JS

Fight, fight, fight for FSU......

[JS @jimbosapp]

“Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats 8 kids to death with a copy of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, I think you’re focusing on the wrong sh$t.” - Wanda Sykes

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

These are bribes.
The Trump administration has been selling pardons.

This is, by far, the most corrupt administration ever.

[David Jolly @davidjollyfl]

@GwenGraham is right. This is a different campaign. Take a listen.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Just refreshing this in everyone’s feed

[JS @jimbosapp]

Read every word of this …

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The Lessons I Learned from My Dad

I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.

Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.

I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.

I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.

I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.

Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.

That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

[CathyNotToday2 🌿 @Cathy2NotToday]

For everyone in Florida cheering for the end of property taxes, Jeff Brandes asks 10 REALLY good questions:

1. If this is real tax reform, what replaces it?
Florida built local government around property taxes because Florida has no state income tax.
You can dislike the system, but you cannot remove the load-bearing wall without explaining what keeps the roof from collapsing afterward.

2. Is this a tax cut… or just a tax costume change?
Homesteaded homeowners may save money upfront.
But governments still need revenue.
So does the bill simply reappear through rent, insurance, utility bills, assessments, fees, and higher costs on businesses and apartments?
Taxes rarely disappear.
They usually come back wearing a different name tag.

3. Who pays the debt already backed by property taxes?
Florida communities have borrowed billions for roads, drainage, water systems, police stations, fire stations, and hurricane infrastructure.
Bond payments do not disappear because politicians change the math.

4. What exactly counts as a “core service”?
Police and fire are easy answers. After that, the politics begin.
Is drainage a core service in a hurricane state? Stormwater? Road maintenance? Permitting? Parks? Libraries? Transit? Homeless services? Constitutional officers?
The real fight will not be over taxes. It will be over who gets to decide what government is allowed to do.

5. Who actually controls your city budget after this?
If Tallahassee defines “core services,” spending limits, reimbursement formulas, allowable millage growth, and allowable revenue… then local government becomes government by permission slip.
Your city council may still hold meetings, but the real budget power moves to the Capitol.

6. What happens during the first recession?
Property taxes are stable.
Sales taxes and tourism revenues are not.
So what happens when the economy slows, tourism drops, state revenues fall, and demand for local services spikes at the same time?
A system designed only for boom years is not reform.
It is a fair-weather theory.

7. What funds the trust fund when Florida itself is projecting multi-billion-dollar deficits?
Sales taxes? Documentary stamps? Debt? New fees? “Future growth”?
Florida’s own long-range forecasts already project structural deficits beginning in fiscal year 2027-28.
So what is the durable funding source?
A trust fund without recurring revenue is not reform. It is delayed instability with a press release.

8. What happens to Florida’s special districts?
Florida already relies heavily on CDDs, special districts, MSTUs, infrastructure authorities, and assessment-based financing.
If cities and counties lose flexibility, does growth simply shift into more off-book financing structures and special assessments?
Taxpayers do not care which government entity sends the invoice. They care that the invoice still arrives.

9. Are we trying to solve a housing crisis entirely through the tax code?
Florida’s affordability crisis is not just taxes. It is missing starter homes, restrictive zoning, rising insurance, infrastructure costs, and years of making housing harder to build.
You cannot tax-cut your way out of a starter home shortage.

10. Does this proposal reduce the cost of government or simply change the collection mechanism?
Nothing in the proposal prevents governments from relying more heavily on utility fees, stormwater charges, mobility fees, special assessments, franchise fees, or special districts.

If the total cost to taxpayers remains roughly the same, this is not necessarily smaller government. It is simply a different billing system.
Bonus question: Where is the sunset clause?

This proposal would fundamentally restructure local government finance in the third-largest state in America.

So where is the mandatory five-year review?
Measure homeowner savings, renter impacts, debt stress, infrastructure quality, public safety, and unintended consequences.

✅Big reforms need an exit ramp if the theory fails.

[John Harwood @JohnJHarwood]

when you steal as much as the Trump family steals, you comfort yourself by insisting others are stealing too

[FactPost @factpostnews]

The Trump administration has forced the National Parks Service to remove any photos of Harriet Tubman from their website covering the Underground Railroad.

[Jumbo Elliott @JumboElliott76]

Unheard of corruption. Beyond 3rd world.

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

David Jolly is opening his campaign’s first office in Pensacola this weekend, showing his “go everywhere, reach every voter” strategy.

