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Weather: A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 4pm, then a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 5pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 80. Southeast wind 6 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. Friday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 65. Southeast wind around 7 mph.
- 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:
Good Friday closures: Schools are closed (for students, but not faculty), many government offices, including Palm Coast government and courts, are closed in observance of Good Friday.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. Today: County Commissioner Andy Dance on last week’s claims by Florida’s CFO about overspending in Flagler County government. See: “Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia Brings Campaign-Style Attacks on Local Government Spending to Flagler County.” See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. Join a Ranger the First Friday of every month for a garden walk. Learn about the history of Washington Oaks while exploring the formal gardens. The walk is approximately one hour. No registration required. Walk included with park entry fee. Participants meet in the Garden parking lot. The event is free with paid admission fee to the state park: $5 per vehicle. (Limit 2-8 people per vehicle) $4 per single-occupant vehicle. Call (386) 446-6783 for more information or by email: [email protected].
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3
Free Family Art Night: Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, 5:30 to 7 p.m. 78 East Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach. All art supplies are provided. No art experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. Free Family Art Night is a popular, monthly program typically scheduled on the first Friday of each month to coordinate with the free, family-friendly movie shown outdoors at Rockefeller Gardens. The two programs offer a stimulating evening for families, at no charge, in the heart of downtown Ormond Beach. Our art program takes place in the OMAM Classroom, rain or shine, but the City’s outdoor movies are weather dependent. Movie information can be found here or call The Casements at 386-676-3216.
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach. Box office: (386) 255-2431. Tickets: $30 for adults, $20 for youth. 7:30 p.m. except on Sunday, 2 p.m. The tale of a cockney flower girl transformed into an elegant lady, featuring one of musical theatre’s greatest scores.
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
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.
Notebook: Scott Spradley, the Flagler Beach city commissioner, attorney and photographer, took the picture of Artemis above on Wednesday. That day I had written in this space that I feared watching the rocket go, my memories of 1986 and DOGE’s residuals on NASA taking the better of me. As it turned out, Cheryl and I were rounding State Road 100 to get on A1A South just as Artemis was riding back to 1972. I held my breath, and it disappeared in the mist of our more metaphorical than actually dusky sky. Godspeed. A great shot of course, nothing to compare with my crappy attempt at an iPhone capture. We had Nixon in ‘72, when it seemed those moon shots had had their time. We have a clown now, and I’m not sure the moon shot is any more purposeful, but as with the World Cup, we can always pretend for a few days that humanity isn’t as fucked up as its lowest common denominators forces us to be. What a waste of the sublime, as humanity can so often be.
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 For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Friday Blue Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Dead Men Tell No Tales…. Or Do They? Murder Mystery Dinner Show
“The Sound of Music,” at Athens Theatre
‘Line’ and ‘All In the Timing’ At City Rep Theatre
Flagler Woman’s Club Charity Golf Tournament
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Dead Men Tell No Tales…. Or Do They? Murder Mystery Dinner Show
“The Sound of Music,” at Athens Theatre
‘Line’ and ‘All In the Timing’ At City Rep Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom?
–From Melville’s White-Jacket (1850).
Dennis C Rathsam says
Funny, you poor Democrats, cant get a win no matter how hard you try. TRUMP & Co has uncovered the ill effects of the Obama & Biden rip off of tons of money from tax payers, the lies of many Jackasses trying to keep TRUMP out of the Whitehouse. Russian lies debunked, it fine Hillary bleached her illegal at home server. That’s ok, shes a Clinton. Hidden in the bowls, of the FBI, Ka$h Patel has found many fowl deeds & made up stories…. Purhaps this is all poppycock, it would be a great win for the Dems. A home run! But if the papers are real, & the dirty deeds were done, they,LL be more Democrats on trial, then for murder as American murder rate is the lowest its been in 120 yrs, Thanx to TRUMP.
