Citizens plans rate hikes; Trump joins TikTok (2024)

Citizens Insurance has announced that it plans to increase rates by 14% in 2025, and former President Donald Trump joins TikTok, a social media platform he once tried to ban.

Citizens board approves rate hike

When it comes to homeowners insurance, there’s a major theme of high rates being felt across the state.

For 2024, the average private market rate increase in Florida is 2%, according to the insurance information institute.

After a unanimous vote by the board of governors Wednesday, the state-backed provider Citizens Insurance is planning to raise its rates by 14% in 2025.

With Citizens asking for an increase, nine companies have filed for rate decreases and 10 have filed for flat rate increases, according to the insurance information institute.

Despite the increase for Citizens policy holders, the rate is still well below the cost of a private policy.

Before he even becomes a Citizens Insurance customer, Brian Mills discovered his rate for 2025 is likely going up.

“My policy doesn’t end until October, but my broker told me to go ahead and get the policy as soon as possible with citizens,” Mills said.

He received a letter from his current carrier saying it was pulling out of Florida. This fall, he will be a Citizens customer, and expects it to have a bigger price tag.

That rate is still less than the next one he could find, and still less than what it would have been next year with his current provider. Knowing his new rate in 2025 will increase by about $500, though, wasn't sitting well with him.

“I mean, I am going to shop around, honestly, when it comes time," Mills said. "I just have to see if I can find any relief anywhere."

Steve Gensolin is the owner of the Little Star Insurance Agency and said a 14% rate increase for Citizens seems excessive, considering how much they’ve made over the years.

“I see that they made $700 million in revenue, in positive cash flow revenue, from last year and they still have over five billion (dollars) in their policy holder reserves,” Gensolin said.

Despite the rate increase, officials with Citizens Insurance said they are going to continue to depopulate their policies after the last three months of the year. So far, they have been able to move about 400,000 policies to the private sector.

But despite the efforts to depopulate, Citizens this year is signing about 5,000 new policies, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

When it comes to 2025, Citizens commercial policy holders will also see a rate increase, though a smaller one of around 10%.

The new rates still need to be approved by state regulators.

Trump calls it 'an honor' to joinTikTok, a video-sharing platform he tried to ban while president

Donald Trump has joined the popular video-sharing app TikTok, a platform he once tried to ban while in the White House. He posted from a UFC fight two days after he became the first former president and presumptive major party nominee in U.S. history to be found guilty on felony charges.

“It's an honor,” Trump said in the TikTok video, which features footage of him waving to fans and posing for selfies at the Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in Newark, N.J., on Saturday night. The video ends with Trump telling the camera: “That was a good walk-on, right?”

By Sunday morning, Trump had amassed more than 1.1 million followers on the platform and the post had garnered more than 1 million likes and 24 million views.

“We will leave no front undefended and this represents the continued outreach to a younger audience consuming pro-Trump and anti-Biden content,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement about the campaign's decision to join the platform.

“There’s no place better than a UFC event to launch President Trump’s Tik Tok, where he received a hero’s welcome and thousands of fans cheered him on," he added.

Democratic President Joe Biden signed legislation in April that could ban TikTok in the U.S., even as his campaign joined in February and has tried to work with influencers.

Trump received an enthusiastic welcome at the fight at Newark's Prudential Center, where the crowd broke into chants of “We love Trump!” and another that insultedBiden with an expletive.

It was Trump's first public outing since a jury in New York found him guilty Thursday on 34 charges of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by covering up hush money payments made to a p*rn actor who claimed she and Trump had sex. Trump has maintained he did nothing wrong and plans to appeal the verdict. He will be sentenced on July 11.

TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has about 170 million users in the U.S., most of whom skew younger — a demographic that is especially hard for campaigns to reach because they shun television.

As president, Trump tried to ban TikTok through an executive order that said “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned" by Chinese companies was a national security threat. The courts blocked the action after TikTok sued.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share user data such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers with China’s government. TikTok said it has never done that and would not, if asked.

The platform was a hot topic of debate during the 2024 GOP primary campaign, with most candidates shunning its use. Many, including former Vice President Mike Pence, called for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. due to its connections with China

Trump said earlier this year that he still believes TikTok posed a national security risk, but was opposed to banning it because that would help its rival, Facebook, which he continues to criticize over his 2020 election loss to Biden.

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,"Trump toldCNBC. "There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it."

The legislation signed by Biden gives ByteDance nine months to sell the company, with a possible additional three months if a sale is in progress. If it doesn’t, TikTok will be banned. Biden barred the app on most government devices in December 2022.

His reelection campaign nonetheless uses the app, which it joined the night of the Super Bowl in February. Aides argue that in an increasingly fragmented modern media environment, the campaign must get its message out to voters via as many platforms as possible, including TikTok,WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Biden’s “bidenhq” account currently has more than 330,000 followers and 4.5 million likes.

Trump blasts Biden’s immigration plan, attempts to clarify ‘horrible city’ comment during Racine rally

Back on the campaign trail in Wisconsin for the third time this year, former President Donald Trump not only attempted to clear up his comments about Milwaukee