Everything At Stake: 2026 Midterms

If it feels like this election cycle is the most important of our lifetimes AGAIN for the tenth or twelfth time, it's because since 2004 we've been dealing with high stakes for our nation - and for the state of Florida where I live - ever since the Bush the Lesser administration created so many mistakes - the flaws and failures of the War On Terror above all - and mishandled so many disasters - the various corporate scandals from Enron to the mortgage crisis, as well as Hurricane Katrina - that we've been trying to compensate ever since.

It doesn't help that the cyclical nature of the elections themselves - swinging towards liberals and Democrats one term, swinging towards conservative Republicans after a term or two - doesn't allow for any stability in policies, with the partisan nature of the Republicans' destructive agendas causing more chaos and harm than any good. This particular congressional term of 2025-2026 - the mass deportations and civil rights abuses, the refusal to rein in trump's corruption and warmongering - has been partisanship destruction on steroids through inaction and distraction, with far too many aspects of federal - and state - effectiveness falling apart.

If there's anything positive about the 2026 midterm cycle, it's that many signs are pointing to a Democratic "Blue Wave" similar to what happened in 2018... except this time voter anger towards trump and Republicans are higher and more visceral. There are signs that the Democrats can claim enough seats in the Senate this cycle - with Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas in play - to clinch control of both parts of Congress.

Granted, the polls are still within margin of error and could still provide narrow wins for Republicans to keep the Senate, but most of the polling - not just nationwide but at the district levels - are pointing to Dems claiming the House of Representatives... and that's AFTER all the massive gerrymandering the Republicans inflicted this year after the Supreme Court ruled they could eliminate minority-majority (also Democratic) districts.

Hoping is one thing that likely voters will show: Action is what matters, and actual voter turnout is necessary among the Democratic base - and all others among the No Party Affiliates and disgruntled Republicans - to show up by November 3rd to get their ballots in and make them count.

For Florida, that means showing up to vote in every congressional district for any Democratic candidate on that ballot. That means showing up to vote for the Democratic Senate candidate statewide. That means showing up to vote out the overlong Republican dominance at the state legislative levels as well as putting Democrats back into the governor's office along with the other executive offices up for vote.

The state attorney general election is vital this year for Democrats to win because of the current scandals surrounding the DeSantis regime, especially the Hope Florida theft of $10 million earmarked for sick kids. If the Republicans win the state AG office, that Republican - James Uthmeier, who has connections to that scandal! - will squash any further investigation or criminal charges aimed at those who stole money from sick kids, and perpetuate all future GOP scandals as the state Republicans know they will get away with all of it. Holding these crooks accountable is a key reason to show up and vote this midterms for Democrats. This is why voting for Jose Javier Rodriguez could arguably be the most important choice on your state ballot.

For the governor's office itself, the Democratic candidate is David Jolly a one-time Republican who quit that party of his own volition during the first trump regime, and has taken the role of the centrist candidate trying to appeal to both Dems and NPA/angry Republican voters. There is a risk though, as previous election attempts of centrist candidates (sigh, Crist) did not boost general election Dem turnout. This year is different due to the overall anger by the electorate, one hopes. It matters to elect Jolly because the Republican on the ballot Byron Donalds is an openly MAGA wingnut who will impose trumpian chaos at the state level.

For the U.S. Senate race, the Democratic primary voters pulled off an upset going with Angie Nixon, an openly avowed progressive who impressed the base with effective ground campaigning and an aggressive anti-trump message. The polling has Nixon neck-and-neck to incumbent Ashley Moody, who has close ties to the DeSantis crime family and involvement in the Hope Florida scandal... and thus utterly deserves to get kicked out by Florida voters angry by all the GOP corruption. Voting FOR Nixon - relax, this is the GOOD Nixon - would also contribute to the Democrats' chances of gaining control of the Senate.

There's also Democrat Annette Taddeo running for the Chief Financial Officer position, and Joey Mendoza Atkins for Commissioner of Agriculture. Voting for the Democratic candidates for Congress, state House, and state Senate depending on your district matters a lot as well, please and thank you.

Florida also has a judicial retention vote, and up for consideration this year is Carlos Muniz, appointed to the seat in 2019 by DeSantis, which should be a huge mark against Muniz for starters. The Orlando Sentinel describes Muniz as one of the most partisan justices on the state bench, who ruled on enforcing a strict abortion ban and supported blatant gerrymandered maps. Voting NO on Muniz will hold him accountable for those decisions. One other reason to vote for Jolly as governor by the by is to end the ongoing stacking of state judgeships by all the Republican governors we've had for 20-plus years: our court system is filled with Far Right partisans who'll rule in favor of their elites instead of serving the needs of the public.

Last thing on the Florida ballots will be three amendments: Amendment One is to increase the amount of money that may be retained in the budget stabilization fund (aka the Rainy Day emergency bank), and limits on how the money gets transferred; Amendment Two is to exempt farm equipment or tools from property taxes if the property is listed for agricultural needs; and Amendment Three is an expanded homestead exemption rate a nuclear bomb wiping out millions from any county and city government's revenues raised from property taxes.

I've already made my position on Amendment Three clear: raising the exemption rates to such extremes would ruin many services provided at the city and county levels, such as road maintenance, clean water supply and sewage handling, public parks, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, and more. Public hospitals and health services could lose $323 million over three years. Counties could lose up to $29.7 BILLION over five years (almost 65 percent of their revenues) and cities losing up to $12 BILLION (around 26 percent of their revenues) in that same span. 

For anyone thinking they're going to save between $600 to $1200 on their annual taxes with this amendment, consider the costs of everything else in your life going up either by counties/cities enacting more fees (if the state will even let them!) or the costs of suddenly dealing with dirty water, higher utility bills, 2000 potholes between your house and work, and your kids suddenly having no safe parks or open museums to entertain them. That $1200 you're saving from one column in your balance sheet is going to get eaten up by the other costs. It's not worth the loss of public services, and I am not saying this as an employee of a city public library I'm saying this as a homeowner who is okay with paying my taxes as a civic duty. For the love of GOD, vote NO on Three.

As for Amendment One, there's no evidence at the moment that the budget stabilization fund needs more money - it's at its highest amount (9.3 percent) in years, having recovered from the fiscal horrors of 2008 - and this move feels like a power grab by the Republicans in the state legislature. I'm thinking of voting NO on One. 

