To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64. North wind 7 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 51.
- 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:
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m., first floor Conference Room, at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The Technical Review Committee (TRC) is a quality control committee that provides technical review of project plans. Staff Liaison is Simone Kenny, 386-313-4067.
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Staff liaison is Bo Snowden, Chief Building Official, who may be reached at (386) 313-4027. For agendas and details go here.
The Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County: The AARP Foundation’s Tax Aide provides free tax preparation services at six locations in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Flagler County through April 15, but you must make an appointment first and fill out paperwork. To do both, go here.
Juxtapositions: On March 14, UPI reported the following from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates: “Several people, including tourists and influencers, have been arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for possessing, sharing or commenting on digital content that shows attacks or damage from attacks by Iran in the country. There have been 21 people arrested in the emirate, said advocacy organization Detained in Dubai. “The charges sound extremely vague but serious on paper. In reality, the alleged conduct could be something as simple as sharing or commenting on a video that is already circulating online,” said Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai and Due Process International. “Under UAE cybercrime laws, the person who originally posts content can be charged, but so can anyone who reshapes, reposts or comments on it. One video can quickly lead to dozens of people facing criminal charges,” Stirling said.”
On March 14, the New York Times reported the following: “Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war, accusing media outlets of “running hoaxes and news distortions.” The comments on social media came as he reposted a Truth Social post by President Trump that criticized news media for what he claimed was misleading coverage of the war with Iran. Carr, who has vowed to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts, said, “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.””
How times have changed. In 1962 ABC News produced a documentary called “The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon.” It included an interview with Alger Hiss. Two companies tried to cancel their advertising. The FCC chairman, Newton “Wasteland” Minow, forbade them from doing so, saying the broadcast networks must be free from the censorship of “those few, fearful advertisers who seek to influence the professional judgment of broadcast newsmen.”
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.
April 2026
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
In Court: Anne Mae Demegillo Arraignment
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board
Hammock Community Association Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
Public Safety Coordinating Council Meeting
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee Meeting
Conversations in Democracy
For the full calendar, go here.
When Johnson asked for a 700-million-dollar supplemental appropriation to finance the escalation, the House approved, 408 to 7, in twenty-four hours, and the Senate followed suit, 88 to 3, in another twenty-four hours. In the popular press a certain stigma was attached to disapproval of American participation in the war. When Majority Leader Mike Mansfield gloomily told the Senate that it might go on “for four, five, or ten years,” an Associated Press writer called this an “extreme view.” (It was to be eight years.) In its annual review of that year’s news the AP, ordinarily the most impartial of insti-tutions, also reported that opponents of the war were giving aid and comfort to enemies of the United States. And when Senator Fulbright held Vietnam hearings in April, providing a forum for such distinguished critics of administration policy as George Kennan and General James Gavin, twenty-four NBC-TV stations refused to carry their network’s coverage of them, while CBS-TV blacked them out entirely.
–From William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream (1974).
Ray W. says
According to an Oil Price US article, the Trump administration is in the document drafting stage of agreeing to have the American taxpayer pay TotalEnergies over $1 billion in compensation for President Trump’s decision to order the cancellation of valid leases of federal seafloor to build wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
My apologies. Nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies.
Further reading on federal leasing policies reveals that cancelling a sea floor lease means that royalties that would have been paid to the federal government on electricity produced by a wind farm now will not be paid over the proposed lifetime of the project.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
What is the value of energy independence?
OPEC was founded more than 60 years ago to exploit a common resource in high demand for maximum value, whether geopolitical, fiscal, or economic. Ever since, the United States has been energy dependent not on individual states but to a coordinated bloc. So long as America consumes around 20 million barrels of crude oil or the innumerable products derived from it, i.e., petrochemicals, plastics, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, aviation fuel, greases, solvents, etc., and so long as America produces less than 14 million barrels per day of crude oil, there will always be a national energy imbalance that can be exploited to our disadvantage.
