To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: A 20 percent chance of showers after 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 75. Thursday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 58.
- 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:
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.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 57 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre, Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. The beloved musical about the optimistic orphan who captures hearts (and maybe even saves a billionaire). Perfect for families and the holiday spirit. Book here. (Note: all Sunday matinees are sold out, but there is a wait list you may join.)
Readings: If you were in Texas this week–and who does not want to be in Texas? “Among other tendencies to be noted, Texas is a military nation,” Steinbeck told us in Travels with Charley) you;d have read something along these lines: “After initially being able to enter the restrooms matching their gender identity and giving a series of speeches in the Capitol rotunda, the protesters were barred from again entering the bathrooms by several Department of Public Safety officers. Some protesters attempting to enter the women’s restroom were asked to show their IDs, which DPS said in a statement were voluntary checks to ensure compliance, but did not specify why those who did not show IDs were not allowed into the restroom. DPS cited the State Preservation Board’s public restroom policy, which was updated in February, and “expects” visitors to use restrooms matching their “biological sex.” The policy does not mention a required verification process. Officers ultimately let two trans women into the restroom after they shared their IDs, which had female markers, according to a video shared online by the 6W Project, a new advocacy group that organized the protest. Protesters also said the men’s restrooms were not guarded by officers.” Then you might have remembered something Martin Amis wrote in The Second Plane: “And doesn’t Texas sometimes seems to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions?”
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.
January 2026
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,’ the Billie Holiday Story, at City Rep Theatre
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
For the full calendar, go here.
For those familiar with the British Empire, Texans are very much like Aussies – they cuss a lot, drink enormous quantities of beer and don’t put up with much, uh, guff. Although there is markedly more civility in their daily intercourse than is to be found in New York City, they are not a civilized people. They shoot and stab one another to death with some frequency, and they stomp one another in bars all the time. Texans are obnoxious to be around when they are having a good time – they hoot and hurrah and bang their beer bottles on the tables. They do not shout when they are angry. They get very quiet just before they get violent. That’s when you should leave the bar. Texas is composed of several distinct cultures, which overlap slightly and are sometimes separated geographically so that the state is like a mosaic. The darker layers tend to end up at the bottom. The state’s cultures are black, chicano, Southern, standard suburban and kicker. Kicker is dominant. Kicker is pick-up trucks with guns slung across the back window, chicken fried steaks, country music, gettin’ drunk on Saturday night, goin’ to church on Sunday morning, drivin’ down the highway real fast throwin’ beer cans out the window, high school football and huge family reunions.
–From “Getting In Touch with Texas,” by Molly Ivins, The New York Times, March 21, 1982.
Dennis C Rathsam says
The donkeys are at it again…Dont blame Trump for your failures! OBAMACARE, Know to the GOP as the Unaffordable Healthcare Act, was pushed through with out 1 vote from the GOP! The mess that they created has now exploded in their faces. All we heard was how great this will be for America, how great is it now? The Jackass party is howling from the rooftops, on TV, & anywhere else someone might listen. They constantly blame TRUMP & the GOP for the demise of a failed concept. THEIR failed concept! This is all on the Democrats, they new long ago it couldn’t servive without government aid. Sadly, the Dems shut down the gov.over this abamanation, screwed many people, many kids. Looks to me we are headed for another pause. Just like a spoiled child who cant get their way! If SCHUMER, decides to shut down the gov. again, Americans will be pissed. 4 BIDEN yrs and they did didily scwatt! Everyone of you saw it in real time, Democrats care more for Bidens invaders, than they care about AMERICANS!
Pierre Tristam says
Dennis may be Dennis, but he’s also as much a fiend of FlaglerLive as he is a Friend of FlaglerLive: thank you for your contribution Dennis. You often take it on the chin here, and often by me, and yet your support the site, and not just a few dollars either. Thank you.
Laurel says
Oh my God, the speech, last night! With Trump angrily reading his speech about how wonderful he is, and the miracles he has accomplished that no one in the history of the universe has been able to do, was truly for the history books! Never seen anything like it in our country!
What my lifelong Republican husband saw was Mussolini. Trump ranted like an angry dictator. He continued with his divisiveness, and displayed his hatred of so many. It was awful. What I saw, was a very angry man, who was lashing out at the 70 percent of Americans who are unhappy with his performance, and felt the country is going in the wrong direction. He is used to being surrounded by ass kissers and sycophants, and is really mad that the rest of us aren’t following suit. Shame on us for seeing that eggs are not 80% cheaper as he actually claimed! The benevolent dictator has thrown us scraps, while making the wealthy wealthier, and we are not appreciative!
