve all seen the DOGE item where USAID sent billions to Stacey Abrams to spend in 21 days. I’m on record that it was going to at least take 4 years to reverse Biden-Harris Bidenomics, if anyone could even do that at all. And re-electing Biden-Harris-Walz was going to be 4 more years of what we saw for the 1st 4 years. I get it, the Republican swamp is no better than the Democrat swamp. Plenty of money to sue/litigate to protect the waste, fraud & abuse that has been going on far too long. The Stock Market drop, notice that took the hit, yet prices still remain Biden inflationary high with fears that the tariffs will make prices go up even higher. Corporations aren’t letting the gouging that has been going on for 4 years go very easily. Corporations made record profits under Biden-Harris. Yet all we hear is how Trump is giving billionaires even more ? What happened under Biden-Harris was criminal, yet instead of focusing on gouging, Biden-Harris did nothing about that. Covid should’ve been handled like gouging post hurricane. Instead supply shortages was the excuse, even though the hiring & production was ramping up. Shame falls on the American Corporations, the Chinese were the only one’s going back to work & keeping prices in line. And all that happened under Biden-Harris.
Just me, but I see the stock market rebounding over months, the Corporations need to lower stock prices enough to get more investment dollars, heaven forbid they apply the record profits they made under Biden-Harris for the future growth ? What happened under Biden-Harris became the new normal for economics. When Harris said “We aren’t going back.” She was right about that, the DC Swamp, the Corporate lobby, all of it is Biden-Harris level inflation. Biden-Harris did this to us all. Until someone makes penalizes that inflationary gouging, there’s no reason for the one’s gouging to alter the behavior patterns, it’s being rewarded & has been for 4 years.
Skibum says
I hope they continue to slither away into the shadows, hiding their faces from their own constituents because it helps amplify their cowardice, their spineless betrayal of the positions they hold, and the complete abdication of their oaths to serve the public! People are rightly PISSED OFF, and the citizens are getting more and more PISSED OFF as the days go by and they witness the necessary services of government ripped apart, their savings and investments that they worked so hard to accumulate disappearing with the steep decline in the stock market due to drumph’s tariff tax. People have already had more than enough of that rancid musk stench that has permeated through our federal government infrastructure, costing many thousands of dedicated public servants their jobs and closing government agencies that are depended on by veterans, retirees, the disabled, schools in every state, etc. And while the very fabric of our government’s services are systematically being destroyed by the sycophant autistic billionaire who doesn’t need any of them to survive, he continues to leech money from them, millions and millions of taxpayer dollars worth of government contracts for his own personal companies. And all of this grift, this corruption, this theft right out of the pockets of those who need the government’s services much more than musk or the felon grifter in the WH goes on in plain sight of the elected gop congress who have the power to put a stop to it if it weren’t for the fact that they are just a bunch of spineless, morally bankrupt pieces of shit that, so far, just avert their eyes and close their ears to the protests, the complaints, and the suffering of their constituents. Well, I think that is already changing conservative voters’ minds about their “beloved” reps in congress, and the road ahead will get even bumpier for congress and the felon in the WH, who by the way, spends his days going from one of his golf clubs to another, swinging his golf club with abandon while Americans stress over what is happening to this nation’s economy and how they will be able to afford the necessities as the tariff TAX is implemented. The day of reconning IS COMING!
Marlee says
and…the HandsOff protests were everywhere! There were over 200+ in Palm Coast with
a positive response from the public!
Remember these no-shows when you vote!
Marlee says
and……the HandsOff protests were all over the Country and European cities.
We had over 200 at the Palm Coast protest with a total positive response from the public.
Remember these no-shows when you vote!
richard santomassino says
All you MAGAs in Flagler county are sure quiet. Listen, did you hear that pin drop? Many of you, at the end of dunderhead’s 4 years are going to be in horrible shape. I wish I could show you some sympathy, but the personnel in that department have been fired.
