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Byron Donalds promises ‘cordial conversations’ with Legislature as Governor

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The gubernatorial candidate also discussed youthful transgressions in the interview with Lara Trump.

Let the healing begin.

That’s the big takeaway from U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds interview Saturday night on Fox News.

The Naples Republican told Lara Trump that he’d be collaborative with the Legislature, a meaningful comment given the arm twisting from the Governor’s Office and national media surrogates about legislative “RINOs” and “Republican-lite squishes” surrounding the immigration legislation passed after a series of Special Sessions earlier this year.

“We saw some of the stuff in the Legislature, and I don’t really want to get too deep in it,” Donalds told the daughter-in-law of the President who endorsed him, by way of prioritizing “setting the example of how we’re going to have the cordial conversations that are necessary.”

Beyond that, Donalds had a message for those allied with likely gubernatorial candidate First Lady Casey DeSantis who might want to push oppo against him.

“I’m not going to be intimidated. I know what I’ve done wrong in my life,” Donalds told Trump.

He noted a youthful arrest for marijuana possession and a no contest plea for theft before he was old enough to drink, before previewing how he intends to frame that as the beginning of a redemption narrative.

“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young. But you know, when I was a youth leader, we would tell the children in a youth group that when you mess up, you make up, but you never give up. And I never gave up on myself,” Donalds said.

He then offered a message to his would be critics.

“So to people who want to dig up dirt and throw it at me, I say, I’m not going anywhere, I’m going to be right here. And I think that if you can go through life being better than you were the day before, then nobody can do anything to you.”


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Cure on Wheels aims to end in Tallahassee with donation to Moffit Center

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Financial donations will be bestowed to Moffit Cancer Center when bike ride ends Wednesday in Tallahassee.

What’s now become a tradition, a long bicycle trek through much of Florida’s Gulf Coast promises to raise funds for cancer research and assistance at a key center in Tampa.

Cure on Wheels will stretch along the West Coast of Florida and take four days to complete as bicyclists end their trip on Wednesday in the state capital. The event runs 325 miles  beginning Sunday from Tampa to Tallahassee and will wind up in the Capitol Courtyard Wednesday about 11:15 a.m.

Much of the money raised from Cure on Wheels will go to the Moffit Cancer Center & Research Institute. The center, initially established by the Florida Legislature in Tampa, is a nonprofit organization. It was founded in 1981 and the hospital was operational in 1986 on the campus of the University of South Florida.

“Their annual Capitol Ride from Tampa to Tallahassee kicks off the cancer center’s annual Moffitt Day at the Florida Capitol. The day of advocacy recognizes the need for continued legislative support of Moffitt and its mission to contribute to the prevention and cure of cancer,” a news release said.

The key to the bicycle ride is a major financial contribution to the Moffitt Center. There are at least 35 cyclists expected to take part in the ride that peddles through the Gulf Coast. Once the Cure on Wheels riders arrive in Tallahassee, they’ll present three checks totaling $40,000.

That funding will go to help research and treatment for blood and marrow transplant services for adolescent and young adult fertility services.

Cure on Wheels organizes several bicycle rides in multiple areas each year and helps raise funds for various nonprofit causes. Two years ago, the ride from Tampa to Tallahassee raised $70,000

Moffitt has more than 7,800 team members and creates an economic impact in Florida of $2.4 billion. The center in Tampa is part of a larger umbrella of 57 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers.


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Elon Musk and DOGE try to slash government by cutting out those who answer to voters

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For decades, conservatives in Congress have talked about the need to cut government deeply, but they have always pulled back from mandating specific reductions, fearful of voter backlash.

Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to make major cuts in government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, run by billionaire Elon Musk — an initiative led by an unelected businessman who’s unlikely to ever run for office and was appointed by a termed-out president who no longer needs to face voters again.

The dynamic of cutting government while also cutting out those who answer to voters has alarmed even some fiscal conservatives who have long pushed for Congress to reduce spending through the means laid out in the Constitution: a system of checks and balances that includes lawmakers elected across the country working with the president.

“Some members of the Trump administration got frustrated that Congress won’t cut spending and decided to go around them,” said Jessica Reidl of the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute. Now, she said, “no one who has to face voters again is determining spending levels.”

That may be changing.

On Thursday, facing mounting court challenges to the legality of Musk ordering layoffs, Trump told his Cabinet that Musk could only make recommendations about government reductions. And there were more signs that Congress, after sitting on the sidelines for nearly the first two months of Trump’s administration, is slowly getting back into the game.