Amendment Two does address the costs of managing farms here in the state, removing some of the fiscal burdens allowing our local agribusinesses to afford equipment and other supplies. Florida needs to maintain local agriculture at least to ensure food security at this level, so this would help our communities overall. It may cut into the property taxes for our counties, but not at the extremes that Amendment Three does. I would vote YES on Two.

That all said: VOTING MATTERS, FLORIDA. Especially during a midterms that trump and his lackeys are threatening to take away our votes by hook or crook. If you're worried about your county precinct being at risk from illegal federal raids, plan ahead and do Early Voting which happens October 19th through November 1st. Check your county's Elections website to find out locations - they tend to be in centralized locations that ICE / DHS / FBI aren't keen to hit since white voters will be there - and plan to go early mornings or late afternoons depending on your work schedules.

Vote the Republican crooks out, Florida. Vote FOR David Jolly, Jose Javier Rodriguez, Angie Nixon, and every Democrat on the ballots. Vote NO on Three above all. 

PLEASE VOTE.

A Flock of Protests

This isn't just happening in Florida, but I figure I should start in my home state (via David Ingram with NBC News):

Florida’s state transportation office on Monday revoked the ability of local police to put license plate readers on state highways, as a nationwide backlash continued to gain steam against Flock Safety and other makers of surveillance cameras.

Will Watts, the chief operating officer of the Florida Department of Transportation, informed local law enforcement agencies in a one-page memo that the department was revoking all previously issued approvals for license plate readers (LPRs) in state “rights-of-way,” or the strip of land that’s next to or part of a state road.

Watts cited a “recent exponential increase” in deployments of law enforcement cameras, as well as “concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes” that he said merit immediate action “to preserve Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life.”

If you've paid attention along the sides of the highways, you might notice these thin black poles on portable mounts with cameras atop them. Unlike the CCTV cameras you'd see at traffic intersections - or the street corners of urban communities - these are cheap, easy to place, and even easier to abuse by law enforcement bullies stalking their exes or other women that caught their eye. Ingram's report provides an example of "a Kentucky police officer was arrested after authorities said he used the Flock system more than 2,000 times to track his ex-girlfriend."

They're investigating cops in Chicago who abused the data for their personal use. A cop in Texas got fired for using Flock to track his ex-wife. A cop is charged in Louisville KY for using Flock to stalk a woman for months.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes is in full effect here, kids.

As Ingram notes, the use and abuse of this new technology - tied into AI, and reaching further into personal privacy data than any previous tech our law enforcement ever wielded - has caught the attention and anger of thousands of fellow Americans:

NBC News has identified 50 areas across the country where Flock cameras have been damaged, spray-painted, smashed or cut down in acts of vandalism since 2024, while some drivers have sued Flock and organized themselves into a proposed class action.

Tim Swarens over at USA Today delves more into the legal concerns:

Unlike old-fashioned surveillance cameras, information gleaned from images captured by Flock cameras – including time, date and place – is stored as searchable text in databases. Law enforcement agencies can then mine the data without a warrant. 

The American Civil Liberties Union says the cameras can even record the bumper stickers slapped on the back of your car. Think about the First Amendment implications of that uninvited interaction with government snoops.

Invasion of privacy concerns have ostensibly motivated vandals across the country to sabotage the cameras. And while I don’t condone breaking the law, I do understand the opposition to unwelcome government surveillance...

Proponents of the cameras say they help police capture dangerous fugitives, stop car thefts and reduce other crimes.

But there is a necessary tension between public safety and our constitutional rights, including the right to privacy. We restrict law enforcement agencies’ power for good reason... 

News stories have cropped up across the country about misuse of the cameras. In 2025, police in Lenexa, Kansas, were accused of using the city’s license plate readers to track the movements of a man who wrote a guest column for the Kansas City Star criticizing the police department...

In February, police in Sherwood, Arkansas pulled over a couple after a Flock camera erroneously identified their vehicle as stolen. The couple was held at gunpoint, with their infant in the vehicle, before officers realized their error...

As much as the technology is cutting edge, the AI used by these cameras is still raw - AI is meant to learn - and prone to mistakes/errors/outright fabrications. We're running the risk of cops reacting to the wrong crimes and towards innocent people. We've had the risk of these same cops abusing their authority to harass and bully others, but now with these cameras and AI they can behave even worse.

I don't condom damaging or destroying any Flock cameras you see out there. But if you ever come across one, take the time to slow down well enough that you can flip the bird at the SOBs as you drive by.

The Crimes of the DeSantis Power Circle, Symbolic of Statewide Republican Corruption

If you want to know how corrupt Republicans are, not only look to their crimes but also look to how they cover up said crimes when they're in control of the investigation. Right here in Florida is a perfect example as a grand jury probe dug into political fundraising misdeeds by those in power (via Jim Vertuno with AP News, linked through PBS Newshour):

A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration "misappropriated" $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity connected to his wife, but it declined to file criminal charges due to a lack of evidence indicating who specifically was responsible.

DeSantis on Thursday did not dispute the legitimacy of the secret grand jury report obtained and published online by CBS News Miami, but he insisted no laws were broken and said whoever leaked the sealed documents would face "consequences."

What consequences? The report already indicated nobody in a position to do anything about this is pressing criminal charges!

The Leon County grand jury completed its report in January on investigations into Hope Florida, the charity started in 2021 by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis. Despite the lack of charges, the report ignited a new round of criticism aimed at DeSantis and other top state Republicans over the charity receiving $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement intended to help poor children get health insurance.

Basically, DeSantis' own wife stole from sick kids. SHE STOLE. FROM SICK KIDS. The sociopathy is bottomless with these crooks.

Also note, the grand jury completed their work in January but it's only NOW - after the August primaries were voted on - that the report leaked.

The Hope Florida charity is supposed to help financially struggling families connect with churches and aid groups to help keep them off publicly-financed assistance programs. The $10 million was instead moved to political action committees that used the money to oppose a 2024 statewide ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana for adults in the state...

The grand jury said no one would take responsibility for sending the money to the charity or had any memory of who did.

"We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution," the report noted. "While we can't prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again."

