The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Thursday, July 23, 2026

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Weather: Sunny, with a high near 92. Heat index values as high as 106. Light and variable wind becoming east 6 to 11 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 17 mph. Thursday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 75. Southeast wind 5 to 8 mph becoming calm after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 15 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:

The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. 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.

The Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast. But it’s a good idea to verify whether the committee is actually meeting this evening, as it tends to be lax.

Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond 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.

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.

The Latest Jail Bookings
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Source: Flagler County Sheriff's Office. Note: the Sheriff's Office redacts or censors the names of migrants arrested under authority of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The federal agency requires the redactions, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Readings: Here’s why Joe Manchin, the former senator from West Virginia, has blood on his hands. From the Bryce Covert review of Manchin’s new book, Dead Center: “If one were to imagine an alternate timeline in which Kamala Harris won the 2024 election-persuading voters for whom pessimism about the econ-omy was often the dominant issue-perhaps the decisive episode to revisit would be the death of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislative package. This, as much as any, may have been the moment when reality forked. Under the plan an estimated 3.4 million Americans would have gained health insurance, families would have saved thousands each year on childcare, and 35 million households would have been able to rely on monthly payments from an enhanced child tax credit, among many other provisions to make life more affordable. Its collapse helped convince voters who wanted solutions to the insecurity created by inflation and the long-simmering crisis of in-equality that Democrats lacked the necessary fighting spirit. The legislation passed the House and had support from every Democrat in the Senate-except one. Joe Manchin opens his memoir, Dead Center, with a meeting in the White House. In stilted reconstructed dialogue, the now retired Democratic senator from West Virginia-who declared himself an independent shortly before the end of his last term-dramatizes his conversation with Biden in the Oval Office on December 14, 2021. The president, calling Build Back Bet-ter “my hallmark legislation,” is asking for his vote. Manchin responds that passing the bill would “forever change the psyche of this country to be ‘what more can my country do for me.” He recounts how, after the meeting, he went on Fox News and announced that he would vote no. “I had just killed Joe Biden’s ‘hallmark legislation,” Man-chin writes, with evident glee. The tone of this passage is typical of a book that somewhat incredibly, given the political moment in which it was published-reads like a valedictory address. “The greatest conundrum in politics today is the relentless pressure to align fully with one side or the other,” Manchin writes. The other problems that consume him include the size of the national debt. the possible desecration of the filibuster, and the price tags of various pieces of legislation. It feels as if he’s speaking from an alternate universe, one where the structures of our political system aren’t being torn down and our neighbors aren’t being terrorized before our eyes by authoritarian violence. His book may have nothing to say about the very real dangers we face, but it is starkly revealing of the worldview that got us here.”

Now this:

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But Vance had a bigger problem. Many of Trump’s advisors would privately observe that the President did not seem to care much what happened to the party or to its nominees once he was no longer on the ballot. In fact, he seemed to take some satisfaction in the unspeakable: Republicans losing when he wasn’t running. The next month, when Republicans performed badly in the off-year elections, Trump would say he was “honored” that people were saying they couldn’t win without him on the ballot. Trump had already climbed his own mountain with his improbable comeback in 2024. If Republicans were wiped out in the 2026 midterm elections, or in 2028, he could simply boast that they couldn’t win without him. Trump could barely be stirred to even think about the midterms.

–From Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. (2026).

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