Tuesday, June 16, 2026

"Donald Trump Will Resign in 2027. The First Domino Falls This November."

This post is a Substack post written by Mitch Jackson. I've reposted it here for your convenience but you can find the original post HERE. It is an extremely important read in clear, factual, and unemotional terms why Trump will resign before the end of his term. While by definition it's conjecture, it is based upon everything you've read and are probably convinced is true about about Trump the man, and it is equally as believable. In the past I've written about how I believe Trump is losing the game he started and losing his sanity along with it in real time, but Mitch Jackson says it so much better. Grab a chair and sit down because you're about to understand what's certainly possible through the remainder of Trumps term, and it's not pretty.                                                                                        
                                                                                                            - Sandspur 

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Donald Trump Will Resign in 2027. 
Mitch Jackson
Jun  08, 2026

The First Domino Falls This November. 
On a rain soaked farm in Wisconsin, the President of the United States unclipped his microphone, called a reporter crooked, called her darling, and walked off the set of Meet the Press. Fifty minutes of cameras rolling. One plain question about a fund he wants to steer toward people who beat police officers on January 6. He never finished the thought. He stood up and left. 

I have watched a lot of people fold under pressure. I have stood in front of dozens of juries who showed up wanting to see a man crack. I know the look. I know the sound a person makes right before the bottom drops out. Here is the prediction I am putting in writing today, June 8, 2026, with my full name on it, so you are free to hold me to it. Donald Trump will resign the presidency in 2027. No impeachment removal. No election defeat. He will quit. And the single event that opens the door arrives this coming November. 

Stay with me, because the road from a televised tantrum to a Rose Garden resignation runs straight through your ballot. 

The Walkout Was the Tell 
Watch the tape again. A reporter asks a fair question. The President insults the network, insults the host, drops a thank you darling, and bolts. A sitting president lost his nerve inside 50 minutes with a journalist who did her homework. Sit with how small that is. 

And it is not just journalists anymore. Republican senators, conservative commentators, and some of the very influencers who helped build his movement are starting to challenge him in public. The protective bubble that once shielded him from criticism is getting smaller. The questions are getting tougher. The excuses are wearing thin. The pressure is building from directions he never expected, and every new crack makes the next one easier to see.

This man built an entire brand on dominance. The tough guy. The closer who never backs down. The footage shows the opposite. The footage shows a man who has lost the nerve to take a hard question in public. 

Now run the clock forward. Picture two solid years of hard questions. Not only to him but to members of his administration, pursuant to Congressional subpoena, and under oath. On the record. Broadcast live. Sworn testimony. Documented. That is what is coming, and the people who love him already see the cracks. 

Everything Changes the Night of November 3 
Right now Congress protects him by staying silent. His party holds the gavels. Committees look away. Subpoenas never get signed. The money flows wherever he points. The whole machine runs on one fact. Republicans control the House and Senate, so nobody with real power forces him to answer for anything. 

That arrangement expires on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. 

Here is where the numbers sit as I write this. Republicans hold the House by a margin you could fit in a phone booth. Democrats need a handful of seats to take the gavel back. The president’s party loses around 28 House seats in a midterm on average. Trump’s approval sits in the high 30s. His standing with independents has fallen into the low 30s, the same ground that came before the roughly 41 seat wipeout Democrats handed his party in 2018. Voters name inflation and the cost of living as their number one worry, and on that issue his disapproval runs as high as 78 percent in some surveys. The generic ballot favors Democrats by a comfortable spread. 

Read all of that together and one conclusion lands hard. A Democratic House is the most likely outcome of this election. The Senate map is steeper terrain for Democrats, so flipping both chambers is the tougher climb, and even the House alone rewrites everything you are about to read. 

A House majority hands the opposition three weapons the founders designed for exactly this moment. 

The first weapon is the power of the purse. Every dollar this government spends starts in the House. A new majority decides what gets funded and what gets starved. 

The second weapon is the subpoena. Committee chairs gain the power to demand documents and put witnesses under oath on camera. The Epstein files, the crypto contracts, the pardon paperwork, the war decisions, all of it becomes fair game. 

The third weapon is oversight backed by the separation of powers. A coequal branch finally does the job the Constitution assigns it. Hearings and investigations. A daily, grinding accounting in public. 

