Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida

In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!

Thursday, July 02, 2026

Mosquito Control and Overdevelopment

I am running for Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County in the November 3, 2026 election. May I please have your vote?

Flooding is increasing. Increased flooding flows from every single proposed "development" here. Mosquitoes flourish amid flooding.

The frequency and severity of storms and flooding is increasing. We must use good science to prepare for the storms and remediate the flooding.

We must protect people from persistent flooding, evidenced by testimony at government meetings.

Whenever a development (sic) proposal is discussed, residents testify about flooding. Too often, our governments are flummoxed, failing to present scientific evidence in response.

Our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County does its best to apply good science to mosquito control. It has five Ph.D. scientists.

But our St. Johns County Commission has no Chief Scientist, no Chief Economist, and makes decisions substantially unencumbered by good data and good science.

Poorly-staffed County Commissioners rather remind me of what Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said in 1937, "The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years – precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain – for the locusts to eat."

Mosquitoes are eating us alive. Building "developments" in mosquito swamps is unwise and unscientific. It needs to stop.

Our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners and our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County are two separate local government agencies, with their own boards.

SJC abolished its Intergovernmental Relations Committee under controversial former County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK (2007-2019), who sought a County takeover of mosquito control. We, the People stopped him.

Our County must better regulate "development" by greedy "developers," who build homes in swamps, exposing residents to hordes of mosquitoes.

Worldwide, some 1,000,000 people die every year after mosquito bites. My Father was bitten by a mosquito in Sicily in 1943, contracting malaria. We saw his suffering. Due to the effects of malaria, I was born fourteen (14) years later, after my parents prayed to Saint Jude (patron Saint of hopeless causes)..

Our County's "Growth Management (sic)" staff must consult with experts with our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County and AMCD's scientists and professionals.

Every single "development (sic) order" must include a mosquito control plan. Every single one. No excuses. Protection against mosquito-borne diseases must not be a "hopeless cause."

I am running for Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County (Seat 2) in the November 3, 2026 election.

May I please have the honor of your vote?

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

Box 3084

St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084

www.edslavin.com

http://www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

http://www.staugustgreen.com

(904) 377-4998

Dr. Seuss's Anti-Nazi Art Mocks "America First," "Nazis," "Fascists" and "Communists"

Wednesday, July 01, 2026

Defeat corruption! Bring on the bear! August 18, 2026 election in St. Johns County -- everybody votes!

1. 612 × 612
  
  Tom Wicker's journalism professor at the University of North Carolina said, "If you're going to tell a story about a bear, bring on the bear!"

"If you're going to tell a story about a bear, bring on the bear!"

So said a famous University of North Carolina journalism professor, quoted by his student, the heroic New York Times reporter, editor and columnist, the late Thomas Grey Wicker.

This 2026 election is about defeating corruption.

Vote for 2026 candidates who will help defeat corruption.

Here in incorrigibly corrupt St. Johns County, Florida, We, the People have elected some heroic reform candidates to County Commission, starting with a former federal lawman, Ben Rich, Sr., in 2004.

Now there's a retired FBI agent who investigated white collar crime and corruption -- Martin Pyszczymuka -- running in the August 18, 2026 Universal Primary for County Commission District 2.

How cool is that!?

Maladroit other-directed Incumbent Sarah Arnold is not seeking re-election.

Everyone can vote for Mr. Pyszczymuka and for Krista Keating-Joseph, a Gold Star Mother.

Everyone can vote to root out and expose corruption.

Everyone can vote for reformers Krista Keating-Joseph and Martin Pyszczymuka.

Everyone can vote on or before August 18 to make this a better place for al of us -- Republicans, Democrats and No Party Affiliation voters can vote this time.

It's about right and wrong. It's about our quality of life here in what we call "God's country," a magical place.

Cast your vote to preserve and protect St. Johns County.

Help save this magical place from corruption, from clear-cutting, from mediocrity and mendacity.

Yes we can!

Vote on or before August 18, 2026.

It's our time, our town, our county and our future.

Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

Box 3084

St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084

www.edslavin.com

http://www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

http://www.staugustgreen.com

(904) 377-4998

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ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: Trump calls on Congress to end birthright citizenship after court defeat. (Dan Diamond & Mariana Alfaro, Washington Post, June 30, 2026)

From The Washington Post:

Trump calls on Congress to end birthright citizenship after court defeat

The president asserted that lawmakers could “easily” address the issue through legislation, defying years of congressional stalemates over immigration.

