A Tampa-based federal prosecutor who handled some of the most prominent cases against Jan. 6, 2021, rioters is suing over his termination by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, and speaking out publicly about what he says is a politically motivated act.

Michael Gordon is one of three Department of Justice (DOJ) employees who filed a lawsuit on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. All three previously worked on the prosecution of January 6th defendants, indicating that their terminations were “retaliations for prosecutions that were perceived as politically affiliated,” according to the lawsuit.

Gordon says he was conducting a virtual witness preparation interview for an upcoming criminal trial on June 27 when an administrative officer asked him to pause the call as he was handed a one-page document signed by Bondi informing him that he was being removed from his position as an Assistant U.S. Attorney “effective immediately,” with no justification given to why he was being fired.

The heart of the lawsuit filed by Gordon and his two DOJ colleagues – Patricia Hartman and Joseph Tirrell – is that Bondi disregarded long-standing protections that govern how and when members of the civil service can be terminated.

“The laws on the books are crystal clear about the procedures that have to be followed to fire federal employees who are protected by them,” Gordon said while speaking to this reporter on WMNF 88.5 FM on Friday. “Crystal clear. It’s not a gray area. And here, the DOJ has just completely ignored the law.”

Retribution

The Trump administration hasn’t been subtle about trying to remove anyone in the federal government who has been involved in investigations stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

ABC News reported in late January that the DOJ asked for information about potentially “thousands” of FBI employees across the country who were involved in that investigation, and they have subsequently fired dozens of career prosecutors during the past six months, the Washington Post reported last week.

Gordon says that morale in his office “is in a bad place right now” with DOJ employees around the country asking, “am I next?”

He says they’re asking questions that Americans shouldn’t want federal prosecutors to answer, such as: “The facts and the law say that I should charge this case, but is this going to be something the president wants? Am I going to be fired for this down the line?”

Mike Gordon v. the United States

“I have been a professional fighter on behalf of the government for my whole legal career,” he says. “Now I’m on the other side of it. I’m fighting against the government. I have been standing up in court for eight-and-a-half years and I start by saying, ’Your honor, Mike Gordon for the United States.’ Now my name is on a federal lawsuit, where it’s Mike Gordon v. the United States. Which is a bizarre place to be.”

Gordon began working in the Middle District of Florida in January of 2017. He worked in the violent crime and narcotics section but volunteered to prosecute January 6 rioters after he watched the attack on the Capitol that day from his home office in Tampa.

He ended up as a senior trial counsel in the Capitol Siege Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, prosecuting some of the more recognizable defendants, such as Richard Barnett, the man who was seen putting his feet up on a desk in the office of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ray Epps, who became a target of conspiracy theorists that he was an undercover agent who helped instigate the uprising.

At the time of his termination, Gordon was counsel of record in 17 cases for the Middle District of Florida, had 20 ongoing investigations, and was slated to have at least six trials between now and September, the legal filing says.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump said if elected he would grant clemency to at least some of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which Gordon said he expected would happen if Trump were re-elected.

But Gordon says he was absolutely “shocked” when Trump commuted the sentences of some individuals convicted of events on that day and granted a full and unconditional pardon to more than 1,000 others who were charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“As much as Donald Trump had campaigned on many issues, one of the things that he had done is he had hugged law enforcement,” he says. “He said that he ‘backed the blue,’ that he was a big supporter of law enforcement. So I never thought that he would pardon people who were either convicted of ,or pled guilty to, assaulting law enforcement officers. And I thought that not just because it was morally and ethically wrong to do that, but also because I thought that would politically inflame his base.”

He’s never met Bondi

Gordon says he’s never met Bondi even though prior to her appointment as AG they both lived in Tampa and have a lot of mutual acquaintances in the legal world.

“This is my speculation, but I suspect she has no idea who I am,” he says. “She might now given the news. I think someone else identified me somehow for political revenge or political retribution, put my name in a letter, put it on her desk, and she probably signed it.”

Gordon says he intends to use the public attention focused on him right now to voice his concerns about what’s happening with the justice system under the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration is walking around the house, dousing it with gasoline and playing with matches in the corner,” he says. “And we all have to stand up and shout from the rooftops before that match gets lit and the house goes up in flames.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Two Florida congressional Democrats have asked federal officials to investigate allegations that the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) and Hope Florida Foundation inappropriately diverted Medicaid funds to two unrelated political committees last year.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

First Lady Casey DeSantis on Wednesday denounced the criticism about her Hope Florida charity program in her harshest terms to date, while maintaining that she remains open about a potential run next year to succeed her husband in office.

The DeSantises appeared at a Brandon church in eastern Hillsborough County to host a roundtable discussion about the virtues of Hope Florida, the social services initiative led by the First Lady that aims to help Floridians in need.

The program itself has come under fire following reports last month from the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald that the Hope Florida Foundation last year quietly and quickly moved a $10 million “donation” from a settlement with a health care company that the state contracts with to two nonprofit political committees that did not have to list their donors.

Those political committees then sent $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean, the main group opposing the constitutional amendment that would have legalized recreational cannabis in Florida — an initiative that Gov. DeSantis opposed.

Claiming that Hope Florida represents one of the “only meaningful reforms” to the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs from the late 1960s, Ms. DeSantis said it was “really disheartening and very sad, but not surprising, to see these slanderous false accusations hurled at Hope Florida in an attempt to undermine all of the meaningful progress that we’ve had on so many families across the state of Florida.”

“We are not going to be dissuaded by the critics who have been captivated by willful ignorance, and we will not allow any politics to drown out the voices of families who have told us over and over for the first time that they feel a sense of hope. Hope Florida is not a program,” she said. “Hope Florida is a movement.”

The governor and his wife have held multiple press events over the past two months defending the program and assailing Florida House Republicans and news reporters who have investigated it as having a political agenda.

The House Committee investigating the allegations ended its work nearly three weeks ago and, unless the federal government intervenes, the controversy may be over for the time being.

But those news reports have done nothing to boost a potential run for governor for Casey DeSantis in 2026. That’s led to questions about how serious she actually is about entering the race. A report published earlier on Wednesday in the Miami Herald speculated that the odds of her pulling the trigger are diminishing by the day.

‘The GOAT’

With Southwest Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds already on the campaign trail and raising considerable money through his main political committee, a Phoenix reporter asked her on Wednesday where she stood on a possible gubernatorial candidacy for 2026?

“I get why this is a big conversation,” she acknowledged. “But I can also say it’s more than a year away from qualifying. I mean, I think we need to be thinking about what people put people in office to do, to try to make sure that they’re delivering on the promises that they told the people that they were going to do when they first got elected.”

She labeled Ron DeSantis “The GOAT” (Greatest of all Time), adding that whomever “he ultimately decides who should be following up after him should be somebody I think was obviously there for the people of the state of Florida.”

That person “should be in the mold of a DeSantis who’s willing to get out there and fight,” Ms. DeSantis said, eliciting a huge response from the approximately 100 people who’d gathered at the ARISE Church.

The First Lady’s comments bolster the notion that the governor is seeking a candidate he can fully back next year to maintain his legacy — someone other than Donalds, who has already been endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Other potential candidates, like former Attorney General Ashley Moody and former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, have now moved into other positions and taken themselves out of the running — DeSantis appointed Moody to replace Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate and Nuñez is interim president at Florida International University, soon perhaps to be president in full.

Fresh reports

The Miami Herald published a story earlier on Wednesday quoting Republican consultants (not all by name) who speculated that the combination of negative publicity around Hope Florida and Donalds’ Trump-backed candidacy was making it less likely that Ms. DeSantis will run to succeed her husband.

But Ron DeSantis blasted the story, asserting that the Herald had been “concocting hoaxes” when it came to reporting about his administration during the Covid crisis, “and so I’m very skeptical of discredited outlets in terms of what they do.”

A recent public opinion survey of Republican voters initially showed Casey DeSantis in a virtual tie with Donalds in the race for the Florida GOP nomination. However, after the voters polled were informed that Trump had endorsed Donalds, he took the lead over Mrs. DeSantis by 19 percentage points.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Although he’s already been endorsed by Donald Trump for governor, Southwest Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is just now beginning to introduce himself to Floridians who don’t know much more about him other than his ubiquitous appearances on cable news over the past few years.

Speaking on the back of a small flatbed truck outside of Conservative Grounds, the MAGA-flavored coffee shop in Pinellas County on Saturday afternoon, Donalds was intent on responding to a criticism voiced by Ron DeSantis earlier this year that he “hasn’t been part of any of the victories” that Republicans have enjoyed in Florida in recent years.

“A lot’s been made about what I’ve been doing the last couple of years,” Donalds acknowledged about halfway through his 22-minute speech. He said the choice before him a year ago was whether he should stay in Florida and work for GOP candidates or “do I go on the road with Donald Trump and campaign to make sure that we save the United States of America?”

He said that, after conferring with his wife Erika and his team, he went all in for Trump.

“I told the president and I told his campaign, I said, ‘Listen: You can have the entire calendar. Just take it. It’s yours,” he said.

“Because Florida is wonderful. We have leadership that has protected this state. Gov DeSantis is to be commended for that. He’s done a tremendous job. But the fight this last November was not in Florida. The fight was across America. And so it didn’t matter where the liberals were, that’s where I was. If they were in Detroit, I was there. If they were in Philadelphia, I was there.”

Donalds, 46, is a Brooklyn native who moved to Florida to attend Florida State University, where he graduated in 2002 before beginning a career in banking, finance, and insurance, according to the biography listed on his congressional website. He got involved in politics in 2010, the year of the Tea Party, which led to his first run for Congress in 2012 (when he lost in a Republican primary in Congressional District 19 to Trey Radel).

He was elected to the state House representing all of Hendry and a part of Collier County in 2016 and was re-elected in 2018. In 2020, he opted to run for Congress in Florida’s 19th District in Southwest Florida after GOP incumbent Francis Rooney announced he was resigning. He narrowly defeated fellow Republican Dane Eagle in a nine-person GOP primary in 2020, and has been re-elected to that seat twice since.

Few details

In speaking about his plans if elected governor in 2026, Donalds touched on a variety of subjects without delving too deeply.

The property insurance situation? “We’re going to fix it once and for all.”

Transportation? “We’re going to continue the work from Gov. DeSantis. We’re going to expand these roads. We’re going to make it easier for people to move through, not just here in Clearwater, not just here in Pinellas, but all through Florida. We’re going to make it clear for everybody.”

The economy? “We’re going to make sure that our economy is the number one economy in the entire [nation],” he said. “We’re going to have more businesses coming here employing more people.”