Now let me show you the ten fronts where this lands on Donald Trump personally, and why each one chips away at the only thing he has ever protected, his image. 

One. The Weaponization Fund and the IRS Settlement 
Start with the fund that triggered the walkout. The administration floated a plan to set up a pool of roughly 1.8 billion dollars to pay people who claim the last administration treated them unfairly. The list of possible recipients includes people who assaulted police officers at the Capitol on January 6. 

Look at where the money came from. Trump sued the IRS over the leak of his tax information. He dropped a claim he valued at 10 billion dollars. In exchange, the Justice Department agreed to stand up this fund, and the settlement reportedly shields Trump, his family, and his business entities from tax audits and enforcement on returns filed before the deal. A president negotiated a personal benefit out of the federal government and built a payout fund on top of it. 

His own party revolted. A judge blocked it. His acting Attorney General announced the Department would not move forward. He went on national television and said he loves the idea anyway. 

A Democratic House holds the purse. They will make certain not one dollar of your taxes ever reaches a person who bloodied a cop. They will haul in everyone who touched the settlement. They will read the audit shield into the record line by line. The hearings alone will run for months, and every minute of them paints the President as a man who treated the government like a personal piggy bank.1 

Two. The Epstein Files He Cannot Bury 
Congress passed a law requiring the Justice Department to release its full investigative records on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The deadline came and went. The Department released about 3.5 million pages of the more than 6 million it collected, smothered in redactions, and the inspector general opened an audit into whether the Department broke the law. Watchdogs caught the Department secretly redacting files all over again, with no notice and no explanation. One legal group counts the released material as a thin sliver of all the records that truly relate to the case. 

Donald Trump is named in these files, along with other prominent figures. Being named in an investigative file proves nothing on its own. The point is simpler. A man who fights this hard to keep records sealed gives the public every reason to wonder what sits inside them. 

Today the Oversight Committee is run by Republicans who block the subpoenas and bury the contempt votes. Flip the House and the gavel changes hands. The new chair signs the subpoenas the old chair refused to sign. The contempt vote that died in committee comes back to life. The unredacted files land in front of investigators who want to read them. 

Think about what that means for a man who walks out of an interview over a question about a fund. Now picture the questions about Epstein, asked to him in public, and his Director of the FBI and Attorney General of the DOJ, under oath, for as long as the majority wants to ask them. There is no walking out of a congressional hearing room without a story that writes itself.2 

Three. A Justice Department Run Like a Personal Law Office 
Trump fired Pam Bondi, his Attorney General when she failed to deliver prosecutions of his enemies fast enough. He replaced her with Todd Blanche, the man who was paid $10 million to serve as his personal criminal defense lawyer in the hush money case and the federal cases. Now he wants to make Blanche permanent. 

Sit with the picture. The lawyer who defended Donald Trump the criminal defendant now runs the agency that decides who gets prosecuted in America. Blanche has already pursued charges against the President’s critics and bragged that the FBI cleaned house of anyone who investigated his client. 

The Senate confirms Attorneys General, so if Democrats take the Senate the nomination dies on arrival. A Republican Senate gives him trouble too, because at least one of his own senators, Thom Tillis, has said out loud he will not back anyone who defends the January 6 rioters. A Democratic House holds a different kind of power. It puts the entire weaponized Justice Department under the microscope. Every political prosecution. Every act of retribution. All of it dragged into the daylight where the public sees the machine for what it is.3 Four. A Spy Chief Who Knows Nothing About Spying The President pulled the head of a housing agency, a man with zero national security background, and made him the acting Director of National Intelligence over all 18 intelligence agencies. This is the same official who accused Federal Reserve officials of mortgage fraud and drafted the letter Trump wanted to use to fire the Fed chair. 

The backlash was brutal and bipartisan. The Senate Majority Leader, a Republican, scoffed that the country does not need a weaponized intelligence chief. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee called the pick probably the worst and most dangerous appointment this President has ever made. The fallout already threatens the renewal of a major surveillance authority, because senators in both parties refuse to hand expanded spying powers to this man. 

A Democratic House owns the Intelligence Committee gavel. They will turn the lights on the entire intelligence apparatus this President has built. They will ask what a housing official is doing reading the nation’s secrets. They will ask it on camera, and the answers will not flatter him.4 

Five. The Crypto Money and the Foreign Cash 
This is the one that follows the money straight into the family bank account. 