June 30, 2026 at 5:15 p.m. EDTJune 30, 2026

6 min

Make us preferred on Google

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Wednesday at the Capitol. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

By Dan Diamond

and

Mariana Alfaro

President Donald Trump on Tuesday called on Congress to end birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right and struck down his executive order seeking to redefine who is American.

“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, calling the court’s ruling “too bad” for the nation. “They will have my Complete and Total Support!”

The president further asserted that lawmakers could “easily” address the issue through legislation — a claim that runs counter to decades of precedent, given Congress’s enduring gridlock on immigration, and some legal experts’ comments that a constitutional amendment would be necessary.

The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s next steps, referring questions to the president’s post.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) was talking to reporters when the decision was issued. He took a deep breath before saying he was disappointed by the decision. Birthright citizenship, he said, “is one of those things that was intended to serve a noble, important purpose, and has been thwarted and overused and abused.”

“I’m sure the conclusion from this opinion is going to be that you got to have a — you got to amend the Constitution to fix that,” he said. “I will say I’m very disappointed in that outcome. I think it subjects the country to serious challenges going forward, and we’ll deal with it as a conference.”

Senate Republicans also expressed frustration with the decision. “The long fight for a constitutional amendment begins now,” Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) wrote on X.

But it is unclear how Republicans can assemble a majority to advance legislation on an issue that has proved politically complicated. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about two-thirds of U.S. adults said that automatic citizenship should be granted to all children born in the country, no matter the circumstances. The poll also found that the public was evenly split on whether children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally should receive automatic citizenship.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are already wrestling over legislation to address national security, food and agriculture issues, and federal spending needs before this fall’s midterm elections. Trump also has insisted that Congress must pass legislation to impose new voting restrictions, further complicating the GOP’s agenda.

Democratic leaders have criticized many of Trump’s efforts to reduce immigration and had vowed to oppose his efforts to end birthright citizenship.

“Despite Trump’s best efforts to bully them, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that if you are born in America, you belong in America,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said in a statement on Tuesday.

Trump had seemed resigned to defeat, predicting in May that the court would “probably rule against me because they seem to like doing that” — a frequent criticism despite the court’s conservative tilt and that three of its nine members are his appointees.

But Trump on Tuesday also highlighted the justices’ other rulings, such as the administration’s victory in Trump v. Slaughter. The court on Monday ruled 6-3 that a president could more easily dismiss leaders of roughly two dozen independent regulatory agencies, expanding Trump’s power over the federal bureaucracy. The president also touted the court’s rulings on transgender athletes and campaign finance rules, calling both decisions a “BIG WIN” as the justices sided with the administration and Republicans.

We had other good Victories, too, and we also had the Birthright Citizenship loss, which we will work to correct in Congress, but the big SLAUGHTER, was SLAUGHTER,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court.”

Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s advisers and an architect of his immigration strategy, took a dimmer view of the ruling, calling it “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions” in the court’s history.

The justices’ 5-4 ruling upheld the long-settled understanding that the 14th Amendment automatically confers citizenship on any child born in the United States, with limited exceptions for children of diplomats and other rare cases. The justices struck down an executive order that the president issued in January 2025 — within hours of being sworn into office for his second term — that said citizenship would not be granted to children born to parents who are in the country illegally or those on temporary visas for work, travel, school or humanitarian reasons.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every freeborn person in this land,’” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in the majority opinion. “We keep that promise today.”

Justice Samuel Alito, a fellow George W. Bush appointee, dissented from the ruling.

“This is one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake,” Alito wrote, arguing that the ruling would contribute to illegal immigration to the United States.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) also said that he found the ruling “disappointing,” arguing that birthright citizenship is widely abused.

You’re seeing … people coming in from other countries just to give birth, so that they can have citizenship, or for the reasons of living off of the welfare state, not to seek the American Dream,” Scalise said. “The reason that people wait in other countries for years, in some cases, to come here should be to seek the American Dream, to be a part of the greatness of this nation.”

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), who has tried to push legislation in the House that would end automatic birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, said in a statement that the court’s decision “only reinforces why Congress must act” on ending birthright citizenship.

“We cannot continue with business as usual while millions of people enter our country illegally and our immigration system is being exploited,” he said. “We have a responsibility to restore the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and protect the value of American citizenship.”

Other Republicans were more cautious. Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) — who was defeated in a GOP primary runoff last month after Trump endorsed his opponent — pointed out that a new constitutional amendment would require supermajorities in Congress and on the state level.

Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.

What readers are saying

The comments express strong criticism of Donald Trump's understanding of the U.S. Constitution, particularly regarding his statements on birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment. Many commenters highlight the constitutional requirements for amendments, emphasizing that... Show more

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.