He knows that his reign is fading fast. His maga is shrinking, and people are finally starting to see through this hatred he has for half of this country. He has deceived maga, and I think they are the ones who will vote against this raving lunatic.
Pogo says
@Democracy died
… defending unisex bathrooms.
With high ground like that — who could have known?
Eat up, it is literally all that is left.
Sherry says
The latest on why trump should be removed from office from wonderful Robert Reich:
Friends,
I couldn’t sleep last night because I kept thinking about Trump’s response to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. Something about it kept worrying me.
As you may recall, instead of extending his sympathies, he said in a post to Truth Social Monday morning that:
“Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace.”
Many commentators and politicians (including several Republicans) have criticized Trump for this.
Sage Steele, former ESPN host and Trump ally, called Trump’s post “disappointing.” Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, wrote that “regardless of how you feel about Rob Reiner this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered.” Rep. Michael Lawler, Republican of New York, said “this statement is wrong.”
Jenna Ellis, Trump’s former lawyer who’s now a conservative radio host, wrote that “this is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said: “We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.”
All true, but Trump says inappropriate things all the time, and most of us know by now that he’s a loathsome human being.
Stephens went on to charge that Trump had debased America:
“In every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized.”
Of course Trump is debasing America. But we already knew this, too.
What kept me up last night was something else.
I’ve worked for three presidents, one Republican and two Democrats. I’ve seen presidents up close. The job is overwhelmingly difficult. It takes a toll. But I have never seen anything remotely like what has happened to Donald Trump.
If Trump was once rational, he no longer is.
His response to the Reiner killings, like his AI post on October 18 in which he defecated on millions of protesters, reveals a depth of paranoia and grandiosity worse than anything he has shown before.
His chief of staff, Suzy Wiles, told Chris Whipple in an interview that appeared in Tuesday’s Vanity Fair that Trump has an “alcoholic’s personality” because he “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
Nothing he can’t do?
I don’t want to alarm you, and I hesitate to even mention this, but I couldn’t sleep knowing that Trump has the power to launch a nuclear bomb.
As commander-in-chief, he is the only person in the United States with the authority to launch a nuke. No one else need be consulted before he does. No one else can veto such an order. Not even the vice president or secretary of defense has the power to stop it.
I hope to god he doesn’t. I don’t think he would.
But what if he’s provoked? What if he feels that his manhood or his authority or his status is being threatened? What if he just wants to demonstrate to Americans and the world how strong he is?
Again, I doubt this will happen, but the risk is not zero. Here’s a man who thinks Rob and Michele Reiner were murdered because they had a “raging obsession” with him. A man who, according to his current chief of staff, has the personality of an alcoholic with delusions of omnipotence.
It’s a risk that neither the United States nor the rest of the world can afford to take.
I don’t think I’m being alarmist. If anything, I worry that we’ve become so inured to Trump’s madness that we’re not alarmist enough.
Trump must be removed from office as soon as possible.
Either Section 4 of the 25th Amendment must be invoked — because he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” — or he must be impeached and convicted under Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Skibum says
Robert Reich’s thoughts about the maniac in the WH should scare the bejeesus out of all of us. I know it does me!
Endless dark money says
Democracy died on Jan 6. The traitors were pardoned by a 35 plus time felon and know pedophile that never served a day in jail. Now they violate human rights daily! End the republican terrorist!
Sherry says
And now for just a little “Fact Checking” on trump’s latest “chest pounding” speech. . . This from the Associated Press:
On inflation
TRUMP: He blamed Democrats for handing him an “inflation disaster,” “the worst in the history of our country,” and said that now, the prices of turkey and eggs have come down and “everything else is falling rapidly. And it’s not done yet. But boy, are we making progress.”
THE FACTS: His claim that prices are falling rapidly is not seen in the inflation numbers, which are about where they were when he took office, after having fallen significantly before the end of Joe Biden’s presidency. Nor is it true that the Biden era gave the country its worst inflation ever.
The consumer price index was 3% in September, the same rate as in January, a tick up from 2.9% in December, Biden’s last full month in office. In an AP-NORC poll this month, the vast majority of U.S. adults said they’ve noticed higher than usual prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts in recent months.
Inflation had been falling during the first few months of Trump’s presidency, but it picked back up after the president announced his tariffs in April.
On Investment
TRUMP: “I secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.”
THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment for the United States. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum.
Even the White House website offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during Biden’s presidency.