Donalds is the only major declared Republican candidate in the race, although how long that remains the case remains to be seen here in the spring of 2025.

First Lady Casey DeSantis has kept the idea alive that she might enter the race. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez says he is still considering getting into the contest. Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson was reportedly considering his own bid, although that was before Trump stepped in and endorsed Donalds (before the congressman himself had officially announced).

Early polls show that the Trump endorsement is a big deal for Donalds.

As Donalds begins his campaign, Florida’s top Republicans are in disarray, with a tentative budget deal between the state House and Senate now off the table, according to state legislative leaders in comments made on Friday.

Donalds assured the audience that “they’re going to figure this out, I promise you that.”

No RINOs

He added that “there will be no RINO (Republicans in Name Only) activity in Tallahasee,” drawing large cheers. “None of that is going to occur.”

He dismissed Democrats, inaccurately claiming that they have now grown so low that they’re behind registered independents in the state.

“We are going to make sure that the Democrats stay exactly as they are in the state of Florida. And that’s not number two, it’s number three,” he said. “Because there are actually more independents than Democrats now.”

As of April 30, the Florida Division of Elections website shows that there are 5.5 million people registered as Republicans and 4.32 million registered Democrats in the state, with 3.58 million registered as No Party Affiliation. Another 425,882 are listed as registered with minor parties.

Donalds was introduced to the crowd by his wife, Erika, a former member of the Collier County School Board who now serves as the chair of the Florida state chapter of the America First Policy Institute. She described the Tea Party movement that they joined.

“We got angry at what we saw the government doing, making decisions that were ruining our economy, bailing out people and companies that didn’t deserve it, while we were working our butts off to pay all of our bills and do things the right way. That’s what got us involved in politics,” she said.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

After negotiations over the state budget between the GOP House and Senate leadership broke down Friday, the Florida Republican Party of Florida stepped in, proposing to host a summit between Gov. Ron DeSantis, Speaker Daniel Perez, and Senate President Ben Albritton.

The talks would include senior staff and leadership teams in a bid for a common path forward as the two chambers remain billions of dollars apart due to competing tax cut proposals.

But DeSantis said Monday that he’s not interested.

“With all due respect though, that’s not the role of the Republican Party of Florida,” he said in response to a question asked by a Phoenix reporter during a press conference in Tampa.

“And so no, we’re not going to do a dog and pony show. That’s not the way this works. The way it works is people should do their jobs.

“Now my role in the process is to sign or veto the budget as a whole but also individual line items in the budget, so there may be things that I’ll say — ‘Hey, this is something that I’m going to be looking for’ — and obviously the Legislature needs to take that into account. But the reality is the House leadership has kind of careened off course the whole session, not just on the budget, let’s just be clear. This has been the whole session this has happened. ”

DeSantis has been relentless in blasting the Florida House over the past month, initially over a committee’s investigation into the Hope Florida Foundation, the initiative connected to DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis. The bitter rancor has now moved on to the House’s support for a major sales tax cut. DeSantis and his supporters have instead been pushing for lawmakers to cut property taxes.

DeSantis spent considerable time Monday when asked about the situation between the two chambers to boast about how he’s handled the state budget during his six-plus years in Tallahassee. He said that, under his leadership, he’s been able to reduce the state’s debt by 41% but also made important investments in law enforcement, transportation, environmental restoration, and education.

‘Just keep doing what we’ve been doing’

“You don’t need a summit to just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” he said. “And I think if you look at my budget, we build off the success that we’ve had. I don’t know what’s gone on in terms of the breakdown [between the House and Senate]. I wasn’t a part of those negotiations per se, because, quite frankly, the Senate and the House go back and forth on these things. But I can tell you, the voters want us to continue doing what we’ve done. To build off the success, to meet challenges that are before us, and to put their interests first.”

In his statement released on Friday afternoon, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power suggested a summit would present an opportunity for the state’s GOP leaders to “collaborate, unite, and deliver relief and lasting results for Florida families.”

“Our Republican leaders are deeply committed to this state and have bold ideas to keep Florida thriving,” Power said. “Bringing everyone to the table will help us focus on our shared priorities — fiscal responsibility, tax relief, and a balanced budget.”

While there is no date yet when the full Legislature will return to Tallahassee to take up the budget impasse, the House is scheduled to meet on Tuesday for a floor session to pass a concurrent resolution extending the timeline to continue budget negotiations through the end of June. The new fiscal year opens on July 1.

Also, the 37-member House committee formed to study the possibility of reducing or eliminating property taxes in the state is also scheduled to convene.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

A public opinion survey shows U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds leading Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis, 44%-25, in the race for the Republican nomination for governor in 2026.

That’s from a new poll conducted for the James Madison Institute (JMI) in the middle of May among 516 Republican voters.

That’s after those Republicans were informed that Donalds has already been endorsed by President Donald Trump for the governor’s race. The poll says initial results from GOP voters surveyed before learning of the Trump backing had Ms. DeSantis narrowly leading Donalds by a single point, 29%-28%.

Ms. DeSantis is not a declared candidate yet for governor, but she has not dismissed the possibility of running next year to succeed her husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is term-limited from running again.

She has faced more media attention over the past month than at any other time as First Lady over the past six years. That’s because of reports about potential misappropriation of funds involving Hope Florida and the Hope Florida Foundation, the social welfare charity that she has been associated with.

Gov. DeSantis has accused House Republicans, the “liberal media,” and Democrats of launching “baseless smears against Hope Florida and by extension myself and the First Lady,” he said at a press conference in Kissimmee last month.

Donalds announced his candidacy for governor on Feb. 26, five days after Trump endorsed him. Since his announcement, Donalds has reported raising more than $12 million as of the end of March, with most of that money flowing into his affiliated political committee.

The James Madison Institute commissioned two public polls, one in April and one in early May. The April poll results were taken when South Florida Sen. Jason Pizzo was still in the Democratic Party and a potential nominee for that party’s gubernatorial nomination next year.

The May poll shows former Northwest Florida U.S. Rep. and now cable news pundit Matt Gaetz in third place at 10%; Jeanette Nuñez, the former lieutenant governor and now interim president of Florida International University, in fourth place with 9% support. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is next with 5%.

Democratic field

As mentioned above, the JMI poll surveyed voters in both April and May. In April, it surveyed 464 Democratic voters, who gave Pizzo 41% support.

In distant second place at that time was Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with 15%. Former Republican U.S. Rep. turned Democrat David Jolly was next with 7%, followed by former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham at 5%.

Jacksonville state Rep. Angie Nixon and former South Florida state Sen. Lauren Book were next at 4%. South Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones was at 2% and House Leader Fentrice Driskell was at 1%.

But with Pizzo’s departure, a follow-up survey in May of 396 Democratic voters showed Mayor Levine Cava now leads the Democrats with 32%. Gwen Graham is next at 13%, followed by Jolly at 10% and former state Sen. Lauren Book at 7%. However, 20% were undecided.

The survey in both months was conducted by Targoz Market Research of 1,200 voters, 43% of whom said they were Republicans, 33% Democrats, and 23% independent voters. It has a +/- margin of error of 2.77%.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

For the past month, something of a civil war has raged between Florida Republicans in Tallahassee.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has accused Florida GOP House leadership of being “at war with the voters who provided the supermajority in the first place.”

He’s criticized them for ignoring his request for a property tax cut and not doing enough on condominium legislation.

And he’s accused them of working with the “liberal media” in the now-concluded investigation into Hope Florida, the welfare assistance program led by First Lady Casey DeSantis.

As a show of support, supporters of DeSantis called for a “Rally in Tally” Friday afternoon at the Capitol in support of his “Freedom Agenda.”

There was no such rally, but there was a press conference on the Plaza Level of the Capitol featuring former Panhandle House Republican Dr. Joel Rudman and Tracy Caruso, wife of Palm Beach County GOP Rep. Mike Caruso, along with some DeSantis supporters.

‘There was a mandate when we voted DeSantis in … and there isn’t a person here who ran on the idea of dismantling any of DeSantis’ policies,” said Tracy Caruso, who has already filed to run in the House District 87 seat in 2026 now held by her husband.

“My message to everyone here is please come out and talk to your representatives,” she added. “Tell them that you stand with our great Gov. Ron DeSantis.”

Text messages sent this week to voters from Restore Our Nation (RON) PAC, a DeSantis-affiliated political committee, bore a similar message: “Florida House leaders are working with Democrats to stop our agenda and sabotage Florida’s success. … Call your State Rep … and tell them to stand with the people and me to keep Florida free!”

Text messages like this were sent to Floridians this week from Restore Our Nation (RON) PAC.

Rudman stepped down from his seat representing parts of Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties late last year to run for the congressional seat vacated by Matt Gaetz, but lost in the GOP primary to former CFO Jimmy Patronis.

He said on Friday that he was “appalled at what was being taught” at a learning session for House members last November.

“We weren’t being taught open carry. We weren’t being taught red flag laws. We weren’t being taught immigration,” he said. “Instead, the topics of discussion that afternoon from the top down were, ‘We are not listening to Ron DeSantis anymore.'”

Rudman has made these charges repeatedly in recent weeks, including during a press conference hosted by DeSantis last week.

“Looking back, once the session started, I had no idea what we were facing even here today,” Rudman said.

“I had no idea that we would see what I would call treachery. Basically, we have the most popular conservative governor in America. Other people in other states stop me and they tell me, ‘I wish I was from Florida. What can we do to get your conservative leadership in Georgia? In South Carolina? In Mississippi? So, to have this open revolt was even more that I couldn’t dare imagine.”

“We cannot have representatives who go against our governor when he’s the one who makes the decision on these things,” added Larry Downs from Pensacola. “I don’t want the fighting amongst our governor and our legislators. I don’t like that. I want them to lead.”

Perez responds

Perez fired back in a statement sent to Fox News on Friday.

“While the Florida House remains the most conservative body in the Legislature — passing a budget billions lower than the Governor’s, approving larger tax cuts than the Governor, and pushing bold conservative policies like repealing gun laws and passing E-Verify — the Governor seems uninterested in a conservative Legislature,” he said.

“He wants a compliant one. After seven years in office, it’s clear he doesn’t want people asking hard questions, especially after neglecting his duties while running for president.”

Rep. Caruso was also slated to speak at the event, but with the House in session, he was unable to attend.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

The superminority status of the Florida Democratic Party in the state Legislature just got smaller when Democratic Senate Leader Jason Pizzo stunningly announced that he was leaving the party and would become a political independent.