The Trump family launched a crypto company. Days before the inauguration, an Abu Dhabi backed firm tied to the United Arab Emirates national security adviser bought nearly half of it for 500 million dollars, and 187 million of that flowed to entities controlled by the family. A second Emirati fund then used the family’s own digital coin to move 2 billion dollars into a crypto exchange whose founder Trump later pardoned. By this spring, outside estimates put the President’s personal haul from the venture in the hundreds of millions. 

Here is the part that should stop you cold. The Middle East envoy this President sends around the world to broker peace helped start this crypto company with his own sons. The son runs the deals, and announced that 2 billion dollar agreement with the Gulf royal whose government bought into the family business. The envoy hung onto a financial stake in the company well into his government service, by the White House’s own account, long after he pledged to walk away from it. The same government wiring money into the family venture holds a direct stake in American policy toward Iran. The diplomacy and the deals run through one family at the same time. 

A House committee has already started asking for the records. Flip the chamber and the asking turns into compelling. Subpoenas for the contracts. Subpoenas for the wire transfers. A presidential historian put the problem plainly, saying there is no longer any line between this family’s policy decisions and this family’s interests. A Democratic House will spend two years drawing that line in public, transaction by transaction, and the word that hangs over all of it is corruption.5 

Six. The Pardons That Look Like Receipts 
Look at the pattern. The founder of the crypto exchange that helped move 2 billion dollars connected to the family business walked away with a pardon. He is one of many. The pardons have piled up until ordinary people who pay attention notice a rhythm. Money and access go in. A pardon comes out. 

I am a lawyer. I will choose my words with care. I will say the optics are devastating, and the optics are all the public ever sees. A Democratic House will hold hearings on the abuse of the pardon power, and they will lay the timeline side by side for the country, the dates of the money next to the date of the pardon. You will draw your own conclusion, and so will every voter watching.6 

Seven. The Iran War He Says Is Over 
In late February, the United States and Israel struck Iran and killed its supreme leader. Iran answered with missiles and drones and shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the channel that carries a fifth of the world’s oil. A ceasefire arrived in April. The ceasefire keeps breaking. As recently as this past weekend, American and Iranian forces traded strikes, the United States hit radar sites inside Iran, and Iran threatened to close the strait completely. Oil prices jumped. Sirens sounded in Gulf cities. 

The President keeps telling you the situation is handled. The bombs keep falling. 

This is the issue that already cracked his own coalition. The voices that carried him to persuadable men and women in 2024 have turned. Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan, both who endorsed him, told their enormous audiences that people feel betrayed because Trump ran on ending senseless wars and then started one with no clear purpose. Tucker Carlson called the campaign disgusting and evil. Megyn Kelly tore into it and said American intelligence put Iran nowhere near a bomb. These are not Democrats. These are the people who built the movement. 

A Democratic House controls the war powers process and the defense budget. They will force votes on whether this war was ever authorized. They will demand the intelligence. They will put generals and envoys under oath and ask why a ceasefire the President sold as peace produced strikes the very next weekend. Every hearing reminds his own base of the promise he broke.7 

Eight. The Ballroom, the Arch, and the Blue Reflecting Pool 
Families count pennies at the checkout line. The President tore down the East Wing of the White House to build himself a 90,000 square foot gilded ballroom. The price started near 200 million dollars and climbed past 400 million. He swears no tax dollars touch it. Then the Secret Service asked Congress for about 1 billion dollars in new security money, with roughly 220 million of it tied directly to hardening the ballroom. The request landed with a thud. The Senate parliamentarian threw it out of the immigration bill where Republicans tried to tuck it, his own party balked at the cost and the timing, and the votes fell apart. 

He ordered the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool repainted. He said it would cost around 2 million dollars. The bill climbed to 13 million. He approved a 250 foot triumphal arch for the capital, stamped his own name on the Kennedy Center, gilded the Oval Office, and paved over the Rose Garden. A federal judge has since ordered his name removed from the Kennedy Center. 