The grand jury report concluded that James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis' chief of staff at the time, "was in a position of authority over those involved in settling," and that his Keep Florida Clean PAC was the prime recipient of the $10 million. The grand jury said then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody's office knew of the plans to divert the money. She was later appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate...

Take note of all the players involved in both the crime and the cover-up, how they're all interconnected and relying on each other to stay in political power. Uthmeier and Moody both owe DeSantis their offices, and they have personal incentives to make sure they're never held accountable for any role they had in this.

The articles covering this story don't delve too much into how a grand jury investigation into this even started back in October 2025. That it was a fellow state Republican in the state House questioning the fundraising diversions seems a bit surprising unless you recognize it as an intraparty power play: Back then, Casey DeSantis was campaigning to run for governor to follow in her husband's footsteps, a blatant act of nepotism that arguably angered other Republicans ambitious for that office. The polls favored her well into February 2026, but the grand jury created enough scandal to keep her from running.

When she didn't show up on the ballot, you'll notice the other state-level Republicans didn't care to hold anybody accountable for it, even though clearly crimes took place. Their inaction reeks just as much as the DeSantis' power grabs and theft.

And this is what you get when one party runs everything at the state level for 28-plus years. The Republicans - driven more and more by their wingnut extremists - have been in control of Florida since 1998, packing the state courts with conservative judges happy to bend the laws to their favor, shredding every voter-backed referendums that supported funding schools and keeping ecosystems safe, denying local communities any sovereignty, and mocking any accountability to the voters who keep putting the same crooks back into office.

All I want - all I've been praying for the last two decades - is for my fellow Floridians to wake up to the reality that the state-level Republicans - as much as the national party - are a bunch of honest-to-God crooks. The Republican Party from trump on down to DeSantis and to every state legislator and county official are part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to take taxpayer money for their own pockets and make most of us - even their own voters - suffer to their cruelty.

Please. I am begging every Florida voter. You want an end to criminal corruption in politics? You're going to have to recognize it's all coming from the Republicans in charge at Tallahassee, and you are going to have to vote every goddamn Republican crook out of office. Please.

In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

Data Dangers

There's a thing happening the past few years of the tech companies rushing around trying to build data centers everywhere. Normally, a data center is a building - oft-times a warehouse - where companies can maintain their servers, networks, and other business functions.

Thing is, most of these newer data centers are built to handle artificial intelligence (AI), which requires more processing speed and power that demands more electricity - and water for coolant - to where the local communities are shoved out of their own access to such resources. These data centers also take up more land than ever before, squeezing out communities looking to expand housing, maintain farmland, or protect fragile ecosystems.

It's a problem that's literally developing in my back yard, as there's a corporation trying to build a large data center in nearby Fort Meade where the city council approved a deal in spite of the large and angry turnout of locals who opposed it (via Chad Mills at ABC Channel 28):

The Fort Meade City Commission unanimously approved a controversial development agreement Tuesday night, which advances a massive data center proposal that has drawn weeks of concern from neighbors, especially over water use and the project’s long-term impact on the city.

The vote clears a major hurdle for Stonebridge’s proposed data center campus, planned for more than 1,300 acres northwest of downtown. The project calls for up to 4.4 million square feet of development and, if ultimately built out, could become one of the largest data center campuses of its kind in Florida.

Tuesday’s meeting stretched for hours, with many in the crowd speaking in opposition before commissioners cast their votes.

Mayor Jaret Landon Williams told the crowd the city was not deciding whether a data center could be built on the site. He described Tuesday’s vote as approval of the development agreement tied to a project that had already won land use and zoning approvals during a meeting last June...

What I can tell you about Fort Meade is that it's a small community in a very rural part of the county, where most of the surrounding lakes are carved-out shallow remnants of where phosphate mining took place, meaning there's not a lot of water resources to rely on. Stonebridge's people were claiming they'll only take up 50,000 gallons a day for "potable" use only, but that's still an insane amount of consumption (and I don't believe them when they're claiming they will recycle water coolant: for what I know, data centers evaporate every last drop). 

Internet connectivity out there is meager at best, begging the question how well that AI data center can reach the web. And the electric grid out that way arguably can't handle an energy hog of that scale. They're going to have to add more power stations (or do something like build a solar panel farm to support it). It's like the only reason the Stonebridge corporation wants to build out there is because there's not a lot of residents who could complain when things go bad.

If you read Mills' article above, you'll see photos of the city hall turnout by locals to where the room was packed and standing room only: I've rarely seen a turnout for local issues like that before. It should have been a warning to the city council, but they ignored it as well as ignoring the evidence that a lot of Americans across the nation hate the spread of data centers (via Jeffrey M. Jones at the Gallup news site):

Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.

These results, from a March 2-18 Gallup survey, represent the first time Gallup has asked about data center construction, a topic that has met fierce opposition from local residents in many parts of the country. These data centers house computing equipment that helps power AI technology used by businesses, universities and other institutions. The centers cover large areas of land, require extensive amounts of electricity to operate and need substantial water to cool the equipment, raising concerns about their impact on the environment and local electric bills...

The March survey asked people to rate their level of concern about the environmental impact of AI data centers. Forty-six percent say they worry a great deal and 24% a fair amount, largely mirroring the degrees of opposition to data center construction.

To gain a deeper understanding of people’s reasons for favoring or opposing data center construction in their area, Gallup asked an open-ended question on an April web survey using the Gallup Panel. Americans who favor the building of a data center in their area mostly cite the potential economic benefits. Opponents of data centers have more varied reasons for their position, but they focus mostly on environmental concerns.

Half of opponents mention data centers’ excessive use of resources, including 18% each mentioning their use of water and energy. Sixteen percent mention a related environmental concern of pollution, including noise pollution and air and water pollution...

Most of the remaining opposition stems from general or specific concerns about artificial intelligence.

Speaking of, the growing disdain towards AI especially as the "techbro" elites push the technology is growing louder, even at college graduation ceremonies (from Mirna Alsharif and Austin Mullen at NBC News):

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed multiple times Friday while discussing artificial intelligence during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona.

Schmidt, who led Google for a decade, opened his remarks by reflecting on his own student years and the rise of the computer, — a device named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 1982. He traced its evolution into the laptop and smartphone and its proliferation through the internet and social media...

Schmidt then drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos.

“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,” Schmidt said, addressing the crowd as many continued to boo him. “There is a fear ... there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear.”

