Florida's Senate voted 25-11 on Thursday to rename Palm Beach International Airport after President Donald Trump, sending the bill to Governor Ron DeSantis's desk after the House passed the same measure 81-30 days earlier.
Republican lawmakers largely supported the bill. Democrats objected.
The margins weren't close.
Trump, a native of New York, moved to Florida in 2019, trading his penthouse at Trump Tower for primary residence at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The state has embraced him in ways his home borough never would.
This isn't the first gesture according to NewsMax, Florida approved a plan last year to donate a downtown Miami property for the site of Trump's presidential library.
The airport renaming is the latest in a series of moves by the Republican-controlled legislature to cement Trump's association with the state that became his political home base.
Rep. Lois Frankel, the Democrat who represents West Palm Beach, issued a statement opposing the legislation:
"It's misguided and unfair that the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature ignored the voices of Palm Beach County by pushing forward a bill to rename Palm Beach International Airport without giving County residents a real opportunity for input."
This is a familiar playbook: invoke "the voices" of a community to suggest that elected representatives passing legislation through both chambers by wide margins is somehow undemocratic. The House voted 81-30. The Senate voted 25-11. Those legislators represent constituents too. The process Frankel describes as ignoring local voices is, in fact, the legislative process working exactly as designed.
If Palm Beach County residents feel strongly enough about the name of their airport, they have representatives in Tallahassee. Those representatives were outvoted. That's not disenfranchisement. That's losing a vote.
The bill now sits with DeSantis. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and he has not publicly indicated whether he will sign it. The White House also declined to comment. The Trump Organization and Palm Beach County spokespeople were similarly silent.
None of that silence is particularly surprising. The bill's path forward depends entirely on DeSantis, and the political calculus is straightforward: a popular Republican president, a Republican-dominated legislature that passed the measure decisively, and a governor whose own political future runs through the same voter base that sent those margins to his desk.
Presidents get airports. Reagan has Washington National. JFK has his in New York. Dulles carries a secretary of state's name, but the principle is the same: the infrastructure of a nation reflects the people who shaped it. Trump reshaped Florida's political identity as thoroughly as any figure in the state's modern history. An airport bearing his name in the county where he lives is less a stretch than most such honors.
The votes are cast. The bill is on the governor's desk. Palm Beach may soon greet every arriving passenger with the name of the president who chose to call it home.