A Democratic House writes the spending bills. Every dollar he wants for the ballroom and the arch runs through a committee that will gladly say no, on camera, with a press release attached. They will read the ballooning price tags into the record. They will hang the photo of the gold ballroom next to the chart of your grocery bill. The picture does the work for them.8 

Nine. Your Groceries, Your Gas, and the Golden Age That Never Came 
He promised you cheaper groceries. He said it at the rallies. A vote for him meant lower prices. 
Prices went up. Inflation climbed to its highest point in years, driven largely by the oil and gas chaos his Iran war set loose through the Strait of Hormuz. Gas is up. Groceries stay high. Working families feel it every single week. 

His answer is to call your pain a con job and a hoax, and to tell you that you are living in a golden age. The problem is that voters do not experience the economy through press releases and campaign speeches. They experience it at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and when the bills arrive. A president can argue with the headlines. He cannot argue with what people see in their own bank accounts. 

A Democratic House will hold field hearings on the cost of living in the districts that flipped. They will put your neighbors on the stand to talk about what a cart of groceries costs now. They will tie the price of your gas to the war he started and the tariffs he imposed. They will make affordability the drumbeat of his last two years, and a man who insists everything is golden as your family skips meals looks more out of touch with every passing week.9 

Ten. The War on the Institutions That Keep a President in Check
 He fired his Attorney General for insufficient loyalty. He moved to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve. He tried to remove a sitting Federal Reserve governor over an accusation pushed by the same housing official he later made spy chief. He has treated every independent institution as an obstacle to clear. 

A Democratic House will defend those institutions because their own power depends on the same separation that protects the Fed and the inspectors general. They will investigate every firing. They will protect the watchdogs he wants gone. They will become the wall he keeps running into, and a man who hates being told no will hear the word every single day.

10 Why a Man Like This Quits 
Now let me put the psychology together, because the policy fights are only half the story. The other half lives between Donald Trump’s ears. 

This is a man who measures his entire worth by how the room looks at him. Strength is the brand. Winning is the brand. Take those away and there is little underneath. 

He cannot stand ridicule. He never has. Watch how he treats anyone who laughs at him. The walkout on that Wisconsin farm was a small man’s response to a moment he failed to control, and that moment lasted 50 minutes. A relentless Democratic House does not stop at 50 minutes. The pressure runs 730 days. Subpoenas in the morning. A fresh damaging headline before dinner. Cameras everywhere. No off switch. 

He copes with reality by denying it out loud with his 3 am social media posts. The election he lost was rigged. The war that rages is over. The prices that climbed are falling. The golden age is here. That coping works only as long as nobody with power stands next to him holding the evidence. A Democratic House stands next to him for two years holding all of it. 

And here is the piece that seals it. His own people are leaving. The influencers who delivered the support and vote, the commentators who built the movement, many of them have looked into the camera and said this is not what he sold us. Republican senators are saying out loud they will not confirm his lawyer or arm his spy chief. The wall of protection is already crumbling before the new Congress is even sworn in. 

And there is one more motive worth talking about. Resigning allows Trump to separate himself from what could become a Republican political bloodbath in 2028. If the economy remains strained, if the scandals keep piling up, and if voters finally decide they have had enough, somebody will have to take the blame. Donald Trump has spent his entire life claiming credit and avoiding responsibility. Why would he start now? 

From the moment he leaves office, every Republican setback becomes somebody else’s failure. Every lost election becomes proof they did not follow his advice. Every polling collapse becomes evidence that the party abandoned his vision. Never mind that the movement, the policies, the appointments, and the chaos all trace back to him. He will be free to spend his days playing golf and telling reporters between rounds that everything would have been different if he had stayed. In his mind, resignation is not an admission of defeat. It is a chance to escape the fallout and preserve the legend in his mind. 

When all is said and done, I believe that a man who lives for applause does not sit still inside a building where the applause has stopped and the questions never end. He looks for the exit.11 

How the Resignation Will Actually Look 
Hear me clearly. This next stretch is my forecast, built on the man’s record and his wiring, not a thing that has happened yet. 

He will not call it surrender. He never does. 

The cover story will be warm and familiar. He will talk about his family and how he wants more time with them. He will look into the cameras and tell you he finished everything he wanted to achieve. He will talk about the golf course and the good life he earned. He might float a medical reason, something dignified enough to salute, vague enough to dodge a follow up. He will frame the whole thing as a man who accomplished his mission and chose to walk away on his own terms. 