No, Schmidt, I don't think you understood that fear. It's not so much fear about losing jobs as it is fear of drowning in slop.

The disdain towards AI isn't entirely built on hostility towards technology overall: nearly everyone accepts the usefulness of things like smartphones and computers. Most of the ire is coming from getting overwhelmed - having it shoved almost literally down our throats - by high-tech oligarchs openly desperate to get people to buy their latest shiny toy that doesn't even work well.

I wrote about Artificial Intelligence over at my librarian blog last year, as the use of AI in research and document creation is showing up more in my profession:

This is a serious problem facing librarians and the overall reference/research profession. As a reference librarian it is (maybe was now) my job to ensure the proper information got to the people asking for it, that the materials were well-vetted, fact-checked, and proven. I was in a lot of trouble if I gave people the wrong info.

Now were we are with AI as a research "tool" except that people are expecting it to be 100 percent accurate; when AI still has problems seeing beyond the poor data getting uploaded, or understanding that the algorithms that produced those results might have been in error. It doesn't help if a patron's existing bias blinds them to the factual information that does come up: they'll take the bad info if it fits their world-view (even if it kills them).

Nothing since then has changed: AI is still faulty, still creating fake data, still untrustworthy, still a major health risk. And yet we are all getting AI shoved into our daily lives - in our browsers, our email services, even house appliances - when we didn't ask or even need them.

We're all in danger with this rush to an AI future that doesn't even look like it will work as promised.

Gods - or else Tech Support - help us. 

The Gerrymander Wars Escalate

Any regular follower here knows I am not a fan of the gerrymander.

I've railed about it often: how it distorts true representation, suppresses voter interest and turnout, and drives the major political parties to pander more to the monied powers than to genuinely represent their districts and states.

For some time there in the late 2010s, I had some hope that legal fighting over the gerrymandering efforts by Republicans in key battleground states like Florida would end the issue: That the skewing of representation and denial of voters rights would irk even conservative-leaning courts to level the electoral field and letting sanity prevail.

Alas, the Roberts Court in 2019 nuked those hopes from orbit. All I had left were my observations that even by 2022 the GOP efforts to rig the congressional elections in their favor had turned farcical and clinging to a diminishing returns cliff - all those distorted districts and they still only have a 4-5 seat lead in the House - of their own making.

With the 2026 midterms looming - and with growing evidence that the slim Republican holdings in both the US House and Senate are slipping away - you can taste the desperation of the Far Right to impose their minority rule with escalating efforts across GOP-controlled states to skew their gerrymandered districts even more. Especially as trump himself - openly noting that losing Congress this 2026 would end his reign of madness and sadism - has been running around since 2025 - when his polling numbers slipped as ICE thuggery and tariffs increased - demanding states like Texas and Indiana redraw their districts to keep Democrats from gaining control of a divided House.

The big difference this election cycle - and a big reason why the Republicans are panicking in public - is that the Democratic Party finally decided to take the gloves off and do their own extreme gerrymandering to counter the decades of GOP mapmaking that drove us to this cliff.

I've noted before that yes, Democrats were guilty of gerrymandering in states their legislatures controlled, especially in Maryland, Illinois, and California. It's just that the Dems never pulled it to the extremes the way Republicans did in Texas, Ohio, and Florida. 

Until now: California passed a voter referendum in 2025 allowing them - the most populous state - to skew their congressional districts to where Republicans may not have any seats left; and Virginia passed a voter referendum this month allowing them to redraw districts to where mathematically speaking the Democrats can win the US House by 1-2 seats.

The Virginia results are under legal scrutiny at the moment, so it may not be settled for this midterms. In the meantime, the GOP panic that they could lose the House - and lose it for a long time, because they don't have as many nationwide voters as they'd like to keep skewing the results - has resulted in map madness in the large-population states they still control.

Florida, for example, called an emergency legislative session: Not about data centers, or AI, or education needs, or funding for the upcoming hurricane season; but about redrawing a map they already skewed 20-to-8 in their favor back in 2022. It's bad enough that they're planning to divide the Tampa metro - as huge a Democratic Party stronghold in the state you can find - so that none of the seats representing that metro will favor Dems: A clear partisan attempt to negate the rights and powers of a large number of American citizens.

The funny thing about all this? All of these Republican efforts to gerrymander themselves into permanent victory could actually help them lose it all (via David A. Graham at The Atlantic):

But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness—a foe that doesn’t always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to learn the word. Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help. Dummymanders are nothing new, but the bunch of new districts drawn in recent months mean that they could play an important role in the outcome of the midterms...

Now the action is mostly reaching its end as the deadline for finalizing 2026 maps nears, although some questions remain. (Among them: Will the Supreme Court issue a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in time for Republicans to draw new maps for this cycle? (editor's note: goddamn this foreshadowing...) The consensus among election analysts is that the redistricting will end up giving Republicans only three or four new seats, if any. But Democratic prowess in recent special elections raises the possibility that rather than a cold-blooded political hit, the GOP’s efforts could end up as a Pyrrhic victory.

In late January, a Democrat won a Texas state Senate seat in Tarrant County—in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Most House districts won’t see a shift that big, but victories like these have raised the possibility of Democrats catching enough of a blue wave that maps drawn to help Republicans might actually hurt them. The math is simple: In order to draw more districts favoring Republicans, GOP legislators had to spread their own voters a little thinner. But if they spread them too thin and Democrats have a good year, Republican candidates will become vulnerable.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked in these gerrymander wars is the role no-party-affiliate (NPA) or independent voters play in how districts get won. When they're drawing these maps, the Republicans (and Democrats) look at how much they can spread out their registered voters they expect to show up, and then pray that the third-party indy voters either side with them or fail to show... which is a huge gamble to take if you're trump's party when polling shows a lot of independent voters are pissed at trump right now. You can survive independent voter outrage if your district is +5 or +8 in favor of your party, but you can't if you've got the percentages at +1 or +2.

Many of Grofman and Brunell’s examples of dummymanders come from late in the 20th century, when Democrats still held lots of southern seats because of historic party support, but were on the verge of losing them to Republicans. For example, they write that the map Georgia Democrats drew after the 1990 census looks more like a Republican gerrymander than one drawn to help Democrats, which the authors blame on “the belief that it is good to be as thin as possible as long as you still remain breathing.” Entering the 1992 election, Georgia had nine Democratic House members. Three won, but three lost, and three more retired.