Democrats already had just 11 members in the 40-member chamber, after Orange County Sen. Geraldine Thompson died just weeks before this year’s legislative session began. They are now down to just 10 members.

“The Democratic Party in Florida is dead,” he said while speaking on the floor of the Senate following the conclusion of the chamber’s business for the day. “But there are good people that can resuscitate it, but they don’t want it to be me.”

He went on to say that the Democratic Party that his father volunteered for when John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960 was not the same party today.

“It craves and screams anarchy and then demands amnesty, and that’s not okay,” he said. “I’ve always been criticized by the far left and the far right, but you know what the small businesses and the hard-working families and the teachers and the cops and the firemen want us to do? Be public servants, not politicians.”

A former assistant state’s attorney in Miami-Dade County, Pizzo has had a reputation as a centrist Democrat since his election to the Senate in 2018, and at times has angered the more liberal parts of the party, particularly regarding criminal justice issues.

He’s also one of the wealthiest members of the Legislature, with an estimated worth of $59 million, based on his 2023 financial disclosure forms.

Whether this will affect his putative plan to run for governor is uncertain at this point. He has previously said he was considering the possibility, although he said in January that he would not run as a political independent.

Some of the party’s top leaders reacted with anger to Pizzo’s announcement.

“Jason Pizzo is one of the most ineffective and unpopular Democratic leaders in recent memory, and his resignation is one of the best things to happen to the party in years,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried in a statement.

“His legacy as leader includes continually disparaging the party base, starting fights with other members, and chasing his own personal ambitions at the expense of Democratic values,” Fried continued.

“Jason’s failure to build support within our party for a gubernatorial run has led to this final embarrassing temper tantrum. I’d be lying if I said I’m sad to see him go, but I wish him the best of luck in the political wilderness he’s created for himself. The Florida Democratic Party is more united without him.”

Hillsborough Democrat Fentrice Driskell, the party’s leader in the House, similarly made blistering remarks about her now former Democratic colleague.

“The party needs strong Democrats who are ready to stand up to Trump, not big egos more interested in performative outrage than true leadership. Legislative Democrats will be fine without him,” she said in a statement. “The Democratic Party is not dead, but if it was Jason Pizzo should consider the fact that he has been a party leader and would bear some responsibility.”

Stunned

Pizzo’s Democratic Senate colleagues seemed stunned — and more charitable about Pizzo’s bombshell.

“It’s a surprise to us,” said South Florida Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones.

“We need to process all this information,” added Palm Beach Sen. Lori Berman. “He is certainly independent and he did what he felt was right for himself, and like Sen. Jones said, I think he’s not going to become a far-right wing Republican by any means, and he will continue to be an effective voice here in the Florida Legislature and hopefully a voice of reason, as he has been.”

Pizzo is the third state Democratic lawmaker to leave the party in the past half-year. In December, Hillsborough County Rep. Susan Valdés switched to the GOP immediately after losing a bid to lead the Hillsborough County Democratic Party. Weeks later, Broward County Democrat Hillary Cassel did the same, saying the party no longer represented her values.

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power responded in a statement that Pizzo could have waited until the end of the legislative session, “but it’s clear he could no longer tolerate the direction of the party.”

Power’s comment does lead into the question of why Pizzo chose Thursday, just eight days before the legislative session is scheduled to end, to make his announcement (although Senate President Ben Albritton announced earlier in the day that the session would go beyond next Friday due to an impasse regarding the state budget).

Earlier in the day, former Florida GOP Congressman David Jolly announced that he was switching from being a non-party-affiliated voter and was now a registered Democrat, fueling speculation that he in fact will run for the party’s nomination for governor in 2026.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Insisting more Floridians are clamoring for cuts to their property taxes than sales taxes, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday attempted to hijack the proposal just announced by House Speaker Danny Perez to save Floridians nearly $5 billion in sales taxes and said that instead the Legislature should direct that cut towards property taxes.

Perez announced last week that he wanted to cut the sales tax for all Floridians this year from 6% to 5.25% — which, if passed, would save them nearly $5 billion. DeSantis dismissed the idea on Monday, though, saying that while well intentioned it would do nothing for Floridians hungering for property tax relief.

A sales tax cut isn’t the first place to go when it looks to providing relief for Floridians, he said.

“I want Canadian tourists and Brazilian tourists subsidizing the state, making it so Florida residents pay less less taxes,” DeSantis said at the Florida Realtors office in Orlando. “I don’t want to give Canadians a tax cut.”

He later doubled down, emphasizing that a sales tax wouldn’t be well directed.

“It also allows relief for foreigners. It allows for relief for visitors and part-time residents,” he said. “I think that tax relief needs to be focused on Floridians. We need a Florida First tax package.”

DeSantis has been speaking for more than a month about providing property tax relief, potentially by placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot next year to eliminate the ability of local governments to collect property taxes.

He took the House’s proposal as evidence that chamber is up for providing billions in tax cuts, and “if that’s something that they’re willing to discuss, we’ll accept that, but we’ll come with a proposal to focus that $5 billion on reducing property taxes for people in Florida.”

He added that if the Legislature agrees to that idea, it would be the “opening salvo” in providing major property tax relief for Florida homeowners, because he still hopes the Legislature will vote to place a constitutional ballot on the 2026 ballot removing local property taxes.

State pays the difference?

Such a proposal could result in approximately $1,000 in property tax cuts for every homesteaded Floridian, the governor said. Although most property taxes go to local governments, the state could cut what is known as the Required Local Effort, which pays for schools, he continued. He suggested the state could make up that difference through its budget reserves.

“We don’t need people to pay property taxes on that specific line-item,” he said. “So we would roll that back to zero. We’d also roll back some of the local lines and issue a rebate and that’s how you end up getting to the $1,000 per resident or homesteaded property.”

The Phoenix reached out to Perez’ office for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Senate President Ben Albritton said last week that he was “open-minded” about Perez’s proposal to cut the sales tax.

“Everybody knows right now we have an affordability challenge with many families in Florida,” he said during a press conference on Thursday. “We’re reviewing what the proposal looks like and we’ll see where it goes, but, to be clear, we are supportive of lower taxes in Florida.”

Florida ranks near the middle of the states for per capita property tax revenue, according to the Florida Policy Institute. That’s not good enough, DeSantis says.

“You gotta do property relief,” he repeated towards the end of Monday’s news conference. “If you want to do sales on top of that, I’m all for that, for sure, but this property stuff needs to be addressed.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

This is not a great time for the Democratic Party brand, to put it mildly.

The party’s favorability rankings are in the tank, according to recent surveys. An NBC News poll taken earlier this month found just 27% of registered voters view the party favorably, the lowest such ratings in that poll for the Dems since 1990. Another survey released by CNN similarly found just 29% of voters look at the Democrats in a positive light — the lowest such number recorded by the channel since 1992.

And in Florida, where the Republican Party has been ascendent for years, two special congressional elections taking place in heavily Donald Trump-friendly red districts next week are expected to pad the GOP’s narrow lead in the House of Representatives. Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, running in Congressional District 1, and state Sen. Randy Fine, running in Congressional District 6, both have received endorsements from the president.

Yet the two Democrats running against them on April 1 — Gay Valimont in Congressional District 1 and Josh Weil in Congressional District 6 — are dominating in campaign contributions over their more heavily favored GOP opponents.

In CD 1 in the far northwest of the state, encompassing Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, and parts of Walton County, Valimont raised $6.3 million from Jan. 9 through March 12, compared to her Republican opponent, who raised $1.1 million.

In CD 6, which encompasses St. John’s, Flagler, Volusia, and Lake counties, Josh Weil, an Orlando schoolteacher, raised $9.3 million, according to Federal Election Commission records released last week. Fine raised less than $600,00 in that same period.

“Ruby” red districts

How red are these two districts?

In November, Mike Waltz, now Trump’s national security adviser, defeated Democrat James David Stockton by 33 percentage points in CD 6. Gaetz defeated Valimont in CD 1 in November by 32 percentage points in a contest in which some pundits said he “underperformed” because his margin of victory was six points lower than Trump’s 38-percentage point victory there.

Both Democrats shrug off claims that they can’t win, and have been leaning heavily into the collective anger that has emerged over the Trump administration’s seemingly indiscriminate layoffs of tens of thousands of federal workers in the past two months, particularly in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

At a town hall meeting featuring former Marine Corps fighter pilot and veterans advocate Amy McGrath Thursday night in Pensacola, Valimont, a gun-control advocate and Pensacola Beach resident, was asked by a voter what the Democrats could do to fight back against the dizzying number of policy changes that Trump has enacted since Jan. 20.

“Everybody is asking what the Democratic Party is doing,” she said. “The Democratic Party … does not have enough votes to matter. Unfortunately, we did not win the majority. Nobody has recourse except for us. We can end that right here. I’m not making a stand against everybody, what I’m doing is making a stand for you. Because I live here with you, you are my neighbors. I want to take care of you.”

Weil is a 40-year-old schoolteacher and single father of two boys who lives in Orlando (both major candidates in District 6 live outside the district — Fine in Melbourne Beach). He says that when he began his campaign, his finance director dismissed the possibility that they might be able to raise $4 million as “crazy.” They’ve since raised double that amount.

An outlet for frustrated Democrats?

What’s behind the large numbers? Analysts suggest at least in part it’s because this is the first opportunity for voters disturbed about what is happening in Washington to try to make a difference right now, without having to wait until November 2026.

“I think it’s part of Democrats who just want to see some of their leaders being under pressure fight back against Trump,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “You have a bunch of donors at the grassroots level where their thinking might be, ‘Well, these aren’t the districts that would be friendliest to us, but this is what’s open. This is what’s available so, sign me up.’”

“There’s been plenty of advertising and pushing out — like, I get it on my own Instagram feed, which is Florida-centric, but I know that this is going out nationally where they simply talk about the margin in the House is this close and these two seats” could make a difference, said Matthew Isbell, an election-data analyst who works with Democrats.

“[National Democrats] are saying that, ‘If we just flip these seats, we can flip the House,’ which is like, yes, true, but it always leaves out the fact that these are incredibly Republican districts … and the likelihood of flipping it is, like virtually non-existent.”

“Democrats are motivated like never before,” added Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg. Noting the huge fundraising leads that Valimont and Weil enjoy, he jokes, “If money wins elections, then the Democrats are shoo-ins.”

But voter enthusiasm and bundles of campaign cash are “weapons that are not likely to be significant enough to expect a reversal of fortunes,” Paulson added.