The truth will be simpler. He will quit because he cannot stand the ridicule, he cannot stand losing control of the story, and there are only so many real estate deals and crypto windfalls a person needs before the daily humiliation stops being worth the trouble. The glass is already full on the money. The only thing left to lose is the dignity, and a Democratic House will spend two years draining that glass drop by drop. 

I am calling the timing for the last stretch of 2027. It will take the new Congress most of a year to do its work and start having a major effect on him. The hearings stack up and the polls keep sinking. The 2028 race swallows the oxygen. Somewhere in that final quarter, with the walls high and the cameras hot, he steps down. 

The Vance Pardon 
A resignation like this does not happen on a whim. It happens with a deal, and the deal has a name you already know from history. 

When Richard Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford gave him a full, free, and absolute pardon for every federal offense across the dates of his presidency. No charge required. No admission required. A clean slate that let Nixon walk into the sunset without looking over his shoulder. 

That is the model. JD Vance becomes president the moment Trump signs the resignation letter. One of his first acts will be a pardon written in the broadest language his lawyers know how to write. A full and unconditional pardon for any and all offenses against the United States committed by Donald J. Trump during the dates of his service. Everything. The known and the unknown, the whole sweep of anything a future prosecutor might dream up. The point is to make the federal exposure vanish so the man leaves office and never fears a federal courtroom again. 

That pardon is the price of a clean exit, and Vance pays it gladly, because the pardon buys him the presidency. 

Now hear me clearly on Vance, because this is where I want you wide awake. A Vance presidency is the more dangerous outcome, and I want to be plain about why. Trump is loud, undisciplined, and easy to read. Vance is none of those things. He is smarter. He speaks in full sentences. He knows how to make an extreme idea sound reasonable to a tired voter who stopped paying close attention. He inherits the same Project 2025 blueprint and the same movement, and he carries them with a steadier hand and a calmer voice. The agenda does not soften. The salesman gets better. I hope this country never has to learn how far a disciplined version of this project would go. 

Which brings us back to the only thing standing between the chaos of today and the quiet competence of what comes next. You. 

Your Move 
Every word of this prediction rests on one event you control. The midterms. 

If the House flips, the machine of accountability switches on, the pressure becomes unbearable, and the man in the Oval Office runs out of room. If the House holds Republican, the silence holds with it, the questions never come, and he sits comfortably through the full term doing exactly what he is doing now. 

So this is not a spectator sport, and November is not somebody else’s problem. Check your registration today. Help three people in your life check theirs. Learn your candidates down to the local races, because the gavels that matter get decided in districts like yours. Show up early. Bring someone with you. 

I put my name on this prediction so you would take it seriously. Donald Trump resigns in 2027 and hands the keys to JD Vance. The first domino falls on November 3, and your hand is the one that tips it. 

Save this article. Share it with the people who think their vote does not count. Then meet me back here in 2027, and let us see if I called this one. 

Mitch Jackson, Esq. 

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Thursday, June 4, 2026

"The 2026-27 environmental budget is the worst since the early days of Rick Scott"




The Florida Springs Council has just released (via email) a review of Florida's secret state budget created by your Republican governor and legislature. Which, not surprisingly, callously relegates all their earlier pretenses of concern for Florida's environmental future to Tallahassee's overflowing and widening latrine of false covenants. It is DeSantis' departing swan song, and it reveals his and a sadly misguided legislature's true essence. They could not care less for the quality of Natural Florida's future. Here's the Spring Council's wrap-up. You need to read it. It's sad, it's ugly, and it's pathetic.

Sandspur

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For the second year in a row, the Florida Senate and House were unable to agree on a budget during the 60-day legislative session and were forced to return to Tallahassee to finish the job. The 2026-2027 Florida state budget, totaling over $114 billion, was finalized behind closed doors, without any public input, over Memorial Day Weekend. The only committee meeting on the final budget proposal was held at 10:45 p.m. on the Sunday night before Memorial Day. No one from the public was recognized to speak. And to no one’s surprise, the outcome of the budget was as flawed as the process to create it. (emphasis added)

Overall, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s budget is being slashed to $2.5 billion, a nearly 40% cut to state environmental programs when compared to 2022. That’s $1.7 billion, over just the next year, that will not be used to protect forests and wildlife corridors; restore springs, rivers, and estuaries; fund water quality and water supply projects; or ensure that our permitting and regulatory systems are properly staffed and functioning.


