Seemingly overnight, Tr*mp rebranded Palm Beach International Airport to the D*n*ld J. Tr*mp International Airport, a switch that will cost the state about $2.5 million.
Meanwhile, the local LGBTQ+ center is forced to sweat it out in record-breaking heat thanks to anti-DEI cuts that left them without funds to fix the building’s air conditioning.
Tr*mp has a friend in anti-LGBTQ+ Florida governor Ron DeSantis, which perhaps explains the quick action in renaming the airport despite an extraordinary cost to the state, which will cover about half of the projected $5 million tab. Characteristically, the airport hasn’t only suffered a humiliating rebrand, but is now Ground Zero for Tr*mp-branded merch in the state.
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Meanwhile, just 14 minutes away, one of Florida’s oldest LGBTQ+ centers is forced to go without AC after being denied a federal grant to fix the broken system in April. Why was Compass Community Center denied the grant—which would have cost the state a paltry $308,000? As a direct result of an anti-DEI bill passed by DeSantis that’s not even meant to take effect until next year.
But when it came to coughing up over $2 million for Tr*mp’s vanity project, DeSantis seemed to have no trouble finding the funds.
It gets even shadier when you learn that the center’s request was denied a literal day after DeSantis signed SB 1134 into law on April 24th. By the 25th Compass’s request was dead in the water. The requested funds would have also gone toward another potential safety concern: updating the building’s elevator. E
ven more suspicious is the fact that the grant request was made without mentioning the LGBTQ+ center at all: it was submitted by the city of Fort Lake Worth in the interest of building maintenance, with no mention of the funds going toward programming.
“It shouldn’t matter who our tenant is in a building. It’s a city-owned building,” Fort Lake Worth City Commissioner told the Palm Beach Post after the decision. “And the fact that this deep dive was done into who was in the building — I’m a little appalled, but not shocked, unfortunately.”
Compass has pushed back on the decision, demanding a clear, legal reason as to why funds are being denied. Meanwhile, the center has to endure ineffective air conditioning during a hotter-than-average summer, in one of the “sweatiest” counties in the entire state.
Nothing homophobic is that shocking in Florida, sadly, especially in Tr*mp country. Tr*mp’s famous estate Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein allegedly celebrated his 50th birthday party, is also located in Palm Beach County.
But even in the reddest parts of Florida, citizens are showing signs of being fed up with Tr*mp, De Santis, and exactly this type of misuse of state funds for vanity purposes. Earlier this year, in nearby Boca Raton, Mayor-elect Andy Thomson was able to flip the deep red county blue for the first time in decades, by a margin of one single vote.
We also know that Tr*mp’s rebranding efforts don’t tend to last very long: consider the mess he made of the Kennedy Center, which has now reverted back to its original name after Tr*mp unlawfully tried to slap his name on there in December. Currently, in an attempt to conceal his humiliation over the failed name change, the building remains shrouded in tarp.
The problem is, even if the Palm Beach Airport eventually reverts to its original name, the state’s money—again, $2.5 million!—will have already been spent.
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