Focus on Musk

The Democrats reject that conventional wisdom. Weil says that on the campaign trail he’s heard particularly strong criticism of Elon Musk, the billionaire brought in by Trump as the public face of the secretive “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which is not an actual government department but nevertheless has sought to drastically reduce federal government spending and go after what its staffers see as waste.

“It doesn’t matter what type of door we’re knocking on, people are unhappy because they didn’t vote for that. No one voted for him,” Weil said of Musk.

“But even among people who voted for Donald Trump, they never thought that he would, that there would be cuts to the VA. No matter how they try to spin it, the veterans felt the cuts with in the first 48 hours. I remember, it was about a day or two after the initial cut of thousands of doctors and nurses, and we were speaking at a VFW hall in the district and just veteran after veteran was coming up to us and telling us that it’s just real. Their doctors’ appointments, their scheduled operations or procedures had all been pushed back four to six months.”

“They never believed that he would do these things when elected. And it’s not what they thought they were voting for,” he said.

Valimont says she’s hearing the same things in her district.

“We’re talking about the 20,000 federal employees who live here,” she told the Phoenix on Monday. “We’re talking about our VA already being at 140% capacity and now 83,000 jobs are being cut. People are already broke, and things about to get a lot worse in our district.”

For his part, Patronis has said he’s not surprised at the money coming for the Democrats.

“They’re going to spend money because they’ve got no other race in the country to spend money on other than Congressional District 1 and Congressional District 6,” he told the Pensacola News-Journal. “So all of their resources are going (into this race) because they’re trying to use this as a referendum on President Trump’s leadership.”

Republicans regaining focus

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power isn’t showing much concern.

“It does not surprise me that Democrats are funneling lots of money through, under investigation, Act Blue potentially illegally. Just like in 2024, no matter the amount of fake energy the democrats attempt to create, Floridians are not buying what they are selling,” he said in a text message.

(ActBlue is a Democratic Party online fundraising platform that is being investigated by a GOP-led committee in the U.S. House regarding allegations of illicit campaign activity).

Both Republicans are fighting back.

In a new ad that began airing this week, Patronis uses Valimont’s verbal criticisms of Trump as reasons why the MAGA-friendly district shouldn’t vote for her. Meanwhile, Fine and some political committees who support his candidacy have been pouring money into his campaign in just the past few days.

Isbell says metrics he’s looking at shed light on what 2026 might look like.

“You’re going to see a very red electorate and it’s going to go Republican most surely. But if the Democrats over-perform — and especially if they over-perform because they had stronger turnout or it looks like they won a good chunk of independents — then you can say, ‘Okay, that’s great. That means a lot for other districts,” he said.

“Whether it’s the 7th District or the 13th District or the 27th, there’s other seats that are much more competitive than either the 1st or 6th. I just think that some Democrats think that if they lose them, they’ll just get discouraged and think, ‘Oh, there’s no hope.’ And I just think that’s not what I’m looking at. I’m looking at 10 points, 15 points, even 20. These are very red seats, so anything that’s not 30 points is pretty notable.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Could a recent Florida transplant who was charged with beating up cops during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot really have a shot at defeating Ashley Moody in the race for U.S. Senate in 2026?

Jake Lang thinks so.

The soon to be 30-year-old native New Yorker was one of the more than 1,500 people charged with offenses related to the attack on the Capitol who received pardons from President Donald Trump earlier this year, and he’s filed paperwork to challenge Moody next year.

“Electing a January Sixer to go back to the Capitol and represent we the people and the constitutional conservatives and a real 1776 patriot is more than just about individual campaign issues,” said Lang, who lives in West Palm Beach, in a phone interview with the Phoenix earlier this week.

“It’s really about a hallmark moment in American history where the old era of Mitch McConnell, uniparty, RINO Republicanism in the Senate is over, and Florida, the most MAGA state in the country, sends a young firebrand to Washington.”

Edward Jacob Lang, then living in Newburgh, New York, was arrested on Jan. 16, 2021, and indicted on Jan. 29, 2021. He sat in jail for nearly four years awaiting trial on an 11-count indictment for his actions at the Capitol, including charges of assaulting law enforcement with a deadly weapon and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds.

Those charges evaporated upon Trump’s mass pardon on Jan. 20, just hours after he was inaugurated as the country’s 47th president.

“Jan. 6 was the day when free men stood against tyranny,” Lang said in response to the federal charges filed against him.

“We peacefully protested. We exercised our God-given right to redress a grievance with our government. A stolen election. A fraudulent and rigged election. And we were out there praying in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and singing hymns and waving our American flags and the unspeakable occurred.”

The “unspeakable,” he asserted, was that law enforcement “unleashed an attack” on those who came out “peacefully” petitioning their government, replete with pepper ball bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades, and flash bangs.

“They basically took what was kindling and threw a match on it and they blamed Jan. 6 and created some sort of false narrative that it was an insurrection. Nobody believed that,” he maintained.

“Nobody showed up armed, and after many years of maintaining my integrity and refusing to crumble, even though I spent 900 days in solitary confinement, I never took a plea deal,” Lang said — claiming that he saved two lives in the ugly melee that unfolded outside the Capitol (one of those individuals, Phillip Anderson, publicly thanked him on X after he also was released in January).

Attacks on officers

The feds took a different perspective. His indictment includes detailed descriptions of how Lang “repeatedly, and strategically, attacked the officers guarding the Capitol with that bat.”

The indictment goes on to read: “Specifically, he can be seen striking the officers with the bat at the following times: 4:54.58 p.m.; 4:56.30 p.m.; 4:56.44 p.m.; 4:57.13 p.m.; 4:57.15 p.m.; 4:57.21 p.m.; 4:57.26 p.m.; 4:57.32 p.m.; 4:58.06 p.m.; 4:58.29 p.m.; 4:59.10 p.m.; 4:59.32 p.m.; 4:59.49 p.m.; 4:59.51 p.m.; 4:59.54 p.m.; and 4:59.58 p.m.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office argued against releasing Lang because of his involvement in establishing a paramilitary group in the days after Jan. 6.

He also has created a legal defense fund for “J6ers” that he claims he directed from his prison cell. The Phoenix was able to locate three separate websites Lang is connected to that have been collecting funds for Jan. 6 participants; one purports to have raised nearly $600,000; another claims to have raised nearly $200,000; and a third says that it has raised more than $241,000).

“My team and I are basically the figureheads of the Jan 6 movement,” he said. “We’ve gotten lawyers for over 50 Jan 6ers and it was those lawyers and our team of professionals that basically have been liaising with President Trump’s team, giving them all of the evidence that they needed, that even people like myself that were charged with violence are not guilty because it was in a self-defense posture and so we were very involved working night and day with people very close to Trump.”

DeSantis-Trump 2?

When asked specifically if he thought he has a chance against Moody, the twice-elected Florida attorney general appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate, Lang said he believes Moody isn’t that well known outside of political circles. He referred to a University of North Florida survey published last month that showed that a majority of voters had never heard of her.

He referred to a potential race against her as “round two” of the DeSantis-Trump GOP presidential primary of 2023-2024.

“There is the DeSantis camp, which is the RINO establishment uniparty, which is what everyone recognizes his 2024 presidential bid was a betrayal of President Trump and the Make America Great movement. And so, Ashley Moody represents the old school Ron DeSantis/Jeb Bush/Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party,” he said.

He added that his interviews on his “Political Prisoner Podcast” from his jail cell with MAGA luminaries such as retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former CBS-turned conservative reporter Lara Logan, and conservative gadfly Laura Loomer show that he has “MAGA patriots” solidly behind him.

The Moody campaign declined to respond to Lang’s comments.

Aubrey Jewett is a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. He’s skeptical that Lang will gain much traction in the Republican primary — especially in trying to convince voters that Moody, who long has proclaimed her ardor for Trump — is not a MAGA Republican.

“In the pre-Donald Trump political era, someone who had been convicted of rioting in the Capitol and attacking police officers would in no way ever be considered a serious candidate for Congress by either party but especially Republicans, who are always claiming that law-and-order mantle in support of the police,” Jewett said. “But here we are.”

With so much activity taking place in the first six weeks of the Trump administration, some might forget the outright shock felt by many when Trump pardoned nearly every person convicted of offenses for Jan. 6. Just a week before, Vice-President J.D. Vance had said, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

Jacksonville-area Republican U.S. Rep. John Rutherford, who previously served as Duval County sheriff, told Roll Call before the mass release of Jan. 6 rioters that he did not support releasing those who had been violent with law enforcement.

“I’m certainly not for an across-the-board pardon of everybody, because there’s some violent felons in there,” Rutherford told the website. “I’m a 41-year police officer. You attack a police officer, I want your ass going to jail.”

Jake Hoffman, executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, doesn’t take Lang seriously.

“Every cycle, both parties have insane candidates with a less than 0% chance of winning enter a race, but they do it anyway. This is one of those cases,” he told the Phoenix.

Lake County Commissioner and former GOP state Rep. Anthony Sabatini represented Lang legally for four months but told the Phoenix that he is not involved with his campaign.

Lang would not be the first individual involved with Jan. 6 to run for office in Florida, if in fact he sticks it out through next year.

In 2022, Jeremy Brown, a self-described Oath Keepers member and lauded 20-year U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison on weapons charges related to an investigation into his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, lost a race for state House in District 62 in the Tampa Bay Area against Democrat Michele Rayner. Brown ran his campaign from jail, an obstacle that Lang would not have to encounter.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Last October in a suburb of Jacksonville, police arrested an 18-year-old Donald Trump supporter they accused of brandishing a machete outside an early voting location, targeting two women.

He was charged with voter intimidation, aggravated assault on persons 65 or older, and improper exhibition of a firearm.

Caleb Williams,18, was booked at the Duval County Jail on Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo courtesy Neptune Beach Police Department)

Last week the state attorney for the 4th Judicial Circuit in Jacksonville announced she would not prosecute the teenager, identified as Caleb Williams, and would drop all charges against him.

That decision has angered a coalition of 16 voting and civil rights groups in the Jacksonville area and around the state, and on Monday they wrote a letter to Jacksonville State Attorney Melissa Nelson and Assistant State Attorney Octavius Holliday Jr., saying their decision to drop all charges against Williams “sends a dangerous message” that voter intimidation “is tolerated rather than prosecuted.”

They also want their office to reconsider the decision to drop the case.

“The facts of this case as publicly reported appear very compelling: a man wielding a deadly weapon approached a polling location and engaged in threatening behavior towards supporters of one of the presidential candidates on the ballot,” reads a portion of the letter.