Trump has routinely claimed rosy investment numbers, without offering the details to support them. Trump nailed down some of the investment terms in an October trip to Japan and South Korea, but they’re over multiple years and it remains to be seen how ironclad those commitments and others will be.
A landslide?
TRUMP: “I was elected in a landslide, winning the popular vote and all seven swing states and everything else, with a mandate to take on a sick and corrupt system.”
THE FACTS: Trump won a decisive victory but hardly a landslide one, however you define a landslide. Trump, who became president with 312 electoral votes, won fewer than Democrats Barack Obama in 2008 (365) and 2012 (332) and Bill Clinton in 1992 (370) and 1996 (379).
The electoral performance of those men pales in comparison with the sweeps by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 (523), Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (486), Richard Nixon in 1972 (520) and Ronald Reagan (525) in 1984.
Trump did win more popular votes than his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, but not quite a majority of them. His win in 2024 ranks among the more narrow.
Pogo says
@Happening now
Eagle hatching
https://dickpritchettrealestate.com/southwest-florida-eagle-cam/
Kennan says
Objectively, we have great doctors, nurses, and medical staff in this country.
Objectively, we have the worst healthcare system in the world. I say the world because it is unabashedly the most for profit scheme there is. You wanna live? Hope you got the money.
In 2009, Ted Cruz held Congress hostage for three or four days pining against the affordable care act, or Obama care as it is commonly known. Since that time, and we’re still waiting…. There has never been a counter to trying to give healthcare to uninsured Americans. Was it perfect? No it was not. Barack Obama took a light version of what he originally wanted, asked Republicans to weigh in and they never did. Almost 20 years later and these Sick fucks Are doing things like taking childhood cancer research away as well as every other institution healthcare or otherwise. This administration as well as Republicans in general, have absolutely no right to criticize any healthcare system because they’re trying to take it away altogether. They have nothing. They don’t even have an opinion on it, much less a plan. These fucks never did.
Listen, I honestly think the two party system is a failure, but even though the Democratic Party has been very weak as of late, what they are not trying to do is actively destroy the country as the Republican party, which is owned and operated by “The Diapered Golden Snake” we have running shit now.
What are we gonna do? We have to fight with everything we have against an unbridled fascist oligarchy right now.
Democrats have to find a way to rebrand themselves, not just by pointing out the obvious destruction that Trump and his minions “Flame Throw”through the American people.
Democrats have to abandon the status quo, that although it’s way less damaging than the right, but most importantly, they must gain the trust of Americans that need them to fight for them. To fully and aggressively represent them.
Sherry says
OMG! Disgusting Egomaniac trump has struck again:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s handpicked board voted Thursday to rename Washington’s leading performing arts center as the Trump Kennedy Center, the White House said, in a move that made Democrats fume, saying the board had overstepped its legal authority.
Congress named the center after President John F. Kennedy in 1964, after his assassination. Donald A. Ritchie, who served as Senate historian from 2009-2015, said that because Congress had first named the center it would be up to Congress to “amend the law.”
Ritchie said that while Trump and others can “informally” refer to the center by a different name, they couldn’t do it in a way “that would (legally) stick.”
But the board did not wait for that debate to play out, immediately changing the branding on its website to reflect the new name:
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that legislative action was needed, “and we’re going to make that clear.” The New York Democrat is an ex officio member of the board because of his position in Congress.
Skibum says
Robert Reich’s thoughts about the maniac in the WH should scare the bejeesus out of all of us. I know it does me!
Laurel says
My hubby said that if any of us knew anyone as narcissistic as Trump at work, or wherever, we wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that person. That’s true. A person with even a tenth of that obnoxious repels people. Think about it. If you worked with a person like that, you would steer clear! Yet, people kowtow and protect this obnoxious person as if he were a saint. Says a whole lot about these individuals! Really strange!
Laurel says
Well, according to Bloomberg TV, Bondi’s justice system is ignoring the law, and not releasing all the Epstein files today! Who woulda figured? Stall time. Instead, Trump will tell us all the wonderful things he will do for us, and we should be happy with all his marvelous successes that no one in the history of the world could do besides him. The raped children can wait a little longer.
Bondi should be disbarred. Then again, one does not need to have professional credentials, and experience, to be a part of Trump’s cabinet. That has been made clear.
So, maga, you have been lied to, just to get your vote. You know that now. I’m sorry that is so, as it effects all of us, but that’s how it is, and has been. It’s time we start to become whole again, become friends again and become families again. Time to move on, away from this lie, now that we know where the “deep state” really is.