To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. Northwest winds around 5 mph, becoming northeast in the afternoon. Thursday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Patchy fog after midnight. Lows in the upper 50s. East winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach, to finish up the agenda from last Thursday’s meeting, which ran very long. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting, 6 p.m. in the main conference room at the GTMNERR Marineland, 9741 N Oceanshore Boulevard, St. Augustine. See the town’s website here.
Model Yacht Races in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library, 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach. It’s where the wild things are: Hop on for stories and songs with Miss Doris.
The Palm Coast Democratic Club holds an “After Dark” Recap Meeting (previous daytime business meeting) at 6 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month to accommodate working Democrats. We will meet at the Flagler Democratic Party Headquarters in City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214, Palm Coast. Hope you will join us. This gathering is open to the public at no charge. No advance arrangements are necessary. Call (386) 283-4883 for best directions or (561)-235-2065 for more information.
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry: Flagler Beach United Methodist Church‘s food pantry is open today from 9:30 a.m. to noon at 1500 S. Daytona Ave, Flagler Beach. The church’s mission is to provide nourishment and support in a welcoming, respectful environment. To find us, please turn at the corner of 15 Street and S. Daytona Ave, pull into the grass parking area and enter the green door.
Notably: We had a surprise in felony court Wednesday. “Hey Mr. DuPont,” went Judge Nichols toward the end of the pre-trial cattle call. Mr. DuPont, of course. Could it be? A man with a familiar bald pate and unfamiliar shades–shades? in front of the judge?–walked up. Sure enough, it was Scott DuPont, the judge disgraced a few years ago from the Flagler County courthouse and the Putnam courthouse (which then-Chief Judge Zambrano ordered him to clear out in a scalding letter), before the Supreme Court tore into him over his behavior in and out of court. He was exiled from the bench and banned from returning for at least a set number of years, though he ran for a seat again in 2024–and was booted off the ballot. Naturally, Anthony Sabatini, who represented our own Mayor Norris in his own bouts of misbehaving arrogance, represented him. No doubt DuPont will run again as soon as he gets the chance. He was all business Wednesday but for those shades, which had third-degree attempted coolness written all over them (no such crime in this state), though who are we to judge the former judge. He may well have been prescribed the shades. History gets bright at the courthouse. He was representing Anthony Orlando, a 32-year-old Palm Coast man, pleading to four counts of masturbating in front of little children showering at Jungle Hut Road park in the Hammock. He got three years in prison and 10 years on sex-offender probation. “So let me say this, you have a very experienced lawyer, and he knows what he’s doing,” Nichols told him. Orlando could have been designated a prison releasee reoffender, slamming him with 15 years in prison, day for day, if he contested. But the cops had his DNA (he’d given himself a happy ending in that park), they had surveillance video, and they had a brood of witness statements. DuPont had no other business before the court.
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
December 2025
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Joint Workshop of Local Governments
Palm Coast Council and County Commission Joint Workshop on Animal Control
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
We have all kinds of aggressive impulses, and also creative impulses, which society forbids us to indulge, and the alternatives that it supplies in the shape of football matches and all-in wrestling are hardly adequate. Anyone who hopes that in time it may be possible to abolish war should give serious thought to the problem of satisfying harmlessly the instincts that we inherit from long generations of savages. For my part I find a sufficient outlet in detective stories, where I alternatively identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but I know there are those to whom this vicarious outlet is too mild, and for them something stronger should be provided.
—Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual (1937).
Laurel says
I believe that if we really want change, if we really want the government, and politicians, to listen to us, we need to change ourselves. Republicans not happy with your current party, Democrats not happy with your those representing you, change to Independents! Can you imagine the shock? No longer will the politicians be able to manipulate us. They will try, but they will no longer be able to predict our reactions. Dividing us will be harder. They would have to listen! They’re worried about Independents now!
Consider it. We, as Independents, can compromise more, can accomplish more, and for the first time in ages, be listened to. This is good because, really, we want the same things. We’re being distracted with petty stuff, not real problem solving. The foolishness going on now, is not governing We the People, it’s using us.
Become Independent. Fox Entertainment, CNN, Newsmax and MSNBC won’t know whether to sh*t or go blind! Take back the power! Can you imagine? One big tribe, not two warring tribes? Then, we can focus on the economy, for all of us, not just for the 1% or the 10%. You, and your warring family, will all be the same Non Party Affiliation. Amazing! No one can predict how we will vote. We can forgive each other. We can let go of the party that’s not supporting us in our every day problems.
A Republican and Democratic nightmare. Power to the People!