“The victims, two women ages 71 and 54, were subjected to an act of intimidation that no one at a polling location should ever have to endure. Your office’s dismissal of this case undermines public confidence in the justice system and fails in its duty to protect Florida voters.”

Among those groups signing the letter were the Jacksonville branch of the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, and the League of Women Voters of Florida.

The letter goes on to cite several state statutes regarding voter intimidation that the groups believe clearly shows that Williams had broken the law when he brandished the machete.

Nevertheless, Holliday wrote in a disposition that the state would not prosecute Williams, adding that the police and the victims “concur” with the decision.

‘To protest and antagonize’

Neptune Beach Police Chief Michael Key Jr. said last October that Williams and seven other teenagers — all supporters of Donald Trump — drove to the polling place specifically “to protest and antagonize the opposing political side, according to the Associated Press.

“Every eligible voter in Florida has the right to cast their ballot free from threats, coercion, or fear of violence,” reads another portion of the letter signed the voting and civil rights groups.

“Your decision not to pursue justice in this case directly contradicts that principle. Failing to prosecute voter intimidation weakens our democracy and puts all Floridians in danger. We strongly urge you to reconsider this decision, uphold the law, and take the necessary steps to ensure that voter intimidation is prosecuted to the fullest extent in this case.”

A request for comment to the state attorney’s office was not immediately returned.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Sarasota Republican Joe Gruters, the Senate sponsor of the illegal immigration bill passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature this week over the objections of Ron DeSantis, said Friday that he feels bad for the nearly 100 Republicans who endorsed the governor for president two years ago.

That’s because the governor is now attacking them on a near daily basis for rejecting his own immigration proposal, Gruters says.

“Listen, who I feel bad for are the hundred members of the Legislature who endorsed Ron DeSantis that are now at odds with him,” Gruters told this reporter during an interview broadcast on WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa on Friday morning.

“Those 100 members of the Legislature that put their necks out on the line to help the governor, and now, rather than working with the Legislature and trying to find common-sense solutions, he is bullying them and trying to beat them up,” said Gruters.

The senator is one of a minority of Republicans in the Legislature who endorsed Donald Trump over DeSantis early in the GOP presidential primary sweepstakes in 2023. (The Phoenix reported in May 2023 that 99 of then 112 Republicans serving in the Florida Legislature had endorsed DeSantis for president).

DeSantis traveled to the Panhandle on Friday to once again use the power of his bully pulpit to urge Floridians to accept their “marching orders” and contact the massive number of Republican lawmakers in the Legislature who voted to support the alternative bill.

That measure, advanced by House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, would crack down on illegal immigration and make Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson the liaison between state government and the Trump administration in immigration enforcement. It passed on an 82-30 vote in the House and 21-16 in the Senate.

DeSantis has been making the rounds on conservative media all week to blast the bill as “weak” and has said he will veto it once it reaches his desk.

Veto override?

If he does veto the bill, the House and Senate could try to override if they receive two-thirds support in both chambers. Gruters acknowledged Friday that he doesn’t know if that is possible.

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to override it, but listen, I think that at the end of the day, we have to help the president out. We have to come together,” he said.

“We’re going to continue to work to do what the president wants, and so I don’t know exactly what will happen in terms of my Senate colleagues through the leadership, but I know that I’m fully committed to making sure that we get the president whatever he needs to do.”

The governor and legislative leaders have battled it out all week regarding who has the tougher bill cracking down on undocumented immigrants and would better complement President Trump’s executive orders to enact a massive deportation effort.

Gruters’ close relationship with Trump is well known. A former Republican Party of Florida chairman, he co-chaired Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign (with Susan Wiles, now Trump’s chief of staff) and chaired his 2020 effort in the Sunshine State. And Trump has already endorsed Gruters in his bid to become Florida’s chief financial officer in 2026.

But Gruters and others are being attacked online by supporters of DeSantis.

Endorsement retracted

For example, the group America First Insight, an organization that says that it is dedicated to endorsing and supporting candidates who prioritize “America First” principles, announced this week that they had “revoked” their previous endorsement of Gruters for CFO.

“Instead of fighting for strong, enforceable policies to secure Florida’s future, he pushed forward a bill that weakened our state’s stance on illegal immigration at a time when bold action was needed,” the group wrote on X.

Gruters said “there’s no doubt that the governor’s proposals are good,” but so is the measure that he sponsored and the Legislature passed this week.

“We have families that squabble once in a while,” he said about the rupture in GOP unity. “We’re going to get past this. We’re going to come together, and the most important thing is that we do the absolute best job on behalf of the citizens of Florida regardless of some of these minor battles that we’re having right now.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

A day after the Florida Republican-controlled Legislature rebuked Ron DeSantis by passing an immigration bill called the TRUMP Act that ignored some of the governor’s priorities, the governor took to the road to blast the measure once again on Wednesday, promising to veto the measure.

“They decided to do a bill that not only won’t work, that actually is weaker than what we have today,” he said during a roundtable discussion at the Brevard County’s Sheriff’s Office in Titusville. “Everything that I’ve proposed is stronger than what the Legislature has done.”

Whether the Legislature, and specifically Senate, has the votes to override the veto, is questionable. The Senate passed its measure 21-16 Monday night, with six Republicans against. Three of those who opposed had offered immigration bills favored by DeSantis that the Legislature ignored. The Legislature’s version passed 82-30 in the House.

Since the new year began, DeSantis almost every day has insisted the Legislature must convene several weeks ahead of its regularly scheduled session to further crack down on illegal immigrants, saying that local and state agencies must be ready to implement executive orders that the Donald Trump administration would issue to begin “mass deportations,”

As Florida GOP lawmakers were passing their own legislation on Tuesday, DeSantis was trashing the bill and Florida Republicans who support it to conservative media outlets across the country, finishing with an appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle. “I’ve never seen a more negative response from the public to the Legislature,” he said.

Whether he will win the hearts and minds of Floridians over the measure pushed by House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton is uncertain.

Objections

DeSantis takes issue with specific provisions in the Legislature’s bill, among them what he called a “catch and release” policy that could allow judges to release illegal immigrants who are detained by law enforcement officers. “That is not keeping the people of this state safe. We need to detain and deport, not catch and release,” he said.

He’s also taking strong objection to the Legislature’s call to move control of immigration matters away from his office and to the office of Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, along with $500 million to implement that program.

“Now they saying that they’re going to give a lot of money, create a new bureaucracy,” he said. “It’s obviously the Commissioner of Agriculture, given how people have come and worked illegally in that industry, is like the fox guarding the henhouse. That’s not where immigration enforcement has typically gone.”

GOP lawmakers “want to neuter” the enforcement that Florida state government is already doing in concert with the federal agencies, he continued. “Their bill would result in fewer deportations than we’re doing right now in the state of Florida.”

Once again appearing with DeSantis during the press conference about immigration was Dave Kerner, executive director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. He took a full minute before expressing his concerns about the revised bill to laud “the hardest-working, most pro-law enforcement, most effective governor in the United States of America and it’s an honor to work for you, Gov. DeSantis.”

Kerner said the legislation would put “a complete stop to operations at the Florida Highway Patrol,” and he read portions of the law specifying that communications with federal immigration authorities would have to go through the Commissioner of Agriculture’s office.

“To put that roadblock in our way, whether it’s intentional or not, will have a devastating effect on our ability as state law enforcement and local law enforcement to work together,” he said.

Rebuttal

Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez responded via X following DeSantis’ press conference.

“Governor DeSantis isn’t being honest with Floridians about the TRUMP Act,” he wrote.

“The Governor’s proposal leaves out large portions of what the Trump Administration wants to get the job done and end the national scourge of broken borders. Facts matter and the facts are clear: the TRUMP Act puts the President in full control, armed with all the tools needed to execute the most aggressive illegal immigration crackdown in our nation’s history. The TRUMP Act delivers the harshest penalties in the nation for illegal aliens, criminal gangs, and terrorists — including an automatic death sentence for capital offense like murder and the rape of a child. The Governor doesn’t support these harsh penalties — the TRUMP Act makes criminal illegals pay the price.”

Following the House’s passage of the immigration bill, Perez responded to DeSantis and his supporters on the internet who have attacked the Legislature’s bill as weak.

“You’re going to have your handful of politicians, small group of activist[s] and a lot of paid bots on social media trying to gaslight you,” he told his members.

“But we know that truth matters. And simply saying that something is terrible, over and over, doesn’t actually make it true. Threatening others to get your way isn’t leadership, it’s immaturity. The people of our state deserve better. And that’s wrong. What we’re living in right now, that’s wrong. But the people don’t just deserve better, they deserve our best. I’m going to ask you to ignore the melodrama and focus on the work that we have to do.”

Override?

Although it’s not clear what route the Legislature will take when DeSantis vetoes the bill, Miami-Dade County Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones said Democrats are willing to negotiate an override if a provision is stripped repealing in-state college and university tuition rates for students lacking legal status who were brought to the country as children.

“My negotiation starts at in-state tuition. I am not willing to bend on anything if in-state tuition is not reinstated. Period, end of story,” Jones said during the Florida Democratic Party’s press conference Wednesday morning.

Reporter Jackie Llanos contributed to this report.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

The Florida Legislature is meeting in special session this week — but only on the issue of illegal immigration. In doing so, legislative leaders are openly defying Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempts to bend lawmakers to his will – and his ability to control the discussion.

For weeks, DeSantis has been pushing for the Legislature to convene ahead of its regular session date of March 4 to deal with issues he insists could not wait — specifically, a crackdown on illegal immigration and making it more difficult to place citizen-led constitutional amendments on the ballot. He also wanted them to provide hurricane relief and deal with condominium safety.

House Speaker Daniel Perez addressed his members at 10:30 a.m. to say that he believes special sessions “should be used sparingly.”

“They should not be stunts designed to generate headlines. I dislike special sessions because they inhibit the very thing the legislative process should encourage: the push and pull of meaningful conversations that lead to the development of good and better ideas. Special sessions should be reserved for those issues that truly cannot be addressed in the normal course of the legislative process,” he said.

The issues DeSantis raised in his proclamation for the special session “simply do not meet that threshold,” Perez added.

Instead, the Legislature will wait to deal with the citizen-initiative process, condos, and hurricane relief during the regular session, he said.

But he said that he and Senate President Ben Albritton were ready act on immigration, now that President Trump had been inaugurated.

“We did carefully consider Gov. DeSantis’ proposal, and he had some good ideas. But many of his proposals are bureaucratic,” Perez said. “We do not need to duplicate the functions of U.S. Immigration and Customs and create a mini-me version of ICE. In addition, his proposals would hijack local law enforcement operations and, at one point, he even proposed arresting local law enforcement officers.”

‘Four Bs’

Perez said that he would have Hillsborough County Republican Lawrence McClure move what is being called the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act (or TRUMP Act) which would focus on what he called the “Four B’s.”

Recruit and empower more BADGES, Build more BEDS, Lock up more BAD GUYS, and Limit BENEFITS that draw illegal aliens into Florida.

Over on the Senate side, Albritton offered similar remarks.

“I’m not going to sit idly by and allow anyone to ignore the constitutional authority the people of Florida have given the Legislature to write the laws of this state. The Florida Legislature matters, our opinions matter, our voices matter,” Albritton said. “The Florida Constitution says so, and more importantly, so do our constituents.”

In addition, the GOP leaders announced that their immigration bill will name Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson as Florida’s chief immigration officer and establish the Office of State Immigration Enforcement within the Division of Law Enforcement under his Department.

Simpson is a Republican former Senate President who sits on the independently elected Florida Cabinet, which with the governor decides some state policies.

According to a statement sent out by the legislative leaders, Simpson “will serve as the central point of coordination between the Trump-led federal government, state entities, local governmental entities, and law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law.”

When asked to comment about that, House Democratic Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said, “It’s my understanding that the agriculture commissioner and the governor have never been close. So, from that perspective it seems like …. legislative leadership sticking with folks who have been in the Legislature and maybe people they prefer to work with on that.”

Committee hearings will convene on the specific immigration bills in both chambers later Monday, beginning at 1 p.m. in the House. Perez said the entire body would return Tuesday at 10 a.m. to vote on the bill.

Declaration of independence

Albritton and Perez told DeSantis two weeks ago that it was “completely irresponsible” to pass any legislative immigration changes before Donald Trump took office, but the president’s promise to begin a mass deportation program has taken root in just his first week in office.

DeSantis has been appearing in press conferences and making television appearances putting the pressure on GOP lawmakers to act on immigration for weeks now — with no reply from the legislative leaders.

The last time the Florida Legislature gaveled out of a special session without acting was when Charlie Crist brought lawmakers back to town in 2010 to vote on a constitutional amendment that would let voters decide if they wanted a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling in Florida waters.

However, that was after Crist had left the Republican Party to run as an independent for U.S. Senate, making it easier for Republicans to publicly rebuke him. It’s a completely different situation now, with the House and Senate Republicans leaders asserting their power in the face of a Republican governor in Ron DeSantis.

Governor’s bills

To prompt lawmakers, DeSantis had placed proposed bill language on the governor’s website.

On Sunday, bills were finally introduced dealing with immigration and the petition-gathering process. Spring Hill Republican Blaise Ingoglia filed several bills in the Senate, with Palm Beach Republican Mike Caruso doing so in the House.

A bill that would repeal in-state tuition for undocumented students in Florida colleges and universities was filed in the Senate by Lee County Republican Jonathan Martin and in the House by Sumter County Republican John Paul Temple.

Jackie Llanos contributed to this story.

A top Florida Republican running for Congress asserted this week that the GOP has been drawing congressional districts to benefit Republicans, a move that brought criticism from one of his primary rivals.

At a campaign event in North Florida on Monday night, Florida Chief Financial Officer and District 1 congressional candidate Jimmy Patronis acknowledged that the district was gerrymandered by state Republicans in the 1990s, and that the party has continued to maintain that practice ever since.

The remark came at a candidate forum hosted by the Niceville Republican Women Federated.

Patronis is one of ten Republicans running to win the GOP nomination for the seat in the special primary election slated for Jan. 28. The seat is considered one of the most conservative congressional districts in the state, with the winner of the primary slated to face Democrat Gay Valimont and other write-in and non-party affiliated candidates on April 1.

Screenshot of video of Jimmy Patronis speaking at a campaign event in Niceville on Jan. 6, 2024 (video courtesy of the Patronis campaign)

“Let me give you a little civics lesson,” Patronis says to the audience in a video clip obtained by the Phoenix. “Do you know why District 1 is where it is? It’s because a Republican Legislature is in charge right now – and this is what we’ve done since Daniel Webster was speaker of the House as a Republican – we try to create as many Republican congressional seats as possible. Okay? So what happened? You get gerrymandered lines.”

Daniel Webster served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives in 1996-1998. He’s served in Congress representing districts in Central Florida since 2010.

Gerrymandering is the practice of a political party dividing or arranging election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage. As a way of stopping that from happening, Florida voters in 2010 overwhelmingly approved what were called the Fair Districts Amendments to the state constitution to stop elected officials from manipulating voting maps to keep themselves and their party in power.

In the case of Florida, Republicans have controlled both chambers of the Florida Legislature since 1996.

Patronis is from PC

In a statement, Joel Rudman, a physician and former legislator who resigned from the House of Representatives to run in the GOP primary in District 1, blasted Patronis’ comments.

“I resent the accusation that Republican leadership would embark on anything unethical or unconstitutional when creating district lines, when in fact, the most gerrymandered district in history (CD-5) that stretched across the Georgia state line from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, was actually Democrat. The fact remains that, for his entire political career, Mr. Patronis has been synonymous with Panama City, which is squarely in Congressional District 2.

“I am disappointed that the candidate would blame others for his lack of residency in our district. I vehemently denounce those comments accusing Republicans of gerrymandering and respectfully ask the candidate to apologize for that statement casting aspersions on our Republican leadership.”

As Rudman noted, Patronis’ voting address is in Panama City, which isn’t in District 1. However, under the U.S. Constitution, candidates aren’t required to live in the U.S. House district in which they run so long as they are a resident of the state. He has been endorsed in the race by President-elect Donald Trump.

The seat had been held by Matt Gaetz from 2016 until this past November. That’s when Gaetz resigned from congress after he was nominated by Trump to serve as his attorney general. But a week later Gaetz announced that because of growing doubts that he could be confirmed because of a House Ethics panel investigation about alleged payments for sex, he would withdraw his name for consideration to head the U.S. Justice Department.

Patronis’ campaign did not respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Supporters of Donald Trump have been calling on Ron DeSantis to appoint Lara Trump, the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, to succeed Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate. But at a press conference on Monday, Donald Trump said he didn’t think DeSantis would do so.

“No, I don’t,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. “I probably don’t, but I don’t know. Ron’s doing a good job and that’s his choice. Nothing to do with me.”

Trump announced last month that he was nominating Rubio to serve as secretary of state in his administration, giving DeSantis the opportunity to select a successor before a special election is held for the seat in November 2026. The seat then comes up for a vote again in November 2028.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, and James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, have been among the names posted in media reports as potential appointees for the seat.

Lara Trump served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee with Michael Whatley from March of this year to last week, when she announced that was stepping down. She told the Associated Press in an interview that she was open to filling the seat if DeSantis were to appoint her.

“It is something I would seriously consider,” she told the AP. “If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t know exactly what that would look like. And I certainly want to get all of the information possible if that is something that’s real for me. But yeah, I would 100% consider it.”

Hype

Lara Trump’s candidacy has been hyped and promoted for weeks by some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in and outside of government, such as Sen. Rick Scott, Pinellas U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, and Elon Musk.

She has served as a television producer and was involved in Donald Trump’s previous presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. In 2021, she briefly considered running for an open U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina before deciding otherwise.

“People talk about nepotism,” Donald Trump said on Monday about Lara. “She could have run for the Senate in North Carolina. Tedd Budd [who did run and win the seat in 2022] would be the first one to say and he wouldn’t have run. Nobody would have run, and she just said, ‘No, I want to really focus on my children.’”

Trump moved on to discussing Rubio, perhaps his most conventional Cabinet nomination, which has received relatively positive media coverage.

“Now, Ron is going to have to make his [selection], because Marco has been really a star. Already. And we haven’t started. But we see signs already from some people very early, we see signs of stardom, and Marco has done incredibly. He’s sort of born for it. It was such an easy decision. The Marco decision was such an easy — but he leaves a vacancy in Florida and Ron is going to have to make that decision. And he’ll make the right decision.”

Push for Hegseth

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump was considering replacing Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News anchor and his choice for defense secretary, with DeSantis. But that was when Hegseth’s nomination appeared to be in so much trouble that he might have to withdraw amid damaging news reports about alleged excessive drinking and sexual assault surfaced.

Since then, however, Trump and his closest supporters have come out strongly in backing Hegseth to get before the Senate for a confirmation hearing sometime in January or early February.

In an interview with CNN last week, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said one reason that Trump had doubled down in terms of his support for Hegseth was that there was little support for him to nominate DeSantis.

“What changed was a couple of things. One was … Trump could not find a single person in his orbit, or even really outside of it, who liked this idea of making Ron DeSantis — the governor of Florida — the defense secretary choice,” Haberman said.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

When Ron DeSantis sidles up next to Donald Trump Saturday in Landover, Maryland, to watch the Army-Navy football game, the topic of whom the Florida governor appoints to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio might be a topic of conversation.

Trump and parts of MAGA World — including Sen. Rick Scott — are lobbying intensely for the governor to select the president-elect’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, for the seat.

Ms. Trump’s resignation as co-chair of the Republican National Committee earlier this week has only fueled such speculation. Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg says it gives the Florida governor leverage in negotiating with the president-elect.

“There has to be something in it for DeSantis because this is a piece of gold that DeSantis has that he’s not going to give up without something in return,” said Aronberg, a Democrat who announced more than a year ago that he was stepping down after 12 years in office.

“And DeSantis wants to run for president again, so this is very valuable to him. He could name himself. He could name his wife. He could name an ally. To give it up to someone outside of his circle, especially Lara Trump, who actively worked against him in his own presidential race would be foolish unless he got something significant in return, and that something significant could be the position of Defense Secretary.”

Born and raised in North Carolina, Lara Trump, 42, met Eric Trump in 2008 and around that time began working as a producer for the television program “Inside Edition”, according to TIME magazine.

She married Eric in 2014 (they now live in Palm Beach County) and launched a “Women for Trump” bus tour for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 (which included a stop in Tampa). She moved up to become a fundraiser and senior adviser on Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. And she served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee from March of 2024 to this past week.

“Lara Trump would be a great choice for anything,” said Judith Zentmeyer, a member of the Pinellas County Republican Party who spoke to the Phoenix during the party’s monthly meeting in Clearwater this week. “A Senate seat would be wonderful because obviously she’s very smart. She’s well spoken. She’s totally loyal, and she’s really strong.”

Darryl Paulson, emeritus professor of government at USF-St. Petersburg, is extremely skeptical that DeSantis would appoint her to replace Rubio in the Senate.

“Trump has ‘yanked the chain’ on DeSantis too many times,” he said. “The last thing DeSantis wants is to nominate Lara Trump to Rubio’s Senate seat, only to see that Trump’s current nominee for Secretary of Defense is confirmed and DeSantis is left with nothing.”

DeSantis has said that he is likely to name his choice to replace Rubio by the beginning of January.

‘Pressure campaign’ for Hegseth

Trump has nominated Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to become his Secretary of Defense, but DeSantis’ name was floated last week as a possible alternative choice after it looked like Hegseth might have a problem being confirmed by the Senate due to allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking that have surfaced in recent weeks.

However, Politico reported this week that a “pressure campaign” on the part of allies of Trump has revived Hegseth’s chances of getting confirmed.

Polk County Republican Committeewoman Kat Gates-Skipper is a veterans advocate who says either would be a great choice for that community.

“I know the governor personally, and I know Pete Hegseth from Conservative Veterans for America,” she said, referring to the organization she served as a regional director, and Hegseth as executive director from 2013 to 2016. “We helped pass the first VA accountability act in 2014. We did that, so Pete is very much about veterans.”

Gates-Skipper is well aware of the heat surrounding Hegseth, however. “If you’re going to be in political office, be careful what you say and do,” she said, adding, “I’m just saying, if you’re going to be in the limelight, just be careful.”

Cavalcade of Floridians

The Rubio seat is open because Trump nominated the Miami Republican to serve as his secretary of state. The president-elect followed up by nominating or appointing at least a dozen more Floridians to join his administration, including U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz for national security adviser, Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general, and former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon to head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

On Wednesday night Trump announced that he was nominating Orlando attorney Dan Newlin to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Colombia.

Gaetz withdrew for consideration for AG after it was apparent that he would have difficulty being confirmed following years of investigations into alleged drug use and payments for sex, including with an underage girl. Trump selected another Floridian, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, to serve in the role.

Shortly after that Trump named Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister to head the Drug Enforcement Agency, although Chronister ended up bowing out of consideration just days later.

“The nominees seem to have one or more of the following traits in common: Several have been TV personalities, usually on FOX News, which may indicate a preference for great communicators,” said Paulson.

“Second, many have been defense attorneys, and several were involved in defending President Trump. Third, several have been family members, such as Lara Trump. Finally, and most importantly, all have been intensely loyal to Trump. Loyalty, more than any other trait, is a key factor in getting Trump to appoint you to a government position. No loyalty, no job.”

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)

“I have been saying for the last couple of years that Florida has become the lab rat of Project 2025, so it’s not surprising that a lot of Floridians are heading up to Washington, D.C.,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said on Sirius/XM’s “The Briefing” last month.

“I feel like Florida has conquered Washington, and you’re going to be having more meetings at Mar-a-Lago than we’re going to have at the White House,” Fried added.

The spate of high-profile Florida Republicans joining Trump’s second administration has thrilled party members in the state.

“It’s always good to have people from Florida representing us in the government,” said St. Petersburg Republican Angelo Cappelli. “We have all kinds of problems here, like in most of the country, and we tend to be a microcosm for the rest of the country, so it’s exciting.”

Score settling

Although several MAGA Republicans were undoubtedly disappointed about Gaetz’ inability to survive more than two weeks as a nominee for Justice, others the Phoenix spoke with this week were fired up about his selection of Bondi as AG.

And they expressed excitement about how she could team up with Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, to go after elected officials who pursued criminal charges against Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Bondi predicted more than a year ago on Fox News what would happen if Trump retook the White House in 2024.

“The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” she said. “The investigators will be investigated, because the Deep State last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows, but now they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated.”

That’s music to the ears of Pinellas County conservative activist Cathi Chamberlain.

“Pam Bondi is very loyal to Trump,” she said this week, before the Pinellas County Republican Executive Committee December meeting began. “I just hope that she has the cojones to push this stuff through.”

Camberlain added, “I do think that with Kash Patel at the FBI and Bondi at DOJ — as long as [Patel] brings her hardcore evidence, I think she has a really sweet way of making sure that gets through.”

‘Tethered to the law’

Aronberg speaks positively about Bondi, who appointed him in 2010 after she was elected as attorney general to a newly created post focusing on prescription pill abuse.

“I know Pam and I ran in the same race for attorney general back in 2010 and, after the race, even though I was on the opposite side of the aisle and had supported her Democratic opponent [Dan Gelber], she had appointed me her drug czar, so it shows that she has cared more about policy than politics,” he said.

“But she is loyal to Donald Trump, and when he asks her to investigate the investigators, I believe she will. The difference, though, is that, unlike Matt Gaetz, I do not believe that she will knowingly violate the law to walk Trump’s enemies out in handcuffs. She has always been tethered to the law, and I think that although there will be investigations, I anticipate they will end up similar to the John Durham investigations, which is a whole lot of nothing.”

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that applicants for government posts in the Trump administration, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, are being asked their opinions of Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.

“We’re going to hear all the truth about the J6 committee, you bet, every single one of them should go to jail for destroying evidence,” said Chamberlain. “Trump can’t say that right now. Nobody’s going to be saying that, not Pam Bondi, not anyone, for fear of recusing themselves.”

Aronberg notes that while Republican primary voters in the 2023-24 GOP presidential campaign heard about “the Florida way,” it’s now coming from a different source. “DeSantis ran on a platform to make America Florida and, ironically, it’s Donald Trump who seems to be doing that,” he said.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Former Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who resigned from Congress last month after Donald Trump nominated him for secretary of state, will host a one-hour nightly political talk show on the ultra-conservative One American News Network (OAN) beginning in January.

“The Matt Gaetz Show” will air every weeknight at 9 p.m. eastern time, according to a press release issued by OAN on Tuesday. The cable news network said Gaetz will also host a weekly video podcast with Dan Ball, which “will deliver fresh perspectives and unfiltered conversations for Millennials, late Gen Z, and early Gen Xers.”

“OAN is blazing a trail in media, embracing not just traditional news but the platforms where Americans are going — streaming, apps, podcasts, and social media,” Gaetz said in the press release. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to join OAN’s forward-thinking team and be part of this revolutionary expansion.”

It’s a soft landing for Gaetz, stunningly nominated by Trump to lead the country’s foreign policy just a week after he defeated Kamala Harris.

But just eight days later, Gaetz announced that he was withdrawing from consideration for the position, as it became apparent his confirmation by the U.S. Senate was in peril following years of investigations about alleged drug use and payments for sex, including with an underage girl.

Gaetz served eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Florida’s First Congressional District in the far western Panhandle. Before that, he served six years in the Florida House representing the same area.

Gubernatorial rumors

There have been rumors Gaetz is considering a run for governor in 2026 — rumors Gaetz hasn’t dismissed at all during just the past few weeks. After former Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini said in a tweet that Gaetz would be the next governor of Florida, Gaetz responded on X with an image of the Florida state flag.

And while the chance of appearing nightly on a conservative cable news network is undoubtedly appealing to the 42-year-old Republican, it’s not clear how many people will be able to watch. The network has been asking viewers to pitch cable companies Charter (which runs Spectrum channels), Comcast, and Frontier to carry the channel over the past couple of years.

DirecTV stopped carrying OAN in 2022.

According to OAN’s website, the providers that do air the network include KlowTV, GCI, and Vidgo. It can be viewed online for a small monthly fee.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.

Has Rick Scott emerged as the front-runner to succeed Mitch McConnell as majority leader for Senate Republicans? Two betting markets think so.

On Monday, Polymarket gave the Florida Republican a 60% chance of succeeding McConnell, who announced earlier this year that he would step down from leading Senate Republicans following the general election. Polymarket places Idaho Sen. John Thune in second place, with just a 35% of becoming the next leader. The third candidate in the race, Texas’ John Cornyn, is a distant third at 6%, as of 9 a.m. eastern time.

Kalshi, another online betting site, shows Scott with a 57% chance of succeeding McConnell. Thune is second there at 33%, with Cornyn at 5%, also as of 9 a.m. eastern time.

Momentum for Scott to succeed McConnell picked up steam over the weekend, as some big-name people in MAGA world such as Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and Vivek Ramaswamy endorsed him.

Scott has also picked up support from Florida GOP congressional colleagues, such as Sen. Marco Rubio and Reps. Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, Byron Donalds, and Greg Steube.

“I am running for Senate Republican leader because I believe now is a moment we need dramatic change in Washington to upend the status quo & make sure President Trump’s agenda gets done,” Scott said on Saturday on X, where he posted a letter that he sent to his Senate colleagues in May when he made the case for his selection and was prescient in predicting that it would be a “watershed election.”

“Americans will reject wholesale the Biden/Democrat destruction of our country,” Scott wrote in May. “I believe President Trump will win with a mandate for dramatic change, we will have a Republican Senate majority and a bigger Republican advantage in the House. We will have a historic opportunity to save our country’s problems. Over the years, the Senate has become the place where change oriented conservative policies come to die, and I believe now is the time to change that.”

Scott noted in that letter that he has known Donald Trump “since before either of us ran for any political office,” but Trump has not endorsed in the race and it’s uncertain whether he will before Wednesday’s vote.

Recess appointments

On Sunday, the president-elect said that any Republican senator who wants the leadership position had to agree to “recess appointments” — temporary appointments that can take place when the chamber is out of session.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote on X. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY! Additionally, no Judges should be approved during this period of time because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. THANK YOU!”

“100% agree,” Scott quickly responded via X. “I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.”

Thune and Cornyn quickly followed suit.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.

Rick Scott is scheduled to appear on a podcast on Tuesday night hosted by Laura Loomer, the far-right activist with a history of expressing bigoted views. The program will air on Rumble, the video-sharing platform popular with conservative commentators.

Loomer is a 31-year-old influencer who has become notorious in recent years for a number of comments that have been labelled as racist, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic. Her remarks last month that the White House “will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election and that the “media is lying and saying Donald Trump lied about @KamalaHarris’s Haitian invaders eating people’s pets in Ohio” received rebukes from other conservatives such as Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called them “appalling and extremely racist.”

Loomer posted a video on social media last year claiming that the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was “an inside job,” according to CNN.

‘Free spirit’

Loomer is an avid supporter of Donald Trump, who told reporters last month in Southern California that “I don’t control Laura. Laura — she’s a free spirit.”

According to her statement on X, Loomer will speak with Scott about the race to win the Senate Republican Leadership scheduled to take place in Washington next month, two weeks after the general election. Scott is running against Idaho Sen. John Thune and Texas Sen. John Cornyn to succeed Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has previously announced that he would step down as the GOP leader at the end of this year. Loomer has said that she hopes Scott wins the contest.

This will not be the first time that Loomer has spoken with Scott. She interviewed the Florida Republican in July during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and posted it on her X page.

Loomer appeared last summer at the Tampa Bay Young Republicans event monthly meeting in Tampa. Jake Hoffman, president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, kicked off the evening by telling Loomer that there were members of his club that said, “we shouldn’t give you a platform,” but added that his group stood for embracing free speech, even if it was unpopular.

Scott is locked in a battle for re-election next week for U.S. Senate next week against former South Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Recent surveys have shown Mucarsel-Powell inching closer to Scott but, overall, he still maintains an average lead of around 5 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average.

The Phoenix reached out to Scott’s campaign to ask if Scott is familiar with any of Loomer’s controversial comments and social media posts over the years, but did not receive an immediate response.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.

A measure to preserve historical monuments, such as Confederate statues, provoked an intense legislative committee meeting Tuesday evening that led to anger, emotion and swearing.

The three Senate Democrats in the committee left the meeting room before the final vote took place. At one point, Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo of South Florida was having a dialogue with a public speaker about Confederate ancestors when Pizzo stopped in his tracks and said, “I’m a “f——a–hole?” … “Sir, why don’t you take a walk. Take a walk.”

It wasn’t clear who Pizzo was referring to in the audience. But someone there, said ” I didn’t call you that.”

At issue is legislation that would prevent local governments from removing or relocating historical monuments.

Over the past decade, dozens of Confederate symbols and monuments have been removed and/or relocated in cities across Florida, but two bills moving through the GOP-controlled Legislature this session would block local governments from doing that in the future.

The bill being discussed Tuesday at the Senate Committee on Community Affairs, called “Protection of Historical Monuments and Memorial Act,” (SB 1122) would take away the ability of local governments to relocate, remove, damage, or destroy a monument or memorial that has been placed on public property for the past 25 years. It would be retroactive to July 1, 2018.

“The goal is to preserve history, not the way it was, not the way that it might have been thought of at the time the memorial or monument was put in place, but to preserve that physical piece of history,” said Fort Myers-based GOP Sen. Jonathan Martin, the bill sponsor.

A similar bill (HB 395) has already been moving in the Florida House.

The movement to remove such controversial symbols emerged back in 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine Black people in a South Carolina church. Photos later showed the shooter with the Confederate battle flag.

Hillsborough County was one of the first local governments in Florida to act in the wake of that incident, with their county commission voting to remove a Confederate flag that had hung in its county center later that summer.

At the committee meeting, there were plenty of public speakers speaking both for and against the proposal.

Jacksonville activist Wells Todd noted that the word “Confederate” was not listed in the bill, for a specific reason.

“These statues were put up to honor the Confederate States of America, not the United States of America,” Todd said. “They were put up at a time of segregation, better known as Jim Crow. And they were put up to tell Black people to stay in your place, or we might come to your house, drag you out, and lynch you.”

But emotions were triggered when a bill supporter said that “this is part of the cultural war being waged against white society.”

That comment angered both Democrats and Republicans on the panel.

“I can’t believe we’re going to have a vote after hearing such a blatant display of white supremacy,” said South Florida Democratic Sen. Lori Berman.

Republican Jennifer Bradley, representing several Northeast counties in Florida, said she would vote for the bill, but called some of the comments “vile” and “bigoted.”

“It looks like I endorse your hatred, and I do not,” she said.

Broward County Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood is the only Black member on the committee.

“I am very, very hurt by some of the things that were said here today,” she said. “And as a Black person living in America, where it’s supposed to be the land of freedom and justice for all, just the outpour[ing] of conversation today in my opinion was non-American.”

Several times during the discussion, Sen. Pizzo told supporters of the proposal that he would personally pay to remove a historic monument to that person’s house so that the rest of the public need not be able to see it.

There are currently 73 such monuments still existing in Florida, according to an updated report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The most notable recent removal of a Confederate monument in Florida took place in Jacksonville in late December, where after years of debate Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument, which had stood since 2015. “We have been very focused on this monument because there was so much concern about the injury that it was doing to the community at large, and especially to the Black community that had to see that all day long,” Deegan told reporters after the monument was removed.

The Florida Legislature voted in 2016 to remove a statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith that was placed in the Statuary Hall collection that represented Florida in the U.S. Capitol. They subsequently passed legislation in 2018 to replace it with a statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, who is perhaps best known for starting a private college for African American students in Daytona Beach.

Sen. Martin concluded the discussion by saying that he was inspired to sponsor the proposal after seeing historical monuments being torn down around the country in 2020 and 2021, and said if the Legislature didn’t act now, “we are going to lose American monuments.”

Martin added that some of the comments made by bill supporters “made him sick.”

“This bill is not about white supremacy,” Martin said. “It’s not about southern culture. Yes, there are white supremacists who want history protected, just like there are some Black nationalists that want some history protected. Just like there’s Europeans who want some history protected, just like they’re Native Americans who want some history protected.”

The final vote was 5-0, with the three Democrats: Berman, Osgood and Pizzo having left the dais before the vote was taken. Their removal appeared to insult Martin.

“That’s the political grandstanding that has to stop,” he said, later adding, “Where are the Democrats? These are my colleagues. We work together on so many bills. And I’m disgusted that they’re gone right now.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

Academic, author and independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced this week that he has formed a new political party called the Justice for All Party that is working to get on the presidential ballot this fall in Florida.

“Currently, our focus is on the states of North Carolina, Florida, Washington,” West said in a press release. “This initiative is a strategic and community-driven effort to extend our reach and impact across the nation.”

A spokesperson for West said that Florida is a key state for his presidential campaign in part because of the “streamlined process it offers for third-party creation.”

According to Florida statute 103.021, there are two ways a presidential ticket from a minor political party can get on the ballot. One is to get a petition signed by 1 percent of the registered voters from the last general election. Another way is by being affiliated with a national party holding a national convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice President of the United States.

“This eliminates the need for gathering over 145,040 signatures, a requirement for independent candidates, and allows us to establish the Justice for All party through a nominating convention,” said West spokesperson Edwin DeJesus. “This strategic advantage makes Florida an ideal starting point for our campaign.”

DeJesus says that the Justice for All Party will hold a national convention later this year but hasn’t yet finalized a date.

West, 70, announced last summer that he would run for president on the Green Party ticket, which already has ballot access in Florida. But he reversed course last October and said that he was dropping his bid for the Greens nomination and instead would run as a political independent.

West is among several high-profile candidates who say that they will compete for the presidential ticket as either an independent or member of a minor political party. Others include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein and possibly West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on the centrist-oriented No Labels ticket, which also is already on the ballot in Florida.

The West campaign rejects the notion that they will act as a “spoiler” for Democratic President Joe Biden, who in some recent polls has shown some erosion with parts of the Democratic base, specifically younger people who are unhappy in particular with his handling of the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

A New York Times/Sienna poll conducted in December showed that nearly three quarters of voters between the ages of 18-29 said that they disapproved of the way that Biden had dealt with the situation in Gaza. Among registered voters, they say they would vote for Donald Trump by 49 percent to 43 percent — in July, those young voters backed Mr. Biden by 10 percentage points.

Though there hasn’t much current polling in Florida, a Florida Atlantic University survey taken last November showed Trump leading Biden in Florida by 10 percentage points, 49%-39%.

“The current dissatisfaction with the Biden administration among Floridians, particularly concerning inflation and government censorship, highlights a demand for alternative voices, ” DeJesus told the Phoenix. “Our campaign aims to fulfill this demand, advocating for policies that resonate with a broad spectrum of voters. The real spoiler, we believe, is the continuation of a political system that limits choice and suppresses diverse voices.”

As an independent candidate working with other minor political parties, West has already qualified for the ballot in Alaska and Oregon.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is languishing in the polls, but he certainly got the GOP crowd riled up at Saturday’s Florida Freedom Summit: He predicted that former President Donald Trump would be found guilty in at least one of the criminal cases that he will be facing in 2024.

“As someone who has been in the courtroom for over 25 years as a federal prosecutor and also in defending some of the most serious federal criminal cases, I can say that there is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year,” said Hutchinson, a GOP presidential candidate.

The remarks elicited a cascade of boos from the hundreds of people sitting inside a ballroom at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Kissimmee, just outside of Orlando.

Hutchinson failed to qualify for the second GOP presidential debate held in Southern California, and he is unlikely to make the stage for the third debate scheduled in Miami on Wednesday evening. But he told the crowd of Florida Republicans that while Trump’s legal woes may not be evident when voters go to the polls in the state’s primary on March 19 of next year, Trump’s legal baggage could turn off independent voters and hurt down ballot races throughout the country come November 2024.

“That may or may not happen before you vote in March and it may not make any difference to you, but it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November, Hutchinson said. “It will make a difference for those down ticket races for Congress and Senate, and it will weaken the GOP for decades to come.”

“While some will ignore the destructive behavior of the former president, I assure you, we will ignore it at our own peril,” he added.

Ninety minutes later, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has made his criticism of Trump a central platform of his candidacy, was booed before he even began addressing the crowd.

After beginning his speech by sarcastically remarking, “Let me guess. You’re for Trump?” the boos became louder, and Christie became fiercer in responding back.

“Every one of those boos, every one of those catcalls, every one of those yells, will not solve one problem we face in this country, and will not make this country better. Your anger against the truth is reprehensible,” which set off louder boos.

“When you think about the problems that our country and this world is facing, when you think about that…this type of pettiness is beneath the process of electing a president.”

Christie continued — as members of the crowd continued to shout at him — “if your arguments are so strong. If your arguments are so great and mine are so bad, then just keep quiet, and let me make my awful arguments, and you can just reject them out of hand. But the problem is you fear the truth. The problem is you want to shout down any voice that says anything different than what you want to hear. And you can continue to do it, and believe me, it doesn’t bother me one bit.”

The crowd then did settle down, and listened mostly in silence as Christie made the case for the United States to continue to support Israel and Ukraine. He finally earned a large round of applause towards the end of his speech when he said that the country was a better place by hearing views that Americans don’t agree with.

“Whether it’s on a college campus in the Ivy League, or whether it’s in an auditorium in Orlando, for us to be booing and shouting down opinions we don’t agree. Let’s go and defeat the opinions that we don’t agree with. That’s what I’m trying to do, and I’m happy to take it on with you. American deserves better.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.