Jim says
Could you enlighten all of us as to what “rip off” Obama and Biden did that Trump uncovered? Didn’t make the news…
What kind of bowls did the FBI use to hide “fowl deeds and made up stories”? Can you provide a list of these “fowl deeds and make up stories” for all of us? Again, missed it in the news…
Not sure what papers you are referring to that will lead to more Democrats on trial. Again, please enlighten the masses…
As far as the murder rate goes, it should be noted that many cities with historically high murder rates no longer provide their statistics to the FBI.
Crime rates have been falling for several years now. So that includes the Biden years. You can credit Trump all you want. Selective reasoning may not be the right way to approach subjects like this but it’s clear you feel better that way so have fun!
While you’re crowing about the Great One, your comments on the following would be interesting:
– War in Iran- going great, right?
– Gas prices – just a little blip, right? Good for America, right?
– Economy – if it tanks, Biden’s fault. If it takes off, Trump did it.
– Corruption in government – Corey Lewandowski, Kristi Noem’s sex toy, soliciting money for Homeland Security contracts, Donald Trump, $400M plane for his library, top secret files in his bathroom, bribes for pardons (the list goes on but that’s enough to give you something to work with).
I’d go on but it’s just wasted effort on you. Trump burns down the country and you cheer.
Laurel says
That is the most tremendous bunch of cow manure anyone has ever read in the history of the universe, like no one has ever read before.
He is not your retribution, you are his.
Pogo says
Kudos to Mr. Spradley’s snap; the FlaglerLive pic too — the juxtaposition of road work, traffic congestion, and Roddenberry’s Wagon Train to the stars, intended, or not, is actually quite excellent. Good on you.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
https://www.google.com/search?q=we+are+all+in+the+gutter+wilde
And, Trump is insane — and taking the planet with him on his way down the glory road to hell.
Pierre Tristam says
Thank you Pogo. The credit for that second shot isn’t to me though, but to Cheryl.
Jim says
Well, if you’re in the Trump camp, Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi are poster women for how things work out.
Both these “cabinet” officials have committed numerous crimes in the name of doing Trump’s dirty work. In the process, both leave office with their reputations ruined. We can watch them in the coming years as they disappear into the woodwork. (As another example, remember Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions? Not seen or heard from in years…)
In both their cases, when the Trump regime is either removed or neutered (see November 2026), both will be investigated and charges will be brought. They’d better pray that Trump at least has the decency to give them blanket pardons. They’re going to need them.
So, once again, we see that Trump loyalty is a one-way street. He uses people and then casts them aside when he’s bored or somehow displeased. I’m reminded of Charlie Brown and the football. So many Charlie Brown’s in this administration, so little time…
Goodbye, Pam. You will not be missed…
Laurel says
Jim: I often think of poor little brother Linus has to unlearn all the false things Lucy taught him!
Sherry says
This from Joyce Vance:
Trump fired Pam Bondi, apparently on Wednesday night, before addressing the country about the war in Iran. But he still has an Epstein problem. Firing Bondi will not make that go away.
Firing Pam Bondi doesn’t change the sweetheart deal Ghislaine Maxwell got in exchange for saying she never saw Trump doing anything wrong. For all we know, there’s a pardon or a commutation in the works, too.
Bondi has to have taken the job of Attorney General knowing what was in store for her. She was cast in the role of the Trump 2.0 Jeff Sessions and her fate was much the same as his, although Trump was a little nicer and her neck got to the chopping block earlier than Sessions’ did—21 months to Bondi’s 14.
To take the parallel further, Todd Blanche, who will become the acting Attorney General, takes on the role played by Matthew Whittaker in the first Trump administration. You may not remember Whittaker, and if you do, it may be because he was involved in the sale of “masculine toilets.” He was a former U.S. Attorney from Iowa who became acting Attorney General but never received the nomination for the top job. If the past is prologue, the important question now is who will be the Bill Barr of the second Trump administration?