In the wake of those 1990 redistricting, the Republicans rose on the demographic - and racist - shifts from social conservative Democrats fleeing a party more inclined to defend civil (Black) rights. Those shifts were accelerated in the 2000s by the War on Terror of 9/11 and the growing evangelical Christianist voting base, which led to the Tea Party/anti-Obama fervor that drives the modern Republican base to this day.

Thing is, that partisan shift is pretty much played out. For all the ongoing outrage and demonizing the Far Right produces and consumes within their own circles, they can't increase their voting base any further. At best, they can bamboozle or enrage certain voting blocs - Latino men for example in 2024 - to side with them for one or two election cycles before their hypocritical true selves emerge and drive those blocs off.

This is one of the reasons the Republicans are not only struggling to gerrymander every state they can to favor themselves, they're also desperate to take away voting rights from everyone - Blacks, women, college-age, LGBTQA+ - they don't want voting. The conservative mindset on full display that only THEIR side should have power and rights, and everyone else needs to sit there in our cages being grateful for the crumbs thrown our way.

I'm terrified of the damage these gerrymanders are going to inflict: the lack of honest representation that will ignore the needs of our communities just as we need help from government the most.

The only true way in my opinion to end these gerrymander wars is for the rest of us - all of us - to show the fuck up at the polling stations during the midterms and vote the Republicans - the ones most responsible for propping up that child-raping, grifting, sadistic trump - out of office. As much as the Democrats are playing these mapmaking games, they're not the ones responsible for this monstrous tyrannical regime arresting families, crashing economies, and bombing schools.

We are long past due holding the Far Right accountable for all the sins they've inflicted on the rest of us. To hell with their games: VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT.

Then we'll see an end to these fucking partisan maps.

A Dark Memorial Blotting Out the Miami Skyline

I once wrote back at the end of trump's first turn at destroying America about how even as a failed president occupant of the White House he was entitled to a library in his dishonor. Even then, I dismissed the prospect because of several points (some of which proved prophetic):

Another thing to consider is the overall mess trump's administration has been. Archivists, historians, and other observers have been complaining about the lack of effective record-keeping in his offices. A combination of understaffing and unqualified hires contributed to a disorganized management system. When you consider the possibility of half the things trump and his cohorts did in the White House - the way they broke the immigration policies and committed potential human rights abuses towards children, for God's sake - we're facing the possibility that half the documentation for trump's would-be library will be missing, destroyed, or redacted into solid pages of black lines...

As a Presidential Museum, of course, it would make perfect sense. The museum won't need to answer to the demands of history or accuracy: the trump Museum would be a grand display of trump's narcissism. Every nook, room, and hallway filled with garish, gaudy tributes to trump's "greatness". A performance hall with a stage dedicated to any speaker offering praise and holiest-of-thous to a con artist, an assembly dedicated to the greed and graft of a corrupt overlord.

It's why I don't see a future trump Library as being anything more than an oversized gift store: Balanced between a Far Right bookstore selling trump ghost-written hagiographies at 100 bucks a cover, and a South Florida tourist trap shilling MAGA beach towels and trump-signed golf clubs...

With trump's return to office, the prospect of his Library getting done became more likely, and with trump basically claiming Florida as his place of power it was unavoidable that my home state is absorbing the potential damage of hosting it (via Kate Payne at AP News): 

A judge in Miami has dismissed a complaint challenging a college’s decision to gift prime downtown real estate for President Donald Trump’s future presidential library, clearing the way for the real estate developer-turned-president to build a towering monument to his political rise in an iconic stretch of the city.

A local activist brought the lawsuit against Miami Dade College, arguing the school’s board didn’t give sufficient public notice and violated the state’s open government law when board members voted in September to give away the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property in downtown Miami.

The site is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on a palm tree-lined stretch of Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more...

After the college first voted in September to transfer the property to a fund controlled by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet, the GOP officials voted to transfer the land again, effectively putting the property under the control of the Trump family when they deeded it to the foundation for Trump’s library. That foundation is led by three trustees: Eric Trump; Tiffany Trump’s husband, Michael Boulos; and the president’s attorney, James Kiley.

Eric Trump has pledged the future library will be “one of the most beautiful buildings ever built” and “an Icon on the Miami skyline.” Under local zoning rules, the best use of the property would be a towering condo building, according to one Miami real estate expert, who described the site as a potential “cash cow.”

That the local developers are picturing the library to be more of a condo seems apt considering how trump and his family view property as money machines for their own pockets. /sigh

As for Eric trump's promise to make the library "one of the most beautiful buildings ever built," you have to remember that the trump ideal of "beauty" is oversized crassness, and this week's preliminary reveal of what they want the library to be wasn't that shocking (horrifying, yes, but not shocking). As Cameron Adams at the Daily Beast documents:

President Donald Trump has shared the first images of his latest vanity building—a book-free library that includes a tacky golden statue of himself and shiny gold escalators.

The first look at the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, to be constructed in Miami, Florida, suggests the building will be firmly on brand for the 79-year-old. It is a mammoth skyscraper with ‘TRUMP’ emblazoned near the top and images of the American flag.

"Book free". Yeah. /Librarian headdesking

An apparently AI-generated video shows multiple aircraft housed inside the library, as well as what appear to be replicas of the White House’s Oval Office and the president’s yet-to-be-built ballroom, as well as a huge gold statue of Trump in what looks like an auditorium.

Linked from the Daily Beast article.

"ALL HAIL THE GOLDEN IDOL! ALL HAIL trump! HAIL! HAIL!"

The president’s son Eric breathlessly posted that he had “poured my heart and soul” into the project over the past six months.

“This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known,” he said on X... 

There's an AI-generated video - which just adds to the tackiness of the presentation - to which I don't want to link. I will share a few more pictures at least.

All images linked from the Daily Beast.

It's all just one big placard for trump's name and likeness, isn't it?

Also note how high this skyscraper is going: it's planned to be the tallest building in Miami, which is already a flat landscape due to Florida's geography. You couldn't avoid it even from the safe distance of Broward County, I'd wager.

I'd also wonder about the all-glass exterior, which can be common among Florida skyscrapers but not at that height, and not at the expense of whichever Category 5 hurricane decides to hit the place.

