Southeast Volusia County for Democracy

10/01/2026

09/28/2026

Florida Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon believes the country should consider pausing the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers.

09/28/2026

In private, the president has been hearing blunt news from advisers about the GOP’s poor chances in the midterms and has accepted that some of the problem is of his making.

09/21/2026

THIS IS HUGE: Kaitlan Collins just announced that every major TV network is standing with CNN, refusing to replace them, which means there will be no camera broadcasting Trump today at all.

With CNN banned from the White House and unable to fulfill its normal pool camera duties, other major networks had a choice: step in and take over CNN's spot, or refuse.

They refused.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins broke the news live, reporting on an email sent to TV pool subscribers.

"Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President," the email read. "This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place."

Read that again.

No replacement pool. At all.

Collins laid out exactly what this means in practice: when the president does anything today, there will be no TV camera with him broadcasting and sharing that footage with the wider press corps and networks around the world.

Think about the significance of that.

Every major network, across the entire industry, made a coordinated decision that the answer to Trump punishing one network wasn't to quietly take its place. It was to refuse to participate in a system that lets the White House pick and choose which outlets get to do their jobs.

This is united pushback from an entire industry, announced live by Kaitlan Collins, not just one outlet fighting alone.

09/21/2026

📺 Major television networks are standing together after The President barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN have agreed to suspend pooled coverage of the president after CNN was blocked from handling its scheduled assignment, meaning there will be no replacement TV pool covering those presidential events for now. CNN, MS NOW and Politico have also filed a federal lawsuit challenging the White House ban.

09/20/2026

A newly obtained un-redacted report shows 20 property insurance corporations have been playing a shell game with Florida homeowners. They denied homeowner claims and said they were broke, while funneling BILLIONS in profits to subsidiaries.

Now the Florida Senate is threatening newspapers with felony charges for publishing the info. WHO ARE WE TRYING TO PROTECT HERE? Giant property insurers or our constituents?

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/09/19/how-florida-fights-to-hide-insurers-finances/?

09/18/2026

States across the U.S. are considering cutting property taxes—a move that would benefit wealthy homeowners while making it harder for lower-income Americans to buy a house, Annie Lowrey argues. https://theatln.tc/5DWnYLF8

The most radical of such proposals will be considered by Florida voters this November. “Amendment 3, popularly known as ‘Save Our Homes,’ would raise the ‘homestead’ exemption on owner-occupied properties in the state from $50,000 to $250,000, meaning a couple with a condo with an assessed value of $400,000 would pay their county’s property-tax rate on $150,000 of their home’s value, rather than on $350,000,” Lowrey writes. “The amendment would eliminate levies on more than half of dwellings. In time, Florida legislators want to phase out property taxes on owner-occupied homes entirely.”

Tenants are “the loser in all this,” Ken Johnson, a professor of finance at the University of Mississippi, told Lowrey. “Many cities and counties offset lower taxes on owner-occupied properties with higher taxes on commercial residential properties,” Lowrey continues. “Landlords pass those costs on to their renters. The policy will also benefit longtime homeowners at the expense of prospective homebuyers. Low property taxes increase home prices, making it harder for people without a lot of money in the bank—such as new parents and just-married couples—to get approved for a mortgage.”

Additionally, municipalities are expected to make budget cuts to account for the lost revenue, Lowrey writes. “Amendment 3 explicitly protects tax-financing streams for schools, meaning that cities and counties are contemplating draconian budget” reductions for public-safety offices, after-school programs, public transit, homeless shelters, and more, she continues. “What is being framed as a populist fight for affordability is in reality a form of class and generational warfare.”

Read more at the link.

🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Shutterstock; Getty.

09/17/2026

09/14/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DeWxS3QNG/?mibextid=wwXIfr

The administration spent a year trying to force the Smithsonian to rewrite American history. Now the man standing in their way is stepping down.

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, confirmed his resignation on Tuesday.

For seven years, Bunch served as the first historian and the first African American to lead the world's largest museum network. For the last year, he absorbed a relentless pressure campaign from the White House and the Department of the Interior to align the Smithsonian with what the administration called "patriotic" history.

As reported by the New York Times and the Washington Examiner, the administration threatened to strip the Smithsonian of federal funding unless it purged "divisive, race-centered ideology."

The White House publicly complained that the institution focused too much on the reality of slavery and demanded oversight of curatorial exhibitions. In a July report, the administration accused museum leadership of corrupting the American story by refusing to treat it solely as a celebration.

Bunch, 73, held the line. "History was never supposed to comfort everyone who encountered it," he told interviewers over the summer. "Its value came from presenting enough of the truth for Americans to understand both what their nation had accomplished and whom it had failed."

The pressure ultimately extracted his resignation, effective at the end of the year. But the administration cannot erase what Bunch already built.

Before he was Secretary, Bunch spent fourteen years as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He oversaw every phase of the project, from hunting down artifacts to securing funding to fighting for its location.

Once elevated to lead the entire institution, he secured congressional approval to build two more: the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

He also stripped the padlocks off the archives, launching an initiative that released nearly three million digital artifacts and images into the public domain, ensuring the raw materials of American history belong directly to the public, immune to political censorship.

Because of Lonnie Bunch, a 400,000-square-foot physical museum dedicated entirely to the unvarnished history of Black Americans stands permanently on the National Mall.

The White House managed to bully a 73-year-old historian out of his job. They will spend the rest of their term looking at his life's work out their window.
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