Florida is the laboratory for MAGA -- and American autocracy

Florida is the laboratory for MAGA — and American autocracy
Journalist Robert W. Fieseler on his new book "American Scare" and how "we’re all Floridians now"

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published August 2, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) Over the past decade, Florida has shifted from swing state status to becoming the center of the Trumpist universe. The state has led the way in trumpeting — and sometimes originating — some of MAGA’s most infamous policies.

But Florida’s rightward shift has been decades in the making. Like other parts of the South and more conservative regions of the country, the Sunshine State has been a laboratory for illiberalism and authoritarianism. In that way, the Age of Trump and the country’s ascendant authoritarianism are American-made, and not something imported or imposed from abroad.

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In his latest book “American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives,” journalist and historian Robert W. Fieseler details a lost and hidden history of the anti-freedom regime that existed in Florida during the 1950s and 1960s — a time that, in retrospect, serves as a terrifying preview of the Age of Trump.

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What is the relationship between Florida and what’s happening in the Age of Trump?

There are presently two major political power centers in the United States: Washington, D.C., which is basically being run by Floridians, and Tallahassee, where the Trump administration’s wildest ideas get incubated and perfected. Our current attorney general is a former Florida attorney general. Our current secretary of state is the former junior senator of the Sunshine State. And what is Trump 2.0 but a superego on spin in the Florida machine? In a horrible sense, we’re all Floridians now and subject to Tallahassee rules.

Donald Trump became more himself, not less, when he became a Florida resident, and the state system catered to his comeback because his personality so grooved with the archetypical values and behavior of a Tallahassee strongman: Spoils, revenge, gerrymandering, scapegoating, exploiting constitutional loopholes and ruling through the news cycle. As Florida State Sen. Lauren Book once explained to me, “When you get power in Florida, you can use it to pick on anyone.” ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/02/florida-is-the-laboratory-for-maga-and-american-autocracy/