And, since crude oil is an international commodity, American energy extractors will be right to sell their product to the highest bidder. Right now, American natural gas producers cannot sell all of their product to the highest bidder because there exists an export bottleneck: too few LNG export facilities. In 2016, the first new LNG liquefaction facility opened in Louisiana (the LNG plant built on the Kenai Peninsula to export Alaskan natural gas closed long ago). Since then, eight more facilities have opened. More export facilities are in the works, with three scheduled to open in 2026 and 2027. As national export capacity rises, thereby transforming more and more of our natural gas from a nationally traded commodity into an internationally traded commodity, the imbalance between the low price we pay now for natural gas and the high price the rest of the world pays for its natural gas will almost certainly narrow.
Yes, right now, natural gas from American wells is flared into the atmosphere, simply because it is too expensive to capture and transport the fuel. This is why plans to build data centers in West Texas near remote natural gas wells proliferate. Building a gas turbine plant on inexpensive land right next to a source of energy that is being wasted into the atmosphere cuts projected plant operating costs.
Sherry says
Meanwhile the trump corrupt “pay for play” MO means that he is soliciting $$$ and promising his donors that they will receive the same “National Security Briefings” that he does:
The fundraising email featured a photo of Donald Trump at a ‘dignified transfer’ of soldiers killed in the Iran war – Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
A fundraising appeal for Donald Trump offered access to the president’s “private national security briefings”.
The email, sent this week by Never Surrender Inc, a group tied to Mr Trump’s 2024 campaign, said that the president was “opening up spots on the National Security Briefing Membership”.
If people signed up, the email said they would “get the inside scoop DIRECT” from the president.
Places were “extremely limited”, but people who signed up would “receive my private national security briefings” and “unfiltered updates on threats facing America”.
Skibum says
Selling “limited” memberships to his so-called “private” national security presidential briefings is either just the latest con man scam in a very long line of his con man scams intended to drain money from people’s pockets… or further proof that HE is the biggest internal threat to our nation’s security!
Ray W. says
According to a recent Alternate article, an economic paper issued by a “liberal-leaning”think tank, the Center for American Progress, posited that tariff policies may be the cause for the loss of more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs over the past year.
The reporter focused on a quote by one of the CAP researchers:
“Far from the manufacturing sector ‘roaring back’ as Trump promised, the United States has lost more than 100,000 jobs. These actions have pushed the country’s closest partners to seek deals elsewhere, including with China; Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, and the EU have all sought new agreements without the United States. … Over time, each of those deals will result in markets that were once enjoyed by U.S. suppliers increasingly oriented away from them – and the rules of international engagement increasingly written by foreign governments.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Because tariff policies were so inconsistently imposed in 2025, meaning up and down and on and off, I remain unconvinced that strong inferences can be drawn from the style and manner of their implementation.
From Yale University’s Budget Lab, between 2022 and 2024, the “effective tariff rate” on all imported goods was 2.7%, a rate yielding $7.6 billion per month in revenue. By the end of 2025, the effective tariff rate on all imported goods had increased from 2.7% to 9.9%, a figure perhaps far below perceptions raised by the numbers bandied about by the current administration. Revenue raised during calendar year 2025 by tariffs was $174.7 billion, not really an amount all that much higher than the three-year average amount, suggesting that the effective tariff rate on imports of goods had slowly risen throughout the year. In January 2026, tariff revenue was $20.1 billion, again suggesting that the effective tariff rate had incrementally increased during 2025.
If I am accurately understanding what transpired during the first year of the Trump administration, there was an increase in tariff impact, but that increase turned out to be less than that predicted by the rhetoric.
So, I checked out 2024’s manufacturing jobs performance: negative 82,000 jobs. This suggests to me that other factors, perhaps many factors, are behind the comparatively worse performance in the manufacturing sector during the Trump presidency so far compared to the lesser negative jobs performance in the manufacturing sector during the last year of the Biden presidency. I am not saying that tariffs did not cause any manufacturing jobs losses. Tariffs very well might be the major reason for the growing decline in manufacturing jobs that took place in 2025.
And none of this is predictive of what is soon to come. Yes, I remember the initial claims of “roaring” manufacturing jobs growth to come due to tariffs. Those initial claims were soon replaced by claims that manufacturing jobs growth would soon start, not immediately start. Then, administration officials said it would take time, but the manufacturing jobs growth would start early in 2026. Here we are, still dropping manufacturing jobs. Maybe, the tipping point from contraction to “roaring” growth is taking place right now? Maybe not?
Ray W. says
Modern Engineering Marvels reports that Iran’s Navy has between 20 and 23 29-meter long Ghadir-class mini-submarines armed with two torpedoes each and each mine-laying capable.
