Tag: florida

Florida FEMA scandal exposes unaccountable bureaucracy that Trump targets for reform and cuts

An emergency response official’s decision to withhold vital assistance to hurricane victims that showed visible support for Republicans is a scandal that belies a larger issue, namely, an unaccountable federal bureaucracy left to police itself and which President-elect Donald Trump has eyed for reform and cuts.   

The concerns were raised by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in a hearing on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the dual crises of Hurricanes Helene and Milton that struck Florida and the wider Southeast earlier this year. 

“While today’s hearing will focus on FEMA, the issue at hand is part of a larger problem: the urgent need to hold the unelected, unaccountable federal workforce accountable to the American people and to the duly elected President of the United States,” Comer said in his opening statement. 

“The current system does not have strong enough mechanisms to ensure accountability. The disciplinary system is run by and for civil servants to protect civil servants,” he continued.

The hearing followed reports that during the hurricane response in Florida, one FEMA official instructed subordinates to bypass houses that displayed pro-Trump signs in Lake Placid, Florida, while they were canvassing to deliver assistance to the hurricane-stricken community. 

At least 20 houses were reportedly skipped under the guidance, and therefore were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance, Just the News reported. 

“I was simply following orders”

The FEMA official responsible, Marn’i Washington was terminated shortly after the public reports emerged of her conduct, but Comer says the accountability came too late, only after the conduct was exposed by reporting from the Daily Wire. For her part, Washington told NewsNation‘s Dan Abrams that “Firstly, I’m being framed,” said Washington. “There’s no violation of the Hatch Act. I was simply following orders.”

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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Calls Trump DNI Nominee Tulsi Gabbard A ‘Russian Asset’

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) joined MSNBC this week where she claimed Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard is “a Russian asset.”

“Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance and secretly, clandestinely went to Syria and met with Assad who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons. She’s considered to be essentially by most assessments a Russian asset and would be the most dangerous…” Schultz said before being asked by an MSNBC anchor if she considers Gabbard a Russian agent.

She answered, “Oh yes, there’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset who would be, as the DNI responsible for managing our entire intelligence community, hold all of our most significant intelligence information and secrets, and essentially would be a direct line to our enemies.”

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Florida Sen. Rick Scott says he’ll vote against recreational pot after brother’s death

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida says he’ll be voting in November against a ballot amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in his state, a deeply personal decision based on his brother’s long history of addiction.

The senator and former Florida governor said he watched his brother Roger Scott begin smoking marijuana as a teenager and then struggle with substance use for the rest of life.

“People end up with addictive personalities, and so he did,” Scott said in an interview. “It messes up your life, and so that’s why I’ve never supported legalization of drugs.”

When Roger Scott died in April at 67, the cause wasn’t substance abuse, but rather “a life of drugs and alcohol” catching up with him, the senator said. He had lived in an apartment in Dallas, Texas, where he served jail time in 1990 on a misdemeanor conviction of possessing dangerous drugs, court records show.

Rick Scott became wealthy as a lawyer and health care industry executive before entering politics. Now running for reelection, he lamented that his brother had a “tough life” and says it all began with marijuana.

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FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees. 

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire. 

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

It is unclear whether the same guidance was issued elsewhere in the country. The employees were part of a Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force team, meaning they volunteered from other DHS agencies to help an understaffed FEMA as it dealt with a second major hurricane in a span of just a few weeks.

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And the Meltdown Begins: Dangerous MSNBC Wacko Joy Reid Calls Florida an “Extreme Right-Wing Fascist State” and Attacks Half of the Country for Supporting Trump

The leftist media is having a meltdown as President Trump’s popularity surges across the nation. Now, Joy Reid, the famously radical MSNBC host, is throwing a tantrum on live television, calling Florida a “fascist state” and attacking half the country for supporting Trump.

Reid’s comments come on the heels of Trump’s record-breaking rise on prediction platforms like Polymarket, where he has seen his largest gain yet. Even The New York Times grudgingly acknowledges that Trump holds an 83% chance of winning.

As usual, Reid couldn’t hold back her disdain for conservatives and for Trump supporters for aligning with Trump’s vision to make America great again.

“You just think about just the last two weeks and the things that Donald Trump has said into, into the TV that people could hear him say and do. The vulgarity in front of families with young children and the threats to do mass deportation and a violent start, violent start to his dictatorship on day one. And you name it. If all of that gets you half of the votes, what does it tell you? I mean, we need to really take a step back and think about what does that say about us?”

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‘Extremely concerning’: Postal worker accused of dumping election-related mail in woods

A contract postal worker in Orange County, Florida, has been criminally charged after tossing election-related mail in the woods, Florida Politics reported on Friday.

According to the report, Ottis Nicole McCoy, Jr. first triggered red flags “raised after another employee helped McCoy load the day’s route that morning and McCoy left ‘with a very large quantity of U.S. Mail’ to deliver Tuesday but instead finished the route earlier than expected, the complaint said. McCoy’s boss at Cummings Contract Delivery Service Corp checked the GPS under McCoy’s car and could see the postal worker veered off his route.”