Names have already surfaced and more are likely to. They are all Trump loyalists of the first order. Trump’s EPA director, former congressman Lee Zeldin, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt (who previously took himself out of the running when Bondi was nominated), and failed New Jersey U.S. Attorney and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba. The most loyal of the Trump loyal. It’s difficult to understand why any credible lawyer would want to serve this president in this position. All the priorities are on the table: prosecute enemies, give friends a pass, forget about justice, and just do whatever the president wants. That means the ultimate nominee should face extraordinary scrutiny.
Bondi was eminently fireable based on objective criteria. But the conduct most former prosecutors would find highly objectionable is probably what Trump liked most about her: the heavy theatrics when she testified before Congress, her willingness to indict a former FBI director and a state attorney general on charges too flimsy to withstand scrutiny in court, and her readiness to investigate senators and members of Congress on specious grounds.
So why fire her, and why now? Many people suggest it was her handling of the Epstein files, which was clearly a mess. Or could it be last week’s reporting from Carol Leonnig, which revealed some of what Trump has fought hard in court to keep private, namely details of the documents he retained during the classified documents investigation, which we discussed here? Trump could have found a reason to fire Bondi on virtually any day of her time in office. So it’s interesting that it happened on this particular timeline.
Whatever the reason it happened now, this outcome was preordained from the moment she took office. Donald Trump routinely asks his attorneys general to stretch and bend, if not break, the rule of law. Bondi was compliant. When asked to prosecute the president’s enemies, she did. The disastrous indictments of Jim Comey and Letitia James were two examples. When it came to the president’s friends, she appears to have complied as well. The investigation into Border Czar Tom Homan, involving allegations that he took a $50,000 cash bribe in a Cava bag, simply disappeared. Every public servant has personal red lines. For Jeff Sessions, it was appointing a special counsel because he had a conflict of interest. For Bill Barr, it was leaving office before Donald Trump escalated his efforts to overturn the election on January 6. We do not really know what Pam Bondi’s line would have been because she never invoked it. Instead, the president fired her.
Bondi’s departure is, unfortunately, no cause for celebration. Donald Trump still gets to choose the next attorney general. He will likely look not for an experienced federal practitioner, but for someone who is compliant, loyal, and willing to do what no good attorney general should in order to serve him and maintain proximity to power.
At the height of public interest in the Epstein files, they appeared to be a major concern for Trump. In some ways, it has worked; they no longer dominate the news cycle. That tells us what we need to know. The job is about protecting Trump, and whoever suppresses the Epstein files succeeds.
Laurel says
Bondi was to go in front of Congress this month and testify under oath.
Callmeishmael says
Bondi knows where a lot of skeletons are buried. She should probably stay out of tall buildings with windows.
Pogo says
As stated
$4 Gasoline is Less Than Half the Story
The biggest losers from the Iran War are buyers of diesel, jet fuel, chemicals and fertilizer
Paul Krugman
Apr 01, 2026
“Although I expected the war on Iran to be a disaster, I didn’t expect the Trump administration to be implicitly conceding defeat after barely a month. Yet that’s where we are:…”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/4-gasoline-is-less-than-half-the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfwX6seL94A
The more you know — the more you know
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(Charlie_Chaplin_song)
Ray W. says
The March 2026 jobs estimates prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out this morning.
178,000 new jobs for the month. Due to additional information received by the agency, February’s job figure was revised down by 41,000 jobs and January’s figure was revised up by 34,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate was “changed little” at 4.3%. The number of unemployed, too, was “changed little” at 7.2 million. The labor force participation rate was “changed little” at 61.9%.
Digging into the news release’s charts for the total number of people earning paychecks, which is one of the primary purposes behind producing the report, in March 2025, 170,641,000 workers were earning paychecks. One year later, 170,087,000 workers earned paychecks in March, a loss of 554,000 jobs over the year.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
A good monthly jobs estimate and a healthy rebound from the loss of 133,000 jobs in February. Not better than good. Not great. And certainly not bad.
Economists debate many things, but the idea of an unemployment rate between 4% and 4.5% being economically healthy is not an issue up for economic debate.