Yankeetown Florida
2026-05-27 (16) 

Despite a state law requiring the Florida Forever program receive a minimum of $100 million a year, for the first time in over a decade, Florida’s premier land conservation program received no new funding in the budget. (Florida Forever should receive more than a billion dollars a year, if the Legislature cared about voters and the constitution, but that’s another story.) That means no new funding to purchase new lands for state parks, state forests, or public hunting lands. No new funding to buy irreplaceable lands at risk of being bulldozed and development. No new funding to protect critical watersheds or habitat for endangered species.

As a reflection of the state’s priorities, the budget is a clear indication that the Legislature has abandoned its commitment to conserving our natural areas and protecting Florida’s wildlife. The Legislature is not only turning its back on acquiring new public lands but also taking funds away from the Florida Wildlife Corridor. 

The 2026-27 budget clawback every single remaining dollar from the Florida Wildlife Corridor funding approved unanimously only a few years ago. The vast majority of this funding, $225 million, is being transferred to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to purchase agricultural easements that temporarily prevent development, but offer no public access or recreational opportunities and dubious environmental benefits. The remaining funds are prioritized to bailout bad investments by wealthy coastal property owners in Okaloosa County. Only after the bailouts of wealthy landowners across the state, does any funding trickle down for land conservation to benefit Floridians.

The picture for water restoration funding is nearly as bleak as it is for land conservation. Springs funding was maintained at a paltry $50 million which is so insufficient that it only guarantees future degradation. The Apalachicola River, Indian River Lagoon, Biscayne Bay, and Florida Keys received even less. Restoring the Ocklawaha River, the most important environmental project in Florida, received not a cent.

Withlacoochee River 
2026-05-27 (102)

Like Wildlife Corridor funding, Legislative leaders raided the Florida Water Quality Improvement Grant Program, enacted only a few years ago to stop the ineffective and wasteful practice of picking water projects based on pork-barrel politics instead of science and the benefit to taxpayers. Despite a requirement in state law that these funds be distributed to the most effective and beneficial projects, the Florida Legislature is redirecting funds to projects based on partisan politics, rewarding political allies and big donors with hundreds of millions of dollars of your hard earned money.

The budget now heads to the Governor’s desk. Although the Governor cannot add to the budget, he does have line-item veto power. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on ways you can contact the Governor to speak out against particular projects in the budget, and we’ll dive deeper into specific allocations once the budget is signed.

💦 Dive Deeper

We know you care deeply about protecting Florida’s springs and drinking water, state parks and hunting lands, and wildlife, but it seems the majority of the Legislature has turned a blind eye to what matters most to their constituents and voters. Here’s a few of the biggest red flags out of the Florida Legislature’s budget:

Florida Forever - No New Funding

The Legislature has ditched Florida Forever, which is used to acquire state park, hunting, and other recreational lands, in favor of more funding for private agricultural lands through the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program. We cannot protect our springs, rivers and aquifer, conserve essential wildlife habitat, and slow development without a meaningfully funded conservation and recreation land acquisition program.

Florida Wildlife Corridor - Existing Funding Clawed-back

During budget negotiations, we alerted Springs Advocates of the Legislature's attempt to use conservation funding to bail out a property owner in Okaloosa County. Unfortunately, the misuse of Florida Wildlife Corridor only got worse as budget negotiations progressed, and the Legislature snuck in another provision to acquire property in Okaloosa County outside of the Wildlife Corridor.

And, just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, Jason Garcia reported that the property could belong to Robert Guidry, the same Louisiana real estate developer who received more than $80 million of our tax dollars for a measly four acres of undevelopable sand after similar language appeared in the 2025-26 budget.

Water Quality Improvement Grant Program - Defunded

For the second year in a row the Legislature defunded the Water Quality Improvement Grant Program - created in 2023 to ensure our tax dollars are being used efficiently - and swept the funding into politically driven pork-barrel projects that benefit local developers and politicians more than the public or our environment.

Swimming at Silver Springs - Funded

We appreciate the advocates who contacted legislators to oppose swimming at Silver Springs. Despite our concerns for wildlife and state park visitors’ safety, the Legislature included a $2.5 million appropriation for swimming at Silver Springs. Although disappointing, we will continue to work on stopping swimming at the headspring as the project moves through the permitting process.