Detection of this type of submersible is difficult in a shallow narrow waterway, says the reporter, because active sonar pulses reverberate off seafloor outcroppings. Passive sonar cannot easily distinguish from natural waterway acoustics and man-made shipping clutter. Variable-depth sonars change acoustic paths, but isolating a single small hull from all other generated noise is difficult.
The reporter puts it this way:
“[C]learing uncertainty from a crowded waterway remains slow work by design. That is the real value of the mini-submarine in Hormuz. It does not need to dominate the battlespace or outrun a pursuing force. It only needs to remain doubtful long enough for every sonar contact, every shipping lane, and every patch of seabed to demand another check.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
Steel Horse Rides reports that Harley-Davidson factories once assembled 300,000 motorcycles per year. After selling 124,500 units in 2025, the company is laying off 800 American factory workers and salaried staff. The company’s new CEO says that Harley can no longer carry nostalgic factory capacity.
Two new approaches are coming. Harley is releasing a mid-level motorcycle at a significantly lower price point and it is shifting more of its final assembly to a long-ago established Thai plant. Tariff issues, it is reported, make final assembly of motorcycles in Thailand more cost-competitive for the Japanese and EU markets.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Japan, long ago, desired Harley-Davidson’s. About a decade before WWII, and perhaps earlier, an industrialist bought an entire Harley factory and shipped it to Japan. A Harley manager was loaned to the effort to not only set up the factory, but to establish both a parts distribution network and a dealership base. The new company provided certain motorcycles to the military. American soldiers and Marines often expressed surprise on finding so many Harleys on islands they conquered on the way toward Japan. Even today, Harleys carry a special status in Japanese motorcycle lore. I can understand why Harley would establish an assembly plant in Thailand to cut supply-line costs.
Chipd says
I was told by a high level exec that Harley is now a tee shirt (merch) company that happens to sell motorcycles.
Make of this what you want….
Ray W. says
Thank you for the perspective, Chipd.
Ray W. says
According to a recent UCONN research paper, chitin is one of the world’s most common organic polymers. But, per a story published by The Cool Down, extracting chitin from seafood shell waste is both environmentally and monetarily costly.
The UCONN research team combined lactic acid with glycerol and choline chloride and used the blend to extract chitin polymer from lobster and crab and shrimp shell waste. The polymer can be used to make a biodegradable food packaging substance that can replace plastic wrap. Some seven to nine million tons of shell waste are dumped each year.
Claimed one of the researchers:
“We are hoping we can turn this trash into a treasure – or at least into value-added products.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
According to an Alternet story, this morning Maria Bartiromo hosted a guest and a reporter on her Fox Business show when the monthly Bureau of Labor Services Producer Price Index report dropped. PPI inflation, year-over-year, is up to 3.4%. The more volatile one-month report has inflation at 0.7%, a very high figure.
Said the reporter, Cheryl Capone, on learning the news, “[t]hese numbers are much hotter than expected, guys.” The guest commented, “[y]eah, this is not good.”
A CNN reporter associated the BLS report with stagflation, which is defined as high inflation coupled with stagnant GDP growth and a weak jobs market. February’s jobs report had 92,000 fewer jobs than in January. The first revision of 4th quarter GDP growth revealed a rate revision down to 0.7% growth.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
The Iran War cannot have impacted the BLS report , as it didn’t start until the very end of the month. Hopefully, this is a one-off report, but who knows how long the war and how much the impact? No one knows whether an uprising against the Iranian regime remains possible. Whether bombing can bring Teheran to the negotiating table. Whether the Navy can force an opening of the Strait to shipping. As of a few days ago, reportedly, only five tankers not associated with Iranian oil exports have traversed the Strait, with oil cargoes destined for Pakistan and India.
As an aside, a new Senate study has the 2026 federal deficit at $1.004 trillion after the first six months of the fiscal year ending February 28th.
Ray W. says
According to a Treasury report, the U.S. federal debt hit $39 trillion today. On January 20, 2025, the day President Trump started his second term in office, the federal debt was reported to be $36.1 trillion. That’s a $2.9 trillion increase in total federal debt in just under 14 months. The debt is expected to cross $40 trillion in October, some seven months from now.