FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Degraded hurricane forecasts. Undetected HIV infections because of reduced testing. Seniors on the phone for hours waiting for Social Security to answer. Children without enough food. And dirtier planes and longer waits for bags at the airport.

Those developments — some calamitous, some merely frustrating — are coming or are already here, a range of Broward elected officials said Friday as they offered their assessments of impacts from a range of policy initiatives and budgetary moves implemented by President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In addition, federal, state and local Democrats warned, the overall direction of the country is alarming. The terms “fascist” and “authoritarian” came up more than once at a “public briefing” convened by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who represents southern and western Broward.

Wasserman Schultz, as a member of Congress, focused primarily on the federal level. “What the administration is doing intentionally is throwing up distractions in order to make people pay attention to shiny objects to call their attention away from the fact that they are literally eroding our institutions intentionally.”

State Rep. Daryl Campbell, a Broward Democrat, also said it’s difficult for people to keep perspective on what is important. “They try to distract us with clickbait debates over DEI and renaming the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.

“Florida’s in a crisis. A housing crisis. A health care crisis. A crisis of affordability. And that is a result of deliberate choices by Republicans in the Legislature,” he said, lamenting decisions that “give away billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts while people struggle to pay rent.”

They and four other Democratic elected officials heard from several panels of witnesses, most representing different constituencies who said their members, or the general public, were negatively affected by policies emanating from Washington, D.C.

Hunger: Paco Velez, president and CEO of Feeding South Florida, said some of the money his organization has been receiving to provide food for people has been cut and more cuts are coming — meaning more people will go hungry.

State Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, a former teacher and school board member, said the state has turned down federal summer feeding program money for two years, depriving children of meals during the summer when school is not in session.

HIV testing: Robert Boo, CEO of the Pride Center, an LGBTQ+ community center in Wilton Manors, said an HIV testing grant has lapsed and he doesn’t know if it will be removed. That means more people in Broward, an epicenter of new HIV, infections won’t learn about their status. A majority of the people tested at the Pride Center are straight, Boo said.

Boo said he’s already eliminated three of the Center’s 30 jobs, with more staff reductions possible.

Boo said “people of trans experience” are being particularly affected by the current political environment. One grant program the center has participated in was renamed to remove the “T” from its LGBT name.

Hurricanes: Frank Marks, retired director of the Hurricane Research Division at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory, said cuts at the agency will hurt future forecasting ability. He said young researchers are among those leaving.

He said the organization he used to lead has lost about 30% of its staff, including young scientists. “These are the best and the brightest,” he said. Their loss cannot be overcome by gadgets, technology and airplanes.

“We’re eating our seed corn for probably the next 20 or 25 years,” he said.

Broward Mayor Beam Furr decried the “decimation of expertise” Marks described. He said Broward County is cutting positions, not people in its next budget, but is retaining subject-matter experts.

“Horrified” about NOAA cuts, Bartleman said Marks’ description “scares the hell out of me.”

Immigration: Wendi Walsh, national general vice president of Unite Here, a union of food service and hotel workers, said dozens of food service and retail workers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Intentional Airport are losing their work authorization because the Trump administration is ending programs allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to legally work in the country.

Helene O’Brien, Florida director of SEIU 32BJ, which represents many service workers, said “de-documenting” of immigrant workers will wreak havoc on families and result in deterioration of services in jobs that many Americans won’t do when the immigrant workers can’t perform them.

O’Brien said people will see the effects, with things like dirtier airplanes and longer waits to get their bags as people doing cleaning and baggage work lose their work authorization and people don’t come forward to replace them.

Though an official gathering, it was Democratic in outlook, with U.S. Rep. Sheila-Cherfilus-McCormick and state Rep. Marie Woodson also participating. About 150 people were on hand at the beginning; after about two-and-a-half hours, some 50 remained.

Broward Republican Party Chairman Chris Marino said later via text the Democrats are ignoring something fundamental: Floridians have repeatedly voted for Trump and DeSantis.

“Boy it’s gotta be rough for Democrats to look themselves in the mirror, then go out and keep pushing the same narrative that the American public clearly rejects and see through,” Marino said.

“The Republican Party is the home for wayward Democrats that feel they are no longer represented (and we welcome them with open arms and no judgment), while those remaining as Democrats are the small percentage that either choose to accept socialism or refuse to use common sense that would allow them to be pleased with the proven results of Republican policies virtually everywhere,” he said.

Bartelman said she had grave concerns if the country doesn’t come together and reject extremes on the left and the right.

Just back from a trip to Israel, Bartleman said what she sees happening at home today became more vivid when she visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

“When they start talking about history and what Hitler did, he was removing books,” Bartleman said. “And then it was vilifying one group of people enough to rally a whole country to say we’re gonna move Jewish people to ghettos, after the books.”

“I went through that museum; I saw the parallels of what’s happening here,” Bartleman said.

Though she had plenty of issues on which she finds fault with both Trump and DeSantis, Barleman said the extremes from both sides need to be reeled in.

“Once we lose this democracy, we’re not gonna get it back,” she said. “Everyone in the middle, let’s preserve the United States of America. Let’s fight against the extremes,” she said, adding she is “scared to death about the future of our country.”

Campbell was more optimistic.

“You may feel defeated, you may feel hopeless,” he said. “You still have a voice. You still have a mission, and everybody’s mission is stopping what we’re seeing is going on in Tallahassee, what we’re seeing is going on in D.C…. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we’re gonna get out.”

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