One of McCoy’s coworkers drove to the lot and found mail strewn around bushes and trees. Surveillance footage from a nearby home’s camera showed McCoy dumping the mail. Around 1,000 mail items were discarded, including 400 political mailings, and “at least one mail-in ballot,” according to the report.

McCoy has been charged with theft of mail, which is a federal offense.

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‘It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’: Federal Judge Slams Florida for Threatening TV Stations

Floridians this fall will vote on a constitutional “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.” So authorities decided to interfere with free speech in an attempt to thwart voters from limiting the government’s right to interfere in reproductive decisions. The state threatened TV stations with criminal penalties for running an ad supporting the abortion initiative (known as Amendment 4).

A federal judge isn’t impressed. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in an October 17 opinion.

Walker temporarily enjoined Florida from attempting to censor the ad, granting the temporary restraining order request sought by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group sponsoring Amendment 4.

“Importantly, this is a temporary restraining order, which is not generally appealable,” noted legal writer Chris Gender, author of the Law Dork newsletter, on BlueSky. “The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Oct.. 29, and the state could appeal from that.”

Florida has been pulling out all the stops to try and stop Amendment 4 from passing. The state has been using taxpayer money to run ads in opposition to the amendment while trying to prohibit people from seeing an ad in support of it.

The ad in question is “political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment,” notes Judge Walker. “And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.'”

This is the rub of the state’s argument against Floridians Protecting Freedom’s ad. It features a woman called Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child. “The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says. “Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine,” she ads.

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DeSantis Stirs Pot Again With More Anti-Marijuana Ads Funded By Taxpayers, Including One Linking Cannabis To Domestic Violence

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is facing new allegations of weaponizing state agencies with taxpayer-funded ads to support his campaign to defeat a marijuana legalization initiative that voters will decide on at the ballot next month.

In an ad from the Department of Transportation (DOT), three sheriffs make various claims about the harms of cannabis—including one who suggests that marijuana use is associated with a greater risk of domestic violence, contrary to research on the topic.

“When we make home visits for domestic violence calls, they’re often associated with marijuana use,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Duval County Sheriff T.K. Waters said in the PSA, first reported by Seeking Rents, that there are “too many kids going to the ER because of weed gummies and joints laced with fentanyl.”

In one of the only statements from the sheriffs that seems directly relevant to DOT, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said “we see more traffic collisions and fatalities because of driving high.”

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‘Fake’ Donald Trump supporters in Swastika t-shirts get instant karma at Florida MAGA boat parade

A group of ‘fake’ Donald Trump supporters with neo-Nazi flags and shirts were doused with water from angry Republicans during a MAGA boat parade.  

The Trump event kicked off in Jupiter, Florida, on Sunday where Republicans have shown their support for the presidential nominee at the same harbor since 2020.

Videos quickly circulated online of a boat filled with men dressed in swastika t-shirts, but Trump supporters were quick to distance themselves from the group, claiming they were ‘infiltrators’ and accusing them of being ‘dirty Dems doing their usual plants’. 

The racist group were seen waving their hands as they shouted: ‘Heil Trump,’ ‘Make America White Again’ and ‘White Power’.

Though Trump fans were encouraged to attend the celebration, which promised attendees ‘an incredible airshow featuring paratroopers,’ the uninvited neo-Nazis appeared to crash the parade. 

The unidentified men hurled hateful messages about Jewish people and yelled the n-word while Trump and swastika flags swayed back and forth behind them. Some of the wayward individuals held up signs and donned masks on their faces.

The viral clip captured the purported neo-Nazis heckling at a boat in front of them on the water in Palm Beach after the parade began from Jupiter Inlet Bridge. 

The other boat, filled with American and Trump flags, then slowed down as the group of men crept closer to the vessel. 

Seconds later water shot out from behind the first boat and sprayed the inconsiderate hooligans making their boat sway to the right. 

As the water surged through the air, a passenger on the boat ahead screamed: ‘Ha, you f****** p****,’ and flashed his middle finger. 

Trump supporters flocked to the video and commended the others for splashing the men. 

‘I watched this too many times. Nobody hates those a**holes more than trump supporters,’ someone wrote. 

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Florida Senator Sues State Over Anti-Marijuana Ad, Alleging Unconstitutional Use Of Taxpayer Dollars Ahead Of Legalization Vote

A Florida Democratic senator is suing the state for using taxpayer dollars to fund a recent ad that he says unconstitutionally attempts to influence voters to oppose a marijuana legalization initiative that will be on the ballot next month.

Sen. Jason Pizzo (D), who is expected to run for governor in 2026, announced on Friday that he would be seeking an injunction against the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) over the ad, which warns against driving under the influence of cannabis and then makes a contested claim that “DUI crashes increase in states with legalized marijuana, putting everyone at risk.”

Making such an assertion in an ad supported by tax dollars amounts to “political messaging” and therefore represents an unconstitutional use of appropriations authority, the senator says. The campaign behind the Florida legalization initiative has also sent cease and desist letters to 54 TV stations that have aired the public service announcement.

“For years, our state has wasted precious time, and many millions, peddling divisive and unproductive nonsense, while flouting practical solutions for critical needs,” Pizzo said.

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