One more thing I just remembered: Can the ground support the weight of such a structure? It's not the bedrock of Manhattan Island, and South Florida runs the risk of collapsing buildings in this day and age.

One last thing to remember is how trump and his kids are grifters of the lowest order: Anything that can make them money while they produce little to no results. Early "fundraising" shakedowns have raised concerns:

This month, congressional Democrats including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal wrote to ABC, Meta, Paramount, and X requesting details about the money they pledged to Trump’s library project as part of their legal settlements, The Washington Post reported.

“Now it is unclear where this money has gone, exacerbating concerns about corruption that were apparent at the time of the settlement,” the lawmakers wrote.

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund was originally set up to manage the money, but was dissolved last year.

A second nonprofit fund, called the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., was then established. The fund reported in December 2025 that it had received $50 million, though it did not confirm whether that sum includes the legal settlement funds...

There's no guarantee that trump's fundraising is actually going into this tower of triteness. I wouldn't trust anyone in this project with doing any fundraising to build a parking garage in Miami, which would be of greater value than this blight.

All this seems to me is - yet again - trump eager to build an oversized, underused monument to his own decaying corrupt ego, one that will likely get torn down the second he's out of power because nobody else really needs it.

The Fall of Florida's Higher Education Under Far Right Republicans

As part of Ron DeSantis' ambitious agenda - for his insane presidential hopes - in 2023 to "fight Wokeness" in Florida's educational system, we witnessed the Sunshine State's schools fall under the merciless attentions of Far Right wingnuts eager to purge "diversity" and any genuine standards at every level. As I wrote back in February 2023:

 Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

This is essentially a hostile takeover, not just by DeSantis but also by Far Right Republicans obsessed with dismantling higher educational systems they fear are too liberal...

DeSantis is essentially saying that things like civil rights and Title IX protections won't be upheld at state universities. Segregation and racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile workplaces, hostile classrooms... all of this will become the norm in DeSantis' Florida.

This is all echoed in DeSantis' efforts to shut down ANY discussion of "Critical Race Theory" essentially meaning our state cannot teach one iota of Florida's history regarding racism, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights marches, all because Republicans are terrified that White People's Feelings (tm) will be hurt if we teach the facts that Yes Goddammit racism happened and keeps happening. He's just making sure that college students will be kept ignorant as much as our K-12 students.

(Christopher) Rufo is, by the by, a wingnut conservative hack actively campaigning to shut down public education of any kind in an obsessive desire to privatize something for greed and racism. DeSantis, desperate to win over 2024 Republican primary voters, is giving Rufo the opportunity to wreak havoc on Florida's educational system...

So it's been two years since then, with DeSantis' presidential hopes all dashed while Florida's educational standards sank into the swamps. In the meanwhile, we had situations like political hack Ben Sasse - Far Right Republican dragged in from another state - causing massive administrative and financial damage to the flagship University of Florida. We keep witnessing Republican leadership at the state level fail our kids and families when it comes to high school success and getting prepared for colleges. The state's budget for education across the board is disappearing, forcing more cuts that shouldn't be happening.

And DeSantis' takeover of New College? How is that turning out? Let Nate Weisberg's report at Washington Monthly educate us:

As Chris Mullin wrote recently in the Washington Monthly, DeSantis exploited Florida’s unusually centralized system of higher-education governance to insert political control directly into the classroom—stacking boards, replacing presidents, and rewriting curricula. His boldest gamble has been a complete takeover and ideological makeover of ​​New College of Florida, a small public liberal-arts college on Sarasota Bay known for its experimental pedagogy and progressive-left campus culture. Charging poor performance and ideological bias, DeSantis announced plans in early 2023 to transform the school into a “Hillsdale of the South”—a reference to the small, selective, conservative-leaning Michigan college that eschews government funds and focuses on teaching the classics. The governor appointed six new conservative trustees to New College, including activist Christopher Rufo, ​who then ​fired its President, Patricia Okker, and replaced her with former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran ​at more than double Okker’s salary​. Within months, the new board abolished the gender​ studies program, dismissed faculty and administrators, created athletic teams, and secured tens of millions in state funding.

Two years later, the picture looks grim. New College’s four-year graduation rate has plummeted from 58.3 to 47.4 percent. The school’s U.S. News & World Report college ranking has fallen by nearly 60 spots, from 76th among national liberal-arts colleges in 2022 to 135th this year. Faculty and staff have fled, and students have followed them out the door. “It’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme,” one professor told Inside Higher Ed. “Students keep leaving, so they have to recruit bigger and bigger cohorts.” Spending​ at the college​, meanwhile, has exploded. ​In Tallahassee, there is now open talk of either privatizing New College or shutting it down completely. 

DeSantis’s justification for the takeover was that New College was an educational disaster—a failed experiment in left-wing academic culture. Though the school ​had its problems (it struggled​​, for instance,​​ to reach its enrollment goals, as do many small, less-selective colleges around the country) and ​was indeed ​​left leaning, it was far from a disaster. In fact, by most objective measures, it was a model of what a small public liberal-arts institution could achieve. As Aalia Thomas reported in the Washington Monthly in 2023, New College consistently ranked near the top of the magazine’s l​ist of l​iberal​ ​arts ​colleges ​​for upward mobility, research, and service. ​​Its graduates earned PhDs at rates higher than many of the nation’s most prestigious private liberal arts colleges. Its curriculum mixed ​​postcolonial theory with Aristotle and Voltaire. The college charged about $7,000 a year for low-to-medium-income students—a bargain compared to most similar liberal arts colleges. It enrolled a high share of Pell​ ​​Grant recipients and produced civically engaged graduates—​​92.6 percent of its students were registered to vote in 2020. Far from failing, New College embodied many of the qualities conservatives say they prize in public higher education: affordability, rigor, civic virtue, and upward mobility. 

