Former President Joe Biden and his radical leftist allies launched an unprecedented assault on Florida seniors through their socialist medicine scheme, deceptively called the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA).

As a Palm Beach conservative who has witnessed President Donald Trump’s commitment to putting America first, I can tell you firsthand: Biden’s war on Medicare must be stopped immediately.

The America First movement under Trump delivered real results for Florida seniors – lower drug prices, more choices, and protection from Big Government overreach. Now, Biden’s socialist price control scheme is destroying everything we achieved. The damage from his radical Medicare experiment is already devastating our great state.

Florida’s world-class biotechnology corridor, stretching from Miami to Jacksonville, is seeing research partnerships canceled and lifesaving clinical trials delayed. Major pharmaceutical innovators across the state are abandoning critical research into treatments for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer, diseases that affect millions of Florida seniors who trusted Biden’s empty promises.

Let’s call this what it is: a radical leftist takeover of health care, pushed by the same “Deep State” bureaucrats who tried to stop Trump’s America First agenda.

These Washington bureaucrats – not your trusted Florida doctors – are currently deciding which treatments seniors can access. Their socialist policies have made cancer therapies and rare disease medicines “less compelling” investments, according to major medical investors, threatening access to lifesaving treatments that Florida seniors desperately need.

This isn’t the Medicare program that millions of hardworking Florida retirees earned.

This is socialized medicine, plain and simple.

Florida’s medical research community — which contributes over $6 billion annually to our state economy and supports thousands of high-paying American jobs — needs certainty to develop breakthrough treatments. Our seniors deserve the world-class health care system Trump built, not Biden’s broken socialist experiment. We are calling on the Trump administration to reverse this radical scheme and immediately freeze the IRA.

The devastation wrought by Biden’s socialist medicine scheme worsens daily. Small biotech companies — the backbone of American medical innovation—are struggling under the weight of IRA uncertainty. With 76% of life sciences investors pulling back from breakthrough research and 40 research programs already canceled, we’re watching Biden’s bureaucrats strangle the future of U.S. health care innovation in real time.

The impact on Florida’s seniors is catastrophic. Our rural communities are being hit hardest as Medicare plan options disappear. Critical cancer treatments and rare disease research – the kind of breakthrough innovations that made American health care the envy of the world – are being delayed or outright canceled. These aren’t just statistics – they’re death sentences for patients waiting for lifesaving treatments that may never come.

Biden and his Deep State bureaucrats thought they could get away with destroying Part D – a program that was working for seniors – while no one was watching. They were wrong. Florida patriots know exactly what was happening: a radical socialist takeover that put government bureaucrats in charge of which medicines get developed and who gets access to them.

The Trump Administration must act now before more damage is done. We need an immediate freeze of Biden’s socialist medicine scheme disguised as the IRA, a return to the America First health care policies that worked, and a commitment to keeping medical innovation on American soil where it belongs. The lives of Florida seniors and the future of American medical breakthroughs hang in the balance.

Let’s be crystal clear: Biden and his radical allies broke Medicare. Only Trump’s bold leadership can fix it. The time for action is now.

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Page Lewis is a former Republican candidate for the Palm Beach County School Board and a health care and education activist.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Florida has reached an agreement with Homeland Security to expand Florida Highway Patrol troopers’ powers to act as immigrant enforcement officers in some capacities.

“We need to be willing partners with the federal administration,” DeSantis said Friday at a Tallahassee press conference. “We have to step up and do our part.”

DeSantis called it a “deputization of state enforcement entities.”

Under ICE’s direction and oversight, the nearly 2,000 state troopers will be allowed to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants caught entering the country as well as interrogate people suspected of being in the country illegally. 

ICE can also partner with state and local law enforcement agencies to deport undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and have committed crimes, DeSantis said.

In addition, troopers could serve and execute warrants for immigration violations.

When asked the timeline for expanding FHP’s authority, DeSantis said “there will be some ramp up time” to give troopers training.

“The goal is, we need to reestablish interior enforcement in this country. We have to fulfill the President’s mission to effectuate the largest deportation program in American history,” DeSantis said. “So we’re stepping up. I know some other states will as well. I know some other states will fight this and do everything they can to throw up roadblocks, but we’re strong partners.”

DeSantis said Florida is one of the first states to reach such an agreement with the federal government.

DeSantis’ press conference comes as he and the Republican-controlled Legislature have not reached a deal yet on an immigration bill to support President Donald Trump’s agenda to crack down on illegal immigration.

DeSantis said Friday he believed the two sides are close to reaching a resolution.

Joining DeSantis was Dave Kerner, executive director of Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, who took a dig at lawmakers as he called the new agreement a “turning point.”

“This agreement is larger than the words on the paper because (the) Legislature and Congress can pass laws, but those words and mandates do not have effects without brave men and women who are willing to give life to these words,” he said. “This agreement represents the commitment and dedication of Florida’s nearly 2,000 state troopers to continue doing just that.”

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Donald Trump continues to fill roles in his new administration, and one of his latest picks is known within the South Florida law enforcement community and to those familiar with the President’s first administration.

Trump has selected Gadyaces “Gady” Serralta as the next Director of the U.S. Marshal Service, which serves as the enforcement and security arm of the federal judiciary.

He takes over for Mark Pittella, who has served as Deputy Director since August 2024. Ronald Davis was the agency’s previous Director, a position now listed as “vacant.”

“Gady is a lifelong public servant,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform. “Gady will work with our GREAT Attorney General Pam Bondi to make sure that we restore Law and Order, and Make America Safe Again. Congratulations Gady!”

Serralta’s appointment is a big promotion over from current role as the U.S. Marshal for the Miami-headquartered Southern District of Florida, which covers Broward, Highlands, Glades, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Okeechobee, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.

Trump placed him there in 2018. Three years later, ex-President Joe Biden kept Serralta in the post after competing groups appointed by Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio — a Republican whom Trump tapped in November for Secretary of State — both recommended that he stay on in the job.

The President said he’s “done an incredible job for the past six years.”

Serralta previously served as a major with the Miami-Dade Police Department, where he began his career in 1990, and as commander of the Palmetto Bay Policing Unit.

Trump’s post errantly referred to Serralta as “Police Chief for Palmetto Bay.”

He is the brother-in-law of former Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera. About 15 years ago, Serralta fell under the scrutiny of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s Office over payments Lopez-Cantera’s prior state House campaign had made to a consulting company Serralta and his wife owned.

An investigation determined that while “it may not look good to campaign contributors of the general public that a company wholly owned by the candidate’s sister and brother-in-law made a profit on the campaign,” the couple had indeed done consulting work for Lopez-Cantera and were innocent of wrongdoing. However, the Miami-Dade Police Department reprimanded Serralta for not notifying it of his side job, according to Florida Bulldog reporting.

More recently, Fernandez Rundle’s Office partnered with Serralta’s office and other law enforcement agencies in a broad effort to locate missing children called “Operation We Will Find You.”

Serralta, a 55-year-old Republican living in South Miami, holds a master’s degree in leadership from Nova Southeastern University and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice studies from Florida International University, whose Board of Trustees may soon select Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez — Lopez-Cantera’s successor — as its new President.

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