Laurel says
Fall on your knees to all powerful Oz Trump, oh, and Chainsaw Musk, oh, and Looney Loomer. It doesn’t matter that your Oz Trump is a felon, multiple times. It doesn’t matter he is an adjudicated rapist. It doesn’t matter he brags about sexually assaulting women. It doesn’t matter he puts out full page ads to kill innocent people. It doesn’t matter he mocks a man with palsy. It doesn’t matter he separates children from their parents without a trail to bring them back together. It doesn’t matter he cannot figure out why the military doesn’t shoot protestors. It doesn’t matter he calls veterans “suckers and losers.” It doesn’t matter he hung out with sex traffickers of teenage girls. It doesn’t matter he fires Inspector Generals, then creates bitcoins that cannot be traced and can be used as dark money. It doesn’t matter he fires four star generals on the advice of lunatics. It doesn’t matter he accepts millions of dollars for his adviser to buy a position in the White House. It doesn’t matter he brings Russian reporters to the White House while banning U. S. reporters. It doesn’t matter he disses our allies and supports our enemies. It doesn’t matter that he lies continually with no conscience whatsoever. Just fall on your knees. He’s here to save you.
Fall on your knees, Republican politicians. When the masses realize the scam. Just run and hide. Then call your constituents the problem. You had better, or Oz Trump, will send his loyalists, with their doorknocker crosses, to condemn you. Ruin your careers. Shutter your businesses. Extortionism, it is now the American way. Forget about all the shouting of “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” you howled about endlessly. Americans don’t need their jobs. Cut those jobs and just clam up. Check your spines at the door, and fall on your knees. He’s here to save you.
Fall on your knees, supporters. Your messiah, and his un-elected incompetents are in charge. Just be patient, the mystery plan is in place. Reducing child food programs is part of the plan. Reducing Meals on Wheels is part of the plan. Cutting American jobs is part of the plan. Not listening to you is part of the plan. Lying about Haitians eating pets is part of the plan. Recession is part of the plan. Novocain of the brain is part of the plan. Tanking the market is part of the plan, but don’t worry, he’s thinking about you while playing golf with the Saudis. It’s just a little pain. Just fall on your knees…
…or don’t!
Stand up, and kick his selfish, bullshit weaving, ally repulsing, mystery *plan* ass out of the White House! Make him take his golf clubs, and go home, and not to Florida! Maybe El Salvador, or some place surrounded by big water.
Sherry says
Suddenly the usual Maga suspects are strangely quiet. Were they recently “shocked/stupefied/stunned” into silence when they saw their latest 401K or IRA statement? Were they recently “dismayed/disgusted/disappointed” after returning from Publix and looking at their cash register receipt? Were they recently aggravated/angry/astonished when they were put on a 20 minute hold when calling Social Security for one simple question?
Hummmmmm. . . .
Sherry says
Here’s a list of some my favorite signs from the amazing protest I marched in on Saturday. . . one where 1,200 people “Signed Up”, BUT almost 5,000 “Showed Up”!
1. Trump’s So Far Up Putin’s Ass He Can See Sarah Palin’s House
2. Orange Lies Matter
3. DEI or DIE
4. VETS Were There For You Now Be There For Them
5. TERRORISTS Trump and Musk Should Be in Jail
6. A pix of trump . . . Does this ASS Make My Country Look Smaller?
Do ya think Republicans as well as Democrats are “Pissed Off”??? You Bet Your Sweet Ass!
NJ says
Finally this Marxist Supporter wrote something that makes Common Sense: Our Republican Congressman and Senators are REFUSING to have Town Hall Meetings to Hear the NEEDS of WE the People who they were ELECTED to Represent! WHY? FL-6 had a “Foxnews War Hero” who was AFRAID to have Town Hall Meetings, yet now he is Trump’s NSA! WHY? DEMAND Town Hall Meetings or DEMAND that they RESIGN! America First means the return to American Values of 1776 and True Conservative Republicans DEMAND Real Town Hall Meetings-NOW!
Deborah Coffey says
No comments? 7,000,000 protesters turned out in Naples, Florida for “Hands Off” rally…in a county that Trump won by 33%. Apparently, enough is enough.