Even with Governor DeSantis’ line-item vetoes, this budget will remain a misrepresentation of the state’s greatest and most urgent conservation needs. Sweeping funds that were dedicated and celebrated for the Florida Wildlife Corridor just a few years ago, spending millions of taxpayer dollars on just a few acres with no conservation value, ignoring the growing list of lands the state can acquire with high conservation value, and prioritizing political favors over protecting natural resources is paving a harsh future for Florida’s environment.  

The 2026-27 environmental budget is the worst since the early days of Rick Scott. Advocates, we’ll need you to remember legislators’ budget priorities as you head to the polls later this year. Protecting springs and natural lands for future generations depends on us holding our legislators accountable today.

Thank you for staying engaged throughout the budget process,

Chloe Dougherty (chloe@floridaspringscouncil.org)

Communications Director

Florida Springs Council

Friday, May 8, 2026

Trump's Chosen War with Iran: Bill Clinton doesn't hold back

 This is an assessment of Trump's chosen war with Iran as carefully enunciated by former Pres. Bill Clinton. It's 24 minutes, but as sincere and straightforward as you'll hear. You need to take the time.

It's a Facebook REEL. Find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2516065268849601

Saturday, April 18, 2026

Thinking of my mom ...

When you get to my age you have time to let your mind sift back through the accumulated detritus of past years and sometimes revisit moments and experiences long thought forgotten. Sometimes, like last night, those bits and pieces trigger dreams and, if you're like me, dreams can trigger feelings that are as real and emotional as they are in the bright of day.

Last night I had a dream that was not about my mother, but in which she was just there, as if it was normal, and she was real. There was no plot in the dream that I can remember. Only that I was home in the old wooden house on US 41 next to the sawmill my dad owned and, I think, in the kitchen. In the dream, I was not directly engaged with my mom. She was just "over there" at the edge of my line of sight. It is a "still" scene. No movement or action that I can remember. I awoke immediately after that and was filled with the feeling of just having my mother near me again, a feeling of safety, and, somehow, warmth. I'm 83 now and and haven't felt that feeling since I left home for the last time in 1963 when I watched her and my dad standing at the Brooksville bus station as I left on a Greyhound bus for flight training in the Marine Corps. I was still a kid then. When a saw them next, four months later, I no longer was.

So, after my dream and maybe because of my dream, this day has became one of those when I'm thinking I need to begin getting all the papers I've kept through the years in order. You know those that intentionally or not, time-stamp events and seemingly document if not simply suggest who you've become and what your life was about. One of those papers was a piece I wrote on December 18, 1993, in honor of my mother's 75th birthday. It was a wonderful surprise organized by my sister, Vicki, to which her entire extended family and many friends were invited and who turned out in full in her honor. On that day the plan was for me to pick her up to have dinner with my two sisters. When she walked in to that room she almost fainted when over a hundred people started singing happy birthday. Her surprise was real and it was a joyous day.

So, the piece I had written in her honor is below. I was supposed to stand read it, but couldn't finish it. Vicki had to read what I couldn't. It's about who she was and, for me, will always be.







Saturday, April 11, 2026

It feels like something has shifted in the United States this week - Heather cox Richardson

April 10, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American<heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>

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April 10, 2026

By Heather Cox Richardson

Apr 11

 

 

 

It feels like something shifted in the United States this week after President Donald J. Trump threatened on Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” As professor of human rights, global affairs, and philosophy Mathias Risse of Harvard University’s Kennedy School noted, the Geneva Conventions prohibit “acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to terrorize civilians.” He notes that Trump’s threat terrorized 90 million Iranians by threatening them with genocide.

Trump has continued to struggle to assert his power over Iran since Tuesday, and has continued to fail. Yesterday former secretary of state John Kerry told Jen Psaki of The Briefing that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and George W. Bush to strike Iran, and they all refused him. Only Trump was willing to go along.

