Ryan Nicol
It appears Mike Waltz will be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
That may not sound like surprising news, given President Donald Trump’s support of Waltz and his substantial background in Washington. But there was some drama this week when Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, often a wild card, appeared ready to vote against Waltz in committee and stall his nomination.
In the end, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were able to convince Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to vote in favor of Waltz, allowing him to emerge via a 12-10 vote and likely set the stage for full Senate confirmation.
The position allows Waltz to have some redemption over the massively embarrassing Signalgate scandal, where Waltz — or someone on his team — added a reporter who has critically covered the Trump administration into a signal chat that included Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other high-level government officials in which they openly discussed plans to strike the Houthis in Yemen.
Just this week, reporting confirmed what any sensible follower knew from the get-go: The chat contained classified information, which came from an email marked “secret.” That comes after Waltz and other Trump officials laughingly tried to say that describing imminent attack plans somehow contained no classified info.
But Republicans are unlikely to tank Waltz’s nomination on the floor over the issue, despite this week’s surprising committee hiccup. He appears well on his way to take the new gig.
Now, it’s onto our weekly game of winners and losers.
Winners
Honorable mention: Farmers. Florida’s farmers are getting more well-deserved help in the form of a $675 million block grant to help with hurricane recovery.
Florida dealt with three major storms last year, with Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton. The money will help with recovery from those storms, as well as damage from Hurricane Idalia in 2023.
The money is coming from the federal government per an agreement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins traveled to Southwest Florida to announce the funding.
This is one of many steps needed to help Florida’s farmers dig out of a hole, particularly citrus farmers who have been crippled by citrus greening in addition to the storms.
State lawmakers have tried to do their part, surging funding to farmers in this year’s budget and voting to ask voters next year whether to cut taxes for farmers.
State and federal partners will need to continue work going forward, but this week’s announcement was welcome news for the industry.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest winner: Ron DeSantis, James Uthmeier. The Governor and his hand-picked Attorney General had two big flexes this week in the form of a legal win and some foreshadowing of additional changes to Florida’s congressional map.
First, the clear-cut win: A Judge sided with Uthmeier’s interpretation of the Miami-Dade County Home Rule Charter and invalidated a push by the city to delay its elections from 2025 to 2026.
Proponents of the change wanted to align the city’s elections with the regular federal cycle in order to boost turnout. But completely coincidentally (wink), the move would have also provided the Mayor and current Commissioners who would have otherwise been on the ballot this year an extra year of service.
Uthmeier threatened the city to stand down, arguing such a move could only be valid if approved by voters via a referendum. But city officials went ahead anyway. A candidate sued, leading to the favorable court decision and keeping the 2025 election date in place. That aligns directly with DeSantis and Uthmeier’s position.
The executive also floated this week another redistricting push prior to the 2030 census, mirroring Texas’ efforts to create more Republican-leaning seats ahead of a hotly contested Midterm Election.
DeSantis is grumbling about Florida’s apportionment following the 2020 census, arguing the state should have more seats to begin with. That’s unlikely to be fixed before 2030, but DeSantis can use his muscle to try to engineer an even more favorable map for the GOP.
And he’s unlikely to face any resistance from the courts after Justices just upheld his work engineering a map far more friendly to the red team than the previous map in Florida.
This entire process — allowing members of either party with vested interest to fudge these lines to explicitly gather more power — is utterly absurd. But the courts have shown zero interest in reining it in, so we’re likely to continue to see this nonsense play out across the country.
The system is allowing partisan politicians to rig the rules, and DeSantis and Uthmeier seem ready to take advantage.
The biggest winner: Joe Gruters, Blaise Ingoglia. Win-wins in the cutthroat political process are rare, but it appears we just witnessed one out of the blue in Florida.
As we wrote last week, when DeSantis officially named Ingoglia the next Chief Financial Officer, it set up a showdown on the horizon between DeSantis’ pick and Trump’s preferred choice of Gruters.
But the wheels apparently started spinning behind the scenes. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, decided against a run for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. That opened the door for Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Michael Whatley, who has long had roots in the Tar Heel State, to run with the President’s blessing, though no official announcement has been made yet..
Ah, but that would create an opening for RNC Chair. There had been some scuttle in previous years that Trump might support Gruters in the role. That never came to pass, but Gruters was elected as RNC Treasurer earlier this year.
Our publisher, Peter Schorsch, revived those rumors Thursday morning, saying that Trump could back Gruters as RNC Chair, leading to Gruters standing down in the 2026 CFO race and allowing Ingoglia to run as the favorite. In turn, perhaps DeSantis would stand down in the Governor’s race and support Trump’s preferred candidate in Byron Donalds rather than DeSantis backing his wife or another ally.
Sure enough, by Thursday evening, Trump did end up pulling the trigger and throwing his support behind Gruters to be the next leader of the RNC.
“Fortunately, I have somebody who will do a wonderful job as the Chairman of the RNC,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “His name is Joe Gruters, and he will have my Complete and Total Endorsement. So, should Michael Whatley run for the Senate, please let this notification represent my Complete and Total Endorsement. He will never let you down!”
Now, Ingoglia is unlikely to face any serious competition in the race, Gruters gets a high-profile national job, and both sides avoid any massive financial war over a 2026 GOP Primary. And it could have gotten ugly. We all remember the vitriol between the Trump and DeSantis camps during the 2024 Presidential Primary.
Now, if the Governor’s race piece of this equation also comes to pass, then perhaps there is finally a legitimate path to a true armistice between Team Trump and Team DeSantis.
Losers
Dishonorable mention: Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office is in hot water after video emerged this week of a February traffic stop that escalated into violence.
A Black driver, William McNeil Jr., was pulled over for not having headlights on during bad weather. According to The Associated Press, McNeil had opened his door and was speaking with officers about the traffic stop. He eventually closed and locked the door for a few minutes and asked to speak to a supervisor when deputies broke through his window, punched him and dragged him from the car.
Officers said he was resisting arrest.
The video appears quite damning, though Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters is arguing the video is misleading. DeSantis appears ready to dismiss any controversy outright, even as he openly admitted he’s not bothering to look into the facts about what occurred.
“Maybe I’ll review it, you know, at some point. But I kind of heard about it,” DeSantis said of the video. “Then I heard the response, and I’m like, yeah, that kind of checks out to me without even knowing any of the facts. I just know how this stuff works, right?”
But this story isn’t going away. McNeil is speaking publicly. He has hired high-powered legal representation in Ben Crump and Harry Daniels, lawyers who also have no problem making their case to the public as well.
Democratic lawmakers in Florida are demanding answers. And with lawmakers away from Tallahassee and major state-level races not on the ballot this year, that gives critics plenty of time to drill down on this issue.
Whether JSO has any satisfying explanation for how this routine stop escalated so much remains to be seen. But despite Republican leadership’s posturing, it’s not going away quietly.
Almost (but not quite) the biggest loser: James Taylor. The Fort Pierce City Commissioner has been arrested — and will likely be suspended by the Governor — after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a young girl.
The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office said the girl’s mother reported the activity to law enforcement.
“The mother advised that her daughter, who was only 12 years old when the communications began, had been contacted by an adult male via Snapchat,” the Sheriff’s Office said. “Over time, the conversations became sexually explicit, and the suspect allegedly sent multiple nude images to the minor.”
Already, Rep. Toby Overdorf is calling for the Governor to “suspend this monster immediately.”
“This is exactly why Florida has taken a fierce stand against the dangers of social media for our children — platforms like Snapchat can be hunting grounds for predators,” Overdorf said. “We are in awe of the brave young victim and her family who exposed this evil. We hear you, we stand with you, and we will never stop fighting to protect Florida’s kids from these despicable acts.”
Everyone is entitled to their day in court. But it’s obvious that if these allegations are true, then Taylor belongs nowhere near any position of public trust.
And as we’ve said in previous instances of elected officials being accused of wrongdoing, the right thing is to step aside and only return if and when you’ve cleared your name. Otherwise, DeSantis is more than justified in acting.
The biggest loser: Local governments. Broward County, the city of Gainesville and Manatee County are all facing state scrutiny after the DeSantis administration says the localities are not willfully cooperating with DeSantis’ requests for audits.
After DeSantis installed Ingoglia as CFO, the two are now targeting municipalities that refused to comply with the Governor’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force.
Broward and Gainesville were the first two targets. Both are deep blue jurisdictions. But late last week, DeSantis and Ingoglia announced they were also turning their focus to Manatee, a red county in Southwest Florida.
That latter move also has shades of political motivation, however, after local Republicans ousted multiple DeSantis-allied officials last cycle.
So this effort seems just as much, if not more, of an effort to drive home political messaging as it is a true push to get government finances in order.
And let us say, we have no doubt there is waste in every one of these government budgets. That’s because there’s likely waste in every single government budget.
But the Governor is also aiming to spotlight waste to reinforce his push to eliminate property taxes next year. By making a scene over local spending, DeSantis can more easily sell the case to gut the revenue source, even if the math doesn’t add up.
But regardless of the motivations, DeSantis’ DOGE is sniffing around these local budgets and policy proposals eager to find a bone. And Ingoglia is more than ready to help show that this effort is just as much bite as bark.
So, like media companies forced to pay tribute to Trump, it seems these local governments are going to need to sacrifice something to appease Florida’s Governor.