​​The governor’s appointees arrived convinced they were rescuing a failing school. ​​They replaced New College’s narrative-evaluation system with traditional grades. They bragged about making the college more “selective” (instead, the percentage of new students with a 4.0 or above high school grade point average decreased from 55.1 percent in 2022 to 42.1 percent in 2024)​.​ They recruited athletes and ​​self-described “normal” students to reshape the culture, ​​many of whom quickly transferred out. ​The campus began to change in telling ways: the reopened campus café, operated by a vendor tied to Corcoran, now serves coffee in cups printed with Bible verses, and the college has commissioned a statue of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk to stand on campus in honor of “free speech​.​​​” ​All this change has been financed by ​​an ​​eye-watering ​​boost​​ in ​​spending​​. The college’s budget has grown from​​ ​$53,232,164​​​​ ​​​​the year before the overhaul ​​​​to​​​​ ​​​​$93,043,119​​​​ ​​​​today​​​​—a​​​​ 75 percent​​​​ increase​​​​.​​​​ ​

​​​​​​​​Even DeSantis allies are turning on the project. “There can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are,” said Eric Silagy, a​​ DeSantis-appointed​​ member of the state Board of Governors. Nathan Allen, ​​who served as ​​​​vice president of strategy​​ for New College ​​during the conservative takeover but has since resigned​​, ​suggested where the blame for those numbers should be placed​: “​​New College is not a House or Senate project … It’s a Ron DeSantis project.”​​ ​​​Corcoran himself has said, ​​if New College doesn’t produce something different, “then we should be closed down.”

That Corcoran - a political hack hire who didn't deserve the job in the first place - is looking for the exit is a telling sign of how screwed up New College under Rufo and the other wingnuts turned out. And as much as this is all on DeSantis - pushing a political agenda on our state's schools - all of the state-level Republicans who backed DeSantis' efforts on this need to answer for their own corruption and incompetence here.

Look at the waste in dollars at New College: almost doubling the spending with reduced results, arguably funneling that money into wingnut ideas that aren't working out, if not funneling that money into their own pockets. Remember what happened at UF under Sasse: He hired in 'consultants' and lackeys at double if not triple the pay for no-show jobs and no-show results. It was... it is a huge grift for these greedheads.

For the Republicans, this was never about improving the educational standards of Florida. This was about viewing public education as a cash cow, a means of filling their own pockets with state money while the system breaks down. It was about playing into the hypocrisy of accusing our schools and colleges of being 'broken' and 'corrupt', while being the ones in charge breaking it all and using their own corrupt urges to make it worse.

We've had almost 30 years of constant Republican (mis)rule in the state of Florida, a straight line of crooked behavior by our elected officials and their shady business allies. Why the hell should they be allowed to retain any office after these decades of deceit and destruction?

State of Plague

Just when you think things can't get any dumber in the Sunshine State, the crazed Republican leadership that's been pretty much in charge since 1999 prove they can dumb down even further.

The GOP Morans are playing to their conspiracy-driven anti-vax MAGA base by deciding to end vaccine mandates for public schools (via Greg Allen at NPR): 

Florida's governor said he'll be asking the state Legislature to repeal a statute that requires children to receive vaccines for polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps before entering school. If it passes, Florida will be the first in the nation to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children and adults.

Other vaccines, including those for chickenpox, hepatitis B and strep infections, are mandated by the state health department, as opposed to Florida's Legislature. The state's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said his department will soon issue rules repealing those requirements too.

"People have a right to make their own decisions," said Ladapo, who joined Gov. Ron DeSantis for the announcement on Wednesday. "If you don't want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. And I hope you make an informed decision. And that's how it should be."

These are, by the by, the same assholes whose anti-abortion stance is to take away all health care choices by women period, so where the "make their own decisions" defense then you bastards.

Public health and child health professionals condemned the move. Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said, "This will cause havoc."

"It will cause problems for funding free vaccines for the impoverished and issues with vaccines to the rest of us due to insurance-related issues," Marty said. "It is clearly against empirical evidence of what is safest for individual children."

It's more than just the children at risk. It will be the teachers, the parents, the communities at large. Schools can be super-spreaders, which we saw happen during the beginnings of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

And here's the thing: COVID is not over. It's still out there, and not just in Florida.

And it's not just COVID, or "regular" influenza.

We're seeing the re-emergence of measles as an infectious threat after decades of thinking our nation had finally seen an end to it. But after all those decades of our medical and scientific leaders successfully promoting and encouraging vaccinations to reduce the risks, we're now in an age when medical frauds are in charge of our nation's health care and are actively shutting down every agency and means to combat infectious diseases.

It is factual to declare that Robert Kennedy Jr., that sonofabitch, is on the side of the viruses making us sick or dead.

And Florida's elected leaders like DeSantis are happy to assist RFK Jr and the other anti-vax frauds to wage war on our children and families all because their anti-science ideology convinces them their ignorance is superior to decades if not centuries of proven medical practice.

Republicans would rather have thousands of Floridians die than admit their anti-vax stances was poor pandering to their conspiracy-driven MAGA base. We're all going to pay for inept, insane leadership by a party that won't lead towards honest-to-God better health and safety for our communities.

Fighting the Fear in Florida

It's hard to keep track of all the atrocities trump and his thugs are inflicting on the United States, but this one back in June really stood out as they were pulling this shit in my backyard: 

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay...

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned...

And it turns out I - and the environmental and civil rights activists as well - was right about that hellhole being unsafe, unsound, and inhuman. Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams gutted the anti-immigrant bastards for their sins (via AP News / NPR):

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' injunction formalized a temporary halt she had ordered two weeks ago as witnesses continued to testify in a multiday hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case...

The judge said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can't bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property. The order does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, "which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.,"

The preliminary injunction includes "those who are in active concert or participation with" the state of Florida or federal defendants or their officers, agents, employees," the judge wrote in an 82-page order.

The judge said state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades. "What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations," Williams said...

DeSantis and Uthmeier never explained why they put the concentration camp there because they didn't want to repeat under oath their gleeful desire to "witness alligators eating any detainees trying to escape." Cruelty may play well on Fox Not-News but not in a courtroom.

While the legal ruling focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the camp, it helps stall the ongoing efforts by the Far Right under trump and Stephen Miller to incarcerate every dark-skinned person they can find in majority-Democratic cities/states. With any luck, it'll at least end that tasteless and profane merch industry that sprang up promoting "Alligator Alcatraz" like it was fcking Disney World.

If there's any good news right now, it's that ICE and the Florida AG aren't ignoring this court order: reports are that camp is emptying out and should be cleared in a few more days.