But negotiations have been rocky all along, and today Trump warned that if Iran didn’t come to a peace deal, the U.S. would launch even deadlier attacks. “We have a reset going,” Trump told the New York Post. At 9:31 this morning, Trump’s social media account posted: “WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!! PRESIDENT DJT.” At 12:27, Trump vented some of his apparent frustration that the Iranians have been trolling him, posting: “The Iranians are better at handling the Fake News Media, and ‘Public Relations,’ than they are at fighting!” A minute later, he posted: “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”

Trump continues to try to shore up the international right-wing authoritarian project even as people are turning against it. Today he threw the economic might of the United States of America behind Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who gutted Hungary’s democracy and turned the country into an authoritarian state. Orbán is deeply underwater ahead of the April 12 parliamentary elections in Hungary. Vice President J.D. Vance has been in Hungary to support Orbán, and today Trump posted: “My Administration stands ready to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian People ever need it. We are excited to invest in the future Prosperity that will be generated by Orbán’s continued Leadership! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

A recently revealed transcript of an October 2025 phone call between Orbán and Russian president Vladimir Putin shows Orbán promising to be a “mouse” aiding the “lion” Putin, telling the Russian leader: “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.” Tonight Hungarians filled the streets to protest Orbán, chanting “Russians, go home.”

Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal reported today that Trump has repeatedly promised to pardon his top officials before he leaves office and that he brings up the subject frequently. In a recent meeting, he said: “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office].” In response to a request for comment by Meredith Kile of People magazine, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke; however, the President’s pardon power is absolute.”

But Tuesday has given momentum to those trying to rein Trump in. Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, made a record of Trump’s recent bizarre behavior in a letter today to the president’s personal physician, Captain Sean P. Barbabella.

Raskin noted that “[e]xperts have repeatedly warned that the President has been exhibiting signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline. And, in recent days, the country has watched President Trump’s public statements and outbursts turn increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening.” Raskin recounted Trump’s wild social media posts and weird performance at the White House Easter egg roll, what the congressman called “a bizarre display that shocked tens of millions of Americans and astonished observers across the political spectrum.”

Raskin wrote that Trump’s “apparently deteriorating condition has caused tremendous alarm across the nation (and political spectrum) about the President’s cognitive function and continuing mental fitness for the office of President, and prompted concerns about the President’s well-being.”

Raskin asked the White House physician to “[c]onduct a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of the President, including a formal cognitive screening instrument, and publicly release the results; [p]rovide a detailed report on the President’s current mental and physical health status, including any medications he is currently taking and their potential cognitive side effects; and [m]ake yourself available for a briefing, under oath, with Members of the Committee on the results of this assessment.”

Former secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg said on Morning Joe today that the gradual destruction of the United States under Trump changed suddenly on Tuesday. “For the leader of the free world, the leader of this country, to just make a nakedly genocidal threat against another civilization, as if the United States of America was a death star that was going around blowing up civilizations, of course that crosses a new line, and, of course, that’s a new low,” he said.

Buttigieg continued: “I think the really important thing to remember is that the effects of that kind of thing will outlive Donald Trump long after he has departed the scene, the collapse in trust, not just affection for the United States, but trust in the United States, and it’s very important that not just allies but, frankly, also adversaries that we’re negotiating with when we’re making a peace deal or some other kind of deal, that they have a level of trust that there is stability in the United States.”

Those trying to write off Trump’s threat as bluster or just Trump being Trump were missing the point, he said. “[T]he reality is that the whole country is being judged. Even though most Americans don’t support him anyway. The whole country is being judged just for tolerating that kind of thing at the White House.”

The pushback against Trump is spreading across the United States. Jess Craven of Chop Wood, Carry Water today called out rock and roll legend Bruce Springsteen’s opening last night at his concert in Los Angeles:

“Good evening, Los Angeles,” he said. “Welcome to the Land of Hope and Dreams tour. We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas. We pray for their safe return.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals, democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American promise. The America I love, the America that I’ve written about for 50 years, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration,” he said.

“Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism, the rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unrivaled corruption, resistance over complacency, truth over lies, unity over division, and peace over war.”

Notes:

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/whole-civilization-will-die-tonight-day-american

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-promises-mass-pardons-to-staff-before-leaving-office-d7274d32

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-07/viktor-orban-offered-to-help-vladimir-putin-call-transcript-shows

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/07/viktor-orban-told-putin-i-am-at-your-service-in-october-phonecall

https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2026-04-10-raskin-to-barbabella-wh-re-25th-amendment.pdf

https://people.com/trump-vowed-to-pardon-everyone-who-s-come-within-200-feet-of-oval-office-report-11947832

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5825822-trump-threatens-iran-military-strikes/

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© 2026 Heather Cox Richardson
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104