On Wednesday, Republican senators told Musk that he needed to ask Congress to approve specific cuts, which they can do on an up-or-down, filibuster-free vote through a process known as recission.

Senators said Musk had never heard of the process before. That was a striking admission given that it’s the only way for the executive branch to legally refuse to spend money that Congress has given it.

“To make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a longtime advocate of spending reductions who said he introduced the idea of recission to Musk during the lunch meeting of the GOP caucus.

Of course, letting Congress have the final word may be constitutional, but it would open up the process to individual representatives or senators balking at cuts because of home-state interests or other concerns, as some have already. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an economist in George W. Bush’s administration, said that “messy” process is a superior one.

“There’s always this instinct in people to insulate decisions from politics,” Holtz-Eakin said. “It’s a mistake in a democracy. It’s really messy. You’re not going to get the cleanliness of a corporate reorganization.”

Riedl noted she has advocated for deep cuts for decades, but there’s a reason Congress has balked.

“If Congress won’t pass certain spending cuts, it’s because the American people don’t want it enough,” she said. “If I want spending levels to be cut, it’s my job to persuade the people of America to agree with me.”

Trump and his supporters argue they did just that in the last presidential election when he promised to shake up Washington: “The people elected me to do the job and I’m doing it,” Trump said during his address to Congress last week.

A corporate-style approach to government has long been the goal of conservatives, especially one segment that has recently called for a more CEO-style leader who is less tied down by democratic commitments to voters. Musk has embodied that, bringing the same disruptive, cost-cutting zeal he brought to his private companies. Some of his DOGE moves mirrored steps he took to slash the social media site Twitter, including the email offering buyouts, both times called “Fork in the Road.”

Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, said the effort seems more destructive than just an attempt to shrink government in ways conservatives have long advocated.

“It is usurping the role of Congress on spending and program design, using cuts as a backdoor way to impound and close agencies created by Congress,” Moynihan said. “It is implementing an unprecedented scale of disruption.”

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist whose pledge to make government small enough to “drown it in a bathtub” has made him an icon for small-government conservatives, cheered the DOGE project. He said Congress has to authorize any real reductions, but hoped that DOGE’s cuts show the legislative branch that voters will not panic when government is shrunk.

“If we do something for three years, they’ll make it the law,” Norquist said of Congress. “They’ll see it’s safe, they’ll see it’s successful. They’ll come in and put their name on it.”

Norquist acknowledged that Congress has repeatedly balked at the level of cuts that he would like to see, even under unified Republican control. He asserted that “95%” of Republicans support such reductions but “that wasn’t enough to get it across the finish line” in an era where the majority party usually only has a razor-thin margin of control in either chamber.

The past nearly half-century of politics has been defined by conservatives pledging to cut government spending, only to see it continue to grow. Republican Ronald Reagan swept into the presidency in 1980 pledging to cut government, but when he left eight years later its size had increased. The trend continued through Trump’s first term and during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency.

Now, however, Trump will not face voters again, despite occasional quips about seeking a constitutionally prohibited third term. He has been open about his grudge against the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for many of his troubles during his initial four years in office.

“I don’t think previous presidents have had the same animus towards the federal government this one has,” Holtz-Eakin said.

He noted that Trump has launched a second cost-cutting initiative through traditional channels — his own Office of Management and Budget, which asked agencies to prepare for mass layoffs. That, Holtz-Eakin said, makes those coming reductions likelier to stick than DOGE cuts.

Holtz-Eakin said there are initial signs of voter discontent over the pace, depth and chaos of the cuts. “The usual way you visit that on a president is you wipe out his party in the midterms,” Holtz-Eakin said. “You never evade the voters.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.


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Armed man shot by Secret Service near White House while Donald Trump out of town

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Donald Trump was in Florida at the time of the incident in Washington, D.C.

An armed man believed to be traveling from Indiana was shot by U.S. Secret Service agents near the White House after a confrontation early Sunday, according to authorities.

No one else was injured in the shooting that happened around midnight about a block from the White House, according to a Secret Service statement. President Donald Trump was in Florida at the time of the shooting.

The Secret Service received information from local police about an alleged “suicidal individual” who was traveling from Indiana and found the man’s car and a person matching his description nearby.

“As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel,” the Secret Service said in a statement.

The man was hospitalized. The Secret Service said his condition was “unknown.”

The Metropolitan Police Department will investigate because the shooting involved law enforcement officers. A message left Sunday for the police department wasn’t immediately returned.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.


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