The bad news is: Where the hell are those poor detainees - most of them honest working people, family members, not at all the criminal rot the fearmongers insist upon - going? There is no way these haters are going to give up the targets of their fear/rage: ICE is most likely shipping these people to the other concentration camps they've been setting up in other Red states across the country. 

This is all going to turn into a sick and cruel game of "hot potato": moving immigrant prisoners from state to state dodging the lawsuits that will get filed in response to any legal abuses the Far Right leaders across those states will inflict on their victims.

If only we had a working Congress that would use its' constitutional powers to rein in a lawless, vulgar, monstrous president shitgibbon. 

Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Stop every concentration camp from getting built. Stop these hatemongers.

Fascism in Florida: Building the Horrors to Come

Update 7/3/25: Oooh, I am so sorry I missed getting mentioned on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up today. I'm a bit distracted with taking care of an ill kitteh and a few other personal things, sorry. Thank you, Batocchio, for the share. To anybody still visiting, I promise to blog four times for the 4th of July (my Four For the Fourth thing) so I hope to see you tomorrow.

There are times I hate living in this godforsaken deep Republican hellhole that is Florida.

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay.

The goddamned trumpshirts can't give up their fantasies about Alcatraz, can they?

Uthmeier told the right-wing podcast The Benny Show on Monday that the federal government had approved his plan that morning, with the facility on track to open the first week of July. He said it would have 5,000 beds — half of its total capacity — by "early July."

"Alligator Alcatraz will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later wrote on X.

DeSantis is using emergency powers to take over the site, which is owned by Miami-Dade County.

But not everyone is on board.

Environmental organizations and immigration advocates have expressed concerns about multiple aspects of the project, from the potential consequences on the fragile Everglades ecosystem to the well-being of the people who will be detained there, especially in the hot summer months.

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned.

And the majority of people getting sent to this forsaken swampy Alcatraz aren't going to be gangbangers, or criminals, or violent people. It's going to be nurses, mothers, veterans, families, honest-to-God citizens.

This isn't even really a prison: it's a goddamned concentration camp, and the first of many under trump.

This is ethnic cleansing, the likes of which we've seen in Nazi Germany, and the Balkans in the 1990s, and dozens of other places we used to pretend we'd never be like. Except that is for the history of us punishing Native Americans in the 19th Century and Japanese residents during the Second World War.

This is us at our worst, America. We need to fight back against what trump and Miller and their ICE thugs and their wingnut allies are doing to our communities and our neighbors. 

Addendum: JFC the Florida Republicans are selling t-shirts promoting this! This is akin to Nazis shilling merch promoting Dachau! Yes I went there, because these goddamn wingnuts are blatantly rounding people up just like 1930s Germany.

The cruelty is not only the point, the cruelty is not only policy, the cruelty is open vice signaling to their fellow haters. GODDAMN THEM.

An Anecdote Involving Air Conditioning

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to save up your pennies, kiddos, 'cause trump's tariff rollercoaster ain't done yet.

Last week, I needed to replace my air conditioner.

The unit was as old as the duplex, built in the mid-1990s. I bought the place - with my parents help, as I was still recovering from long unemployment - in 2014 with the understanding that things were 20-plus years old and at some point will age out and die on me.

The AC compressor had been a problem for years, barely generating enough air to cover the two-bedroom place. The far ends of the house - which happened to be the master bed and bath - wasn't getting much air at all the last five-six years. The AC repair guy told me the last two annual checkups that the compressor was doomed sooner rather than later. This winter, it finally doomed.

The repair guy came out and checked, and showed me the points of failure in the compressor that meant getting a replacement. Problem is, the whole unit was thirty years old, and replacement parts - even compressors - were no longer available. The whole thing needed switching out.

And the cost was going to be around $7500.

Any homeowner will tell you things can get expensive - have been even before the housing booms of the 1980s and 1990s, and the housing market crash of 2007-08. It was still something above my annual income, and it was something I had to get further help from the parents, who were understanding because they knew I lived alone and had no other options other than an equity loan that would cost me a lot more later down the road. They had already helped to clear my mortgage, so replacing the AC was something they could help.

Also, this is the middle of Florida, heading into April and the goddamn heat wave that is April through November anymore (fuck you deniers, climate change is REAL). Air conditioning should not be a privilege, it should be a constitutional right in this state.

So I put in the repair order, the AC guys came out with a three-person crew, they worked on it early Thursday morning well into noon, finishing an hour early, and got the system turned on and pumping clear air. I checked: the new compressor is strong enough to get air to the back rooms of my duplex. At last.

While showing me that new compressor, pointing out what I need to look at in case there are any issues during the limited warranty period for it, the three AC guys all complimented me on spending $7500 on the whole thing.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," the lead guy responded. "Next week, our company has to raise the price on these units by 20 percent."

Basic math told me 20 percent (.2) of $7500 (and change) was $1500 (and change) meaning a cost spike to $9000 (and change). THAT would have even made my parents give pause and suggest I just live with the ceiling fans on full blast for the rest of my life. 

I had to ask this. "Is this because of the trump tariffs?"

All three of the repair guys - where at least one of them had to have voted for that shitgibbon trump in 2024 - said "Yup!" while shaking their heads in discomfort if not alarm.

And this was just as trump unleashed his "liberation" Retribution tariffs on every country and territory on the maps - save for his buddies in Russia - to where we've started trade wars with the entire planet - again, save for Russia - even the islands populated solely by penguins (no, I am not making that up).

I could go into the illogic of trump - and his handlers' - math regarding how his tariffs are "fixing" any trade deficits we have with penguins and most of humanity, and I would argue that trade deficits we've had since the 1970s aren't damaging our economy the way trump claims. Hell, it's not trade deficits that have caused recessions, it had been reckless deregulation of financial markets; the upending of our housing markets; and a global pandemic that our political leaders - especially trump himself - barely took serious.

But I'm sticking to this anecdote as an example - that I'm certain is repeating across many households  this weekend - that right now, the American economy as we know it - our industrial capacity, our supply chains, our ability to provide goods and services, our ability to get reliable air conditioning - is doomed by trump's irrational and aggressive push for high tariffs.

The U.S. economy is not ready for any of this. And all the other damage trump and his lackeys are inflicting on us - the dismantling of our federal agencies, the theft of revenues, the growing job losses - is turning this all into the early stages of an economic depression. It won't even be a recession long enough to ease the coming fall off the cliffs.

Gods help us.