Someday soon, perhaps, an economist will offer a rational explanation for the year-on-year loss of 541,000 jobs after so many years of consistent monthly job gains (2009-early 2025, excepting March and April of the pandemic year), as losing that many jobs is not economically healthy. Maybe, it can be called mediocre or less than good. Hopefully, I will come across the explanation and share it.
Ray W. says
Earlier today, Iran’s military struck a Kuwaiti refinery that, among other products, creates jet fuel that is bound for the United Kingdom. Britain’s Prime Minister has dispatched a rapid response ground-to-air defensive system to the country.
Also, one of Kuwait’s desalination plants was damaged. Kuwait gets 90% of its drinking water from desalination systems.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
International rules of war, of diplomacy, of alliance, of commerce, of morality, all are being rewritten. Damaging desalination systems is a war crime. International supply chains have been disrupted. The magnitude of the worldwide economic disruption is as yet unknown.
Mohamed El-Elian, an economist and former president of Queens College, Cambridge, offered perspective to a Moneywise reporter about national economic resilience in spite of adversity.
During the 2021-2025 “robust recovery” from the economic effects of the pandemic, he notes that U.S. GDP growth averaged 3.27%, compared to eurozone average GDP growth of 2.63%.
The reporter added that, from 2007, just prior to onset of the Great Recession, to the end of 2020, just after the end of the Pandemic Recession, U.S. GDP growth averaged 1.48%, compared to eurozone GDP growth of 0.59%.
The point drawn by the reporter is that over the last 19 years, an era including two significant worldwide economic disruptions, the U.S. economy has been comparatively resilient. Mr. El-Elian, per the reporter, argues that this type of economic resilience may help the U.S. economy better weather coming Iran War economic disruptions.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
Both Newsweek and The Daily Galaxy report that Mexico is nearly finished with building a “dry canal”, meaning a heavy freight rail line, between improved seaports at Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast and Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf coast. The 303 kilometer track cuts north from Salina Cruz across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
A test run involving 900 Hyundai vehicles proved that cargo could be offloaded from a freighter car carrier and loaded onto rail cars. The train could then traverse the Isthmus and be offloaded onto a different freighter. Total elapsed time? 72 hours.
The viability of the project comes from years of drought in Panama that has in certain instances delayed Canal transit traffic by up to 20 to 25 days.
At current rail capacity, no more than 5% of Canal traffic could be diverted to the dry canal, and only certain freight, such as vehicles, is best suited to rail transport, but the dry canal should increase the number of shipping options and perhaps reduce shipping costs for certain business sectors.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
Oman Moments, a news outlet with which I am unfamiliar, reports that earlier today a French-flagged container ship openly signaling French ownership exited the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz.
Yesterday, three Omani-flagged fossil fuel tankers sailed west through normal Hormuz maritime channels.
On April 1st, 16 vessels of various types negotiated the passage.
Prior to the outbreak of war, from other sources, an average of 138 vessels per day exited the Strait.
Make of this what you will.
Me
On news outlet reported the other day that on each side of the Strait of Hormuz some 2,000 ships await passage. After 35 days of closure that figure makes sense. Unwinding the tangle will take time, regardless of who claims who won the war. Port facilities and infrastructure across a number of nations are damaged or wrecked. No amount of magical thinking can suddenly make cargo immediately flow into and out of the region as if nothing had happened.
As with any other unprecedented act, like the 2020 pandemic, no one has a working economic model to adequately measure the full extent of the impact of worldwide supply chains. New modeling will take time to prove reliable. By definition, economic models are constructed by looking backwards. Anyone who claims to know how to cut this Gordian knot is just talking to hear his head roar.
Ray W. says
Intellinews, among other news sites, reports that Oman, without coordinating with the U.S., is drafting a proposal that will allow Iran and Oman to “monitor” shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s state news agency quoted an Iranian diplomat as saying the deal is “intended to facilitate and ensure safe passage and provide better services to ships passing through the route.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister is quoted as saying:
“The future of the Strait of Hormuz will be determined by Iran and Oman, not by external powers.”
Make of this what you will.