Southwest Florida Trump supporters celebrate his inauguration on Jan. 20. (Image: WINK News)
March 7, 2025 by David Silverberg
On Jan. 6, 2021, a rampaging mob incited by President Donald Trump defiled and vandalized the Capitol of the United States in what even Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) called at the time, “a warped display of so-called patriotism.”
Beginning on Jan. 20, 2025, the regime led by President Donald Trump began attacking and destroying the government of the United States in a no-less destructive series of executive orders and mass firings.
In his second inaugural address Trump declared that “From this moment on, America’s decline is over” but as with so many of his deceptions and delusions exactly the opposite is true. Under Trump, America isn’t declining, it’s plunging into isolation, ignorance and impotence.
Politically, Southwest Florida is heavily Trumpist. It was long a conservative bastion, whether segregationist Democratic or post-Richard Nixon “southern strategy” Republican. With Trump’s candidacy in 2016 it largely became a pro-Trump, Make America Great Again (MAGA) bastion. His victory and inauguration was celebrated and hailed locally, especially in Collier County.
As part of its political orientation, Southwest Florida has long been hostile to the federal government, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2022. Collier County passed a federal nullification ordinance in 2023. The federal government was regarded as a hostile entity by local activists like Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III and Keith Flaugh and their supporters.
With Trump now dominant, unchecked and unbalanced by Congress or any other institution, with billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rampaging through federal agencies, and with the much-hated federal government being dismantled, what can Southwest Floridians expect from the Trump policy agenda? What will be the impact on them and their region? How will people feel Trumpism in their personal lives?
Social Security uncertainty
A homeless encampment in Fort Myers under the Matanzas Pass bridge in 2023 in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Homelessness is likely to rise in Southwest Florida if Social Security and other safety net programs are cut or terminated. (Photo: WGCU/Mike Walcher)
Social Security is clearly at risk.
In the past Trump has promised not to touch Social Security—but the same cannot be said for the Social Security Administration (SSA), which administers the program. There, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly targeted at least 7,000 jobs for elimination. These are the people who make sure the checks go out on time, who help recipients with difficulties and clear procedural problems.
Musk has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and accused it of being rife with fraud.
In his March 4 State of the Union address, Trump also alleged waste, stating that “Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old”—which prompted shouts of “No!” and “It’s false! False!” from members of Congress. In his very next sentence, Trump altered the numbers: “It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that are rather elderly but not quite that elderly.”
That too was incorrect. According to the Social Security Administration, only 89,106 recipients older than 100 years were listed on Social Security rolls as of December 2024. Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner, said in February that the raw numbers did not reflect actual benefits being paid.
“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” Dudek clarified.
When it comes to Southwest Florida, according to 2023 figures from the Social Security Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, there were 3,780 Social Security recipients in Collier County, 11,937 in Lee County and 2,779 in Charlotte County. Overall, there were 539,276 Social Security beneficiaries in Florida, the second largest number in the country, after California.
(Editor’s note: The 2023 figures may be the last credible figures available, given cuts to the Social Security workforce and removal of publicly available data across the federal government.)
Social Security doesn’t just provide a steady, reliable income for those who paid into it all their working lives, it helps fuel the local economy.
Any cuts to the benefits will be devastating for fixed-income recipients who depend on the program and will likely have a significant impact on the businesses and services they use, not to mention equally devastating blows to Medicare, Medicaid and other safety net social programs that are being considered for DOGEing.
Beyond that, the regime’s official hostility toward vaccinations and public health measures both at the federal and state levels means that Southwest Floridians will be vulnerable to epidemics and diseases previously rendered non-threatening. Already, one case of measles has been reported in a Florida high school. In Texas the number is 158, with one death.
Thanks to these policies and actions, Southwest Floridians will be both poorer and sicker.
Prices, tariffs and international isolation
President Joe Biden, along with the independent efforts of the Federal Reserve, managed to lower the inflation rate from 7.5 percent as of January 2022 to 2.9 percent by the end of his term in December 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The inflation rate under President Joe Biden from January 2022 to December 2024. (Chart: US Bureau of Labor statistics [click link for full interactive chart and data])
Trump’s economic isolationist policies will undoubtedly drive up prices of all goods and services across the board—this is Kindergarten Economics 101. Completely unnecessary and unprovoked trade wars with America’s biggest trading partners, Canada, Mexico and China, will effectively impose a tax on everything that Americans buy, especially big-ticket items like cars and appliances.
Southwest Florida stands to be hit hard by Trump’s inflation: prices for foodstuffs like tomatoes and common items like imported beer from Mexico will rise, not to mention big ticket items like cars and car parts and anything made of steel and aluminum.