Skibum says
I think you are a very smart cookie, Laurel! The political polarization has been getting worse each year, and even horrible things happening in our society like the sexual abuse and trafficking of young girls by a predator and his unnamed, wealthy and powerful co-conspirators has become sort of a back and forth political football between politicians instead of focusing on and prioritizing the victims and the trauma they went through.
I extracted myself from the Republican Party many years ago when I realized what that political party idolized didn’t match up with my values. I have been becoming more and more disillusioned with many in the Democratic Party more recently after seeing the focus of elected officials going off the rails as well, and I made the decision months ago to become an Independent. There are pros and cons about doing what I did, but I believe, like you, if the two major political parties realize how many voters from either end of the spectrum are identifying as Independent, that can really make a difference and refocus on what is important as well as what is broken in our national political system.
Pogo says
@A bigger picture
Pogo says
@Bare Naked Trump Crime — All The Time
…from the criminal who has never stopped campaigning. Or begun governing.
Why — and who profits?
“NEW YORK (AP) — President Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Wednesday, using a legal maneuver to keep his budget director Russell Vought as acting director of the bureau while the Trump administration continues on its plan to shut down the consumer financial protection agency…”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-nominates-new-cfpb-director-but-white-house-says-agency-is-still-closing/ar-AA1QKI7s?ocid=TobArticle
Who is in your wallet?
Bo Peep says
Comparing apples to acorns.
Laurel says
I once worked with a woman who complained “There are too many hands in the pudding!”
Hilarious!
Ray W. says
About a month ago, George Will, one of the best of American conservative thinkers, wrote an editorial column prompted by the announcement that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution will soon cease printing newspapers. He opined of the role that, for 400 years, evolving technology in newsprint played on the formation of differing thoughts in the American mind.
As Mr. Will puts in, up until about 1840, news traveled at a rate no faster than 35 miles per hour. Today, while far more efficient, digital news can travel as fast as search engines can drive thought. Printed news is fading away in a manner similar to the ice tongs once used to carry ice into early home refrigerators, tongs that now adorn Cracker Barrel dining room walls.
Will turned to a study published by The Economist about changes in efficiencies of sentences written in hundreds of New York Times bestsellers dating from the 1930’s. Over time, Will wrote, “[t]he sentences being read are shorter and simpler. … [The study] found that sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930’s … But sophistication is not in the repertoire of journalism devoted to what Andrey Mir, a Canadian, calls the retribalization of society. In his epigrammatic 2020 book, ‘Postjournalism and the death of newspapers,’ Mir, a self-described ‘media ecologist’ says the media lost agenda-setting power when the internet enabled crowdsourced agenda setting.”
Throughout the history of print media, in Will’s recounting, print media first were funded from above, meaning that print media sold “readers to advertisers.” Wrote Will, “[n]ewspapers encouraged readers to think of subscriptions as donations to political causes.” Newspapers were funded by advertising dollars sourced from “department stores”, whose goal was to make “happy customers.”
But with the advent of digital media, that funded from above business model that made happy customers shifted to a “funded from below” business model of “making angry citizens.” The goal for the new digital news outlet business model became a study of how to find “successor scare[s].” In other words, the business model became more dependent on polarization, frustration, and amplification of reader irritation, and not so much on making happy customers. “Today, information matters less relative to opinions, and opinions are distilled to attitudes.”
Will continues:
“These are performative, and they compete for attention with upwardly spiraling shrillness. Hence this distinctively 21st-Century achievement: the velocity of stupidity.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Have we become a nation of polarized, frustrated and irritated consumers of ever-more compressed thought? Are we careening ever faster into a nation influenced by a velocity of stupidity?
I spent over thirty years in the courtroom. The premise of argumentation, also known as legal reasoning and one of the three forms of reason taught to those of our founding fathers who attended university or college, is zealous advocacy of a policy, a point, a mind, a worldview.
Whenever I was in court, I faced an opposing zealous advocate, also promoting a policy, a point, a mind, a worldview.
Zealous advocacy never imposes a duty to present both sides of a point. Opposing counsel had that duty to present the second side of a point. Zealous advocacy commanded of me the duty to present my client’s voice to the best of my ability. If that presentation could best be achieved through arguing both sides of point, then …
It is this clash of zealous advocacy that makes legal reasoning work as well as it does, even admitting its flaws. The biggest flaw of zealous advocacy is when a judge abandons the role of neutral and detached magistrate.
This is the reason why I repeatedly ask Ed P. to hone his abilities. In my estimation, the FlaglerLive community could benefit from a zealous advocate who presents the voice of conservative thought. Right now, by default, I am that voice of conservative thought. Having studied the Conservative tradition, I understand how so many of today’s Republicans have abandoned conservative thought.
I repeatedly demand of FlaglerLive commenters the exercise of intellectual rigor before putting fingers to keyboards. Zealous advocacy admits of nothing less than the exercise of intellectual rigor.
Yes, solar and wind power generation have negatives, but on the whole, both forms of electricity generation are the best options among several good options of electricity generation. Coal-fired generation of electricity, comparatively, is one of the worst forms of power generation. Simple as that.
The dude says
“A lie can make it halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting on its shoes”…. Or something like that.
X, Facebook, “truth” social are all living embodiments of this apt and very astute quote.
Ed P says
Other than cost and slow build, nuclear energy is a solid alternative.
France gets 65% of its electricity from nuclear. Sweden 30%.
30+ countries ( including the U.S.) currently operate nuclear power plants to generate electricity.
Lack of political will and visionary planning are poor excuses for
not expanding and improving the technology. While wind and solar are cheaper and quicker, they also lack the 50-80 year useful life of a nuclear power plant.
We tend to kick the can down the road and leave the headaches for the future generations. We have the attention span of gnats.
Jim says
This on ABC News website today:
By BYRON TAU Associated Press and GARANCE BURKE Associated Press
November 20, 2025, 12:14 AM
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.
Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.
The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.
This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.
This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.
The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.
The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.
And it reaches far into the interior, impacting residents of big metropolitan areas and people driving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican border region. In one example, AP found the agency has placed at least four cameras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilometers) from the Mexican frontier, beyond the agency’s usual jurisdiction of 100 miles (161 kilometers) from a land or sea border. The AP also identified several camera locations in metropolitan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana border to capture traffic headed towards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby destinations.
Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are “governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”
“For national security reasons, we do not detail the specific operational applications,” the agency said. While the U.S. Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 miles of the border, it is legally allowed “to operate anywhere in the United States,” the agency added.
While collecting license plates from cars on public roads has generally been upheld by courts, some legal scholars see the growth of large digital surveillance networks such as Border Patrol’s as raising constitutional questions. Courts have started to recognize that “large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” might be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University.
Today, predictive surveillance is embedded into America’s roadways. Mass surveillance techniques are also used in a range of other countries, from authoritarian governments such as China to, increasingly, democracies in the U.K. and Europe in the name of national security and public safety.
“They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”
The article goes on with several examples of people being pulled over and searched/arrested. They end up spending thousands of dollars to get their equipment back and for court costs even when they haven’t done anything wrong….
This country is headed in the wrong direction. I’m all for getting criminal illegals out of this country. I am not for a police state which is exactly what this Border Patrol system is.
Laurel says
Big Brother is watching you!
Palm Coast watches every car that enters the city from I-95. The Flagler County Sheriff’s Dept wants to use you Ring doorbell camera. All for you, you know.
China uses facial recognition, for them of course. Now China’s system is here.
It’s nice to be loved.
The whole border angle is just another excuse that half the country will buy. Our Constitutional freedoms are becoming elusive.
Ray W. says
Each month I present to all FlaglerLive readers a snapshot of the performance of the Dow during presidential administrations.
This month marks the 10th month of President Trump’s second administration.
I always select administrations dating from Reagan’s administration starting in 1981, because 1983 marked the end of a 15-year bout with inflation that sometimes veered into stagflation. When I took out a mortgage for the first time, it was at a 13.5% interest rate. The loan officer told me that he didn’t think America would ever see single digit mortgage rates again. The Fed’s lending rate had not yet reached 24%. I know of a man who took out an 18% mortgage lending rate.
I don’t want to make more of this comment than what it is. It is a comparative snapshot into how the Dow has performed by president during these past 44 years, and nothing more. Then again given the number of gullibly stupid FlaglerLive commenters who declare over and over again that Democrats “destroy” economies, when that obviously is a lie, the snapshot might be worth more than it seems.
So here goes:
Obama: up 29.3%.
Trump (1st administration): up 22.2%.
GHW Bush: up 15.5%.
Biden: up 15.0%.
Clinton: up 11.3%.
Trump (2nd administration): up 3.6%.
Reagan: down 6.2%.
GW Bush: down 9.5%.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Reagan was in the early months of what has long been called the second dip of a double-dip recession, brought on by the Iran-Iraq War that choked off oil coming out of the Persian Gulf.
GHW Bush was coming off a downturn in the Reagan economy.
Clinton was benefiting from the tax increase signed into law by GHW Bush that stabilized an unbalanced economy.
GW Bush was just coming off 9-11.
Obama was coming off the Great Recession, when the economy was resurging through the trillions of dollars allocated to stimulate the economy, including $770 billion in TARP funds.
Trump (1) was benefiting from the strength of the Obama recovery from the Great Recession.
Biden had inherited the economic shock directly caused by the pandemic.
But Trump (2) is coming off his inheritance of a Biden economy that The Economist and the Wall Street Journal the “envy of the world.”