[David Jolly @davidjollyfl]

To my Republican friends, I'm not asking you to reconsider your principles, I'm asking you to remember them.

Regardless of party, consider being a part of this moment in history. Join us at https://t.co/ZMD4oQV3N7.

[Really American 🇺🇸 @ReallyAmerican1]

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s crusade to purge women and people of color from our Armed Forces has never been subtle.

But today, a New York Times exposé revealed exactly how far he’s gone to dismantle the careers and achievements of our finest servicemen and women.

More than a dozen military insiders — both active duty and those already purged — spoke to the Times anonymously to unmask a horrific ongoing attack.

They detailed a process used by Hegseth and his team to halt senior officer advancements for reasons completely unrelated to merit, job performance, or fighting wars.

Hegseth’s efforts are part of a quest to advance his white-and-male centered worldview, facts, history, and actual service be damned.

In the absence of any such evidence, insiders confirmed that he has used his position to withhold promotions from qualified, decorated veterans. The Times cited several enraging examples:

• Last fall, Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll to remove two Black and two female officers from a 29-person promotion list. Driscoll repeatedly refused, citing their decades of exemplary service. In March, Hegseth bypassed him, removed their names, and sent the modified list to the White House.

• In total, Hegseth has removed 32 officers from Air Force and Navy one- and two-star promotion lists. He also pulled the only Black officer and the only female officer from a Marine Corps list, leaving their promotions in limbo.

• Vice Adm. Sara Joyner, a highly decorated three-star fighter pilot, saw her advancement stalled over a 2021 Navy recruiting ad where she said, "I’m not just a girl with a dream. I’m a sailor with one." Hegseth deemed the line a "big problem." Joyner has since retired.

• Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett was recommended for a promotion after successfully managing the aftermath of a massive Navy fuel spill in Hawaii. Hegseth blocked his advancement after Barnett participated in a Navy-sponsored Pride event back in 2018.

It is an outrage to watch a media personality whose greatest battles have been with hangovers intentionally harm the careers of people who risked everything to keep America safe. Hegseth’s actions are insult to all who have served and a risk to national security.

[Image: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov]

[David Jolly @davidjollyfl]

Juneteenth commemorates the day the message of freedom reached the last enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas.

Weeks earlier, on May 20, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was read in Tallahassee, Florida on the steps of the now historic Knott House.

Knowing our history, teaching our history, strengthens and equips us. We will never recognize the darker chapters of our present if we don't first learn from the darker chapters of our past.

Join us as we continue to move Florida forward.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A brand new bridge between Detroit and Canada is finished and ready to open. It would speed up traffic for millions of trucks, cut delays for American businesses, and help the auto industry that employs people in every state. There is just one problem.

Donald Trump won’t let it open.

Here is why.

The family that owns the old bridge stands to lose business when the new one opens. So in January, they gave one million dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC.

Weeks later they met with Trump’s Commerce Secretary.

He called Trump.

Hours after that, Trump announced he would block the new bridge. The opening was set for June 12. It got canceled the day before. The bridge sits there finished and empty.

Now here is the part that should make every taxpayer angry.

Canada paid for the entire bridge.

Every dollar. And the United States already owns half of it for free. Trump is holding up a bridge we got for nothing, to protect a donor who wrote him a check, while picking a fight with our closest ally and biggest trading partner.

This is corruption in plain sight.

A billionaire pays, and the President delivers. American workers and businesses pay the price.

Open the bridge. A government should work for the people, not for whoever writes the biggest check.
https://t.co/9o9Gz9UrBo

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

Pastors for Trump founder Jackson Lahmeyer has suspended his congressional campaign after the Daily Mail published flirty text messages with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

In one text, Lawmayer said he was offered cocaine after leaving Mar-a-Lago to visit a strip club at 1am.

[JS @jimbosapp]

I’m out.

[TJ Pittinger @TJ_Pittinger]

That sounds way better than playing games in Tallahassee & Athens!

~ Zero FSU or UGA fans ever

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

This is not part of the agreement. He is making this up. Iran agrees to give up NOTHING on their nuclear program in this deal.

[Amy Klobuchar @amyklobuchar]

With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran. This is not America First. Not even close.

[John Harwood @JohnJHarwood]

Obama's superiority, as a president and a person, hurts Trump especially badly because he's a huge racist and Obama is black.

[John Harwood @JohnJHarwood]

our president is a pitiful wreck of a man