Southwest Florida will also be particularly hard hit by Trump’s economic and verbal attacks on Canada, which was a source of 15 percent of Collier County’s tourism. In 2024, 119,000 Canadian visitors came to Collier County, according to the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Canadians also accounted for 5 percent of Lee County’s tourism in April and June of last year. Statewide, Visit Florida, the state’s tourism bureau, estimated that over 3.2 million Canadians visited Florida in 2024, making up 27 percent of all international travelers
“Canadians are hurt. Canadians are angry. We are going to choose to not go on vacation in Florida,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a press conference on Tuesday, March 4, when US tariffs kicked in. “We are going to choose to try and buy Canadian products ... and yeah we’re probably going to keep booing the American anthem.”
Unusually, Trudeau addressed Trump directly: “I want to speak directly to one specific American, Donald,” Trudeau said. “It’s not in my habit to agree with the Wall Street Journal, but Donald, they point out that even though you’re a very smart guy, this is a very dumb thing to do.”
When it comes to America’s southern trading partner, Mexico provides considerable produce for Florida consumers including tomatoes, avocados and strawberries. As importantly, it and other Latin American countries have been a major source of cheap labor, whether documented or undocumented, for Florida’s construction, hospitality and agricultural industries, especially in the Southwest region.
But Trump has been at war with Mexican migrants since his very first candidate press conference in 2015 when he called them “criminals” and “rapists.”
Now Trump’s hatred, prejudice and rage against migrants is official US policy and that goes double for Florida where the governor and legislature are competing with each other to enact ever more restrictive and punitive measures.
The effort is ostensibly aimed against undocumented migrants, who have gone from being regarded as people seeking a better life and a source of cheap labor to a criminal invasion that threatens the country. But the hostility to immigrants whatever their status, particularly those from Latin and South America, is unmistakable.
An interesting example of this is a television advertisement from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that just began running in Florida markets, promising to hunt down undocumented migrants, urging the rest to self-deport, extravagantly praising Trump and ending with the lines “America welcomes those who respect our laws” while closing with an image of a 34-count convicted felon.
The ultimate end of these efforts appears to be to make Florida the most anti-immigrant state in the nation.
Immigration raids are ongoing in Southwest Florida as they are throughout the country, including possible targets in schools, churches and hospitals. Their net effect for Southwest Florida residents, in addition to the potential for their neighbors and employees to suddenly be deported, will be another force driving up prices, depressing the local economy and eroding the quality of life and availability of all goods and services.
DOGE destruction: FEMA and NOAA
Debris lines a street in Naples, Fla., following Hurricane Ian in 2022. (Photo: Author)
Both the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were targeted by Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint. These are two agencies are of particular importance to Southwest Florida given its vulnerability to weather, climate change, hurricanes and harmful algal blooms.
DOGE has already fired 500 people from the National Weather Service, an office of NOAA, and another round of 800 layoffs is expected. This means there will be that much less capability for forecasting and warnings of dangerous storms. Even the famous Hurricane Hunters, the heroic pilots and crews who fly into storms to gather crucial data, are not immune. It’s unclear whether there will be any Hurricane Hunter aircraft flying in the future.
This will leave Southwest Floridians with less time to prepare in the event of severe weather and will probably make forecasts less precise, affecting evacuation decisions and endangering the public. It reverses 155 years of steady scientific meteorological progress ever since the US government first started monitoring the weather in 1870.
After a storm comes through, FEMA is likely to have less capacity to help victims and survivors, depending how its budgeting and management emerge from the current shakeup.
One dramatic way that people in Southwest Florida will see this on the ground is in debris removal after a major storm. Instead of several months of inconvenience, debris will now be more likely to linger for years, proving a health and navigation hazard.
After Hurricane Ian in 2022, the Lee County government put the estimated cost of Hurricane Ian in the county at $297.3 million. Over half of this was for debris removal, whose cost came to $156.3 million. Much of that was covered by FEMA funding.
In the future, given likely cuts to disaster assistance, money won’t be there and the debris will linger as counties and municipalities struggle to cope with storms’ aftermaths.
It needs to be noted that Donalds, whose district covers coastal Southwest Florida from Cape Coral to Marco Island, has consistently voted against appropriations bills that would replenish FEMA funding. Moreover, he is now running for governor on a Trump-endorsed platform, so in the event of disasters between now and the 2026 election he cannot be expected to assist affected communities and seek aid from an eviscerated FEMA and a hostile regime.
In all, Southwest Florida will be on its own, before, during and after any storms.
Gulf of Mexico: Exploitation and degradation
Offshore oil platforms and vessels. (Photo: USCG)
Trump’s announcement on Jan. 7 that he was renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” proved a major distraction—as intended. But it masked a much more serious threat to the body of water and the communities on its shoreline, in particular those of Southwest Florida.
When, as a candidate, Trump was pressed about the possibility of being dictator, he responded that he would be a dictator on day one so he could implement a policy of “drill, baby, drill.”
That day has passed and indeed, the protections Southwest Floridians enjoyed against coastal oil exploration and exploitation on their shores are gone.
On his first day in office Trump declared a national energy emergency and revoked a large number of previous executive orders and memoranda issued by President Joe Biden. Among these were executive actions protecting areas from offshore drilling, including off the coast of Florida. The Trump actions were challenged in court and as of this writing await final disposition.
However, the possibility is much higher now that when Southwest Floridians go to the beach in the future they could be met by a vista of derricks, drilling platforms, ship traffic and wade into water polluted with spills, chemicals and oil debris.
Education and the descent into ignorance
The Collier County School Board building. (Photo: CCPS)
On Monday, March 3, the US Senate voted to confirm Linda McMahon, a former chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, as Secretary of Education. On Thursday, March 6, The Washington Post reported that Trump was going to issue an executive order calling on McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
The Department of Education, created by President Jimmy Carter, has long been a conservative, Republican target.
The closure of the department, whose primary mission is to distribute federal education grants, will negatively impact local school districts. Nationwide, public spending on kindergarten through 12th grade education totals $857.2 billion of which the federal government provides 13.6 percent.
This reaches down to every school and school district. In Southwest Florida, for example, in its tentative 2024-25 budget released last July 31, the Collier County School District estimated it would receive $7,243,150 in direct federal funding and nearly $80 million in federal funding passed on through the state. This money goes for everything from school lunches, to salaries, to supplies, to services, to furniture and more. Lee County is expecting $87,879,653 in federal funds during the 2024 to 2025 fiscal school year both directly and through the state.
The uncertainty and unpredictability of federal education funding under Trump-McMahon will make it nearly impossible for local school districts to reliably and credibly budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal school year. They cannot even budget based on previous fiscal years or hold spending steady, since the past can no longer be a guide to future funding.
What is more, if the funds are cut off altogether, as seems likely, every school district in the country will be impacted. The big losers here are the students, who will lose everything from teaching materials to facilities, and the country itself, which will become less educated, less capable and less informed.
Once again, no comfort or assistance should be expected from Southwest Florida’s congressional representative, Byron Donalds, who, along with his wife has been a longtime critic of public education and proponent of non-public alternatives. As a Trump-endorsed candidate for governor, it is unlikely that he will go against Trump’s decrees and argue the case for funding state and local public schools in Congress when the ax falls.
Commentary: Barbarians through the gates
In the year 455 of the Common Era, a barbarian tribe known as the Vandals sacked the city of Rome. They occupied it for two weeks and during that time their wanton, random, mindless destructiveness gave rise to the word “vandalism.”
Currently, it is as though the tag team of Trump and Musk is trying to replay the sack of Rome in Washington, DC, complete with ruin and barbarity. Trump is driven by hatred and a desire for revenge and Musk is pursuing an elusive and undefined “efficiency” that thoughtlessly changes daily based on his whims. They are making big decisions on the basis of stereotypes, assumptions and emotions that make them feel strong or outraged rather than dispassionate examination of a complicated reality. And they are acting without regard to law, due process or constitutional restraints.
Together they are carelessly upending the 249 years of painstaking thought and effort that built the United States and the federal system that governs it. This essay hasn’t even scratched the surface of the damage they are doing economically, internationally or scientifically, affecting health, safety, research, military strength, homeland security, law enforcement and every other area of life and civilization involving the United States government. The ultimate victims are the American people and the United States itself.
Those Southwest Floridians who still support Trump and his regime for emotional or sentimental reasons should know that they will not be immune or protected or untouched by the tempest out of the Oval Office. It’s coming to Southwest Florida as surely as any hurricane barreling in from the Gulf of Mexico. They’re going to get wet too.
There is a rising opposition to this in Southwest Florida, as people begin to demonstrate and protest. Perhaps the same spirit that led Ukraine to fight Russia’s aggression—and motivated American patriots to oppose a distant king’s tyranny nearly 250 years ago—can help contain some of the damage from the human-caused storm that’s already breaking on Southwest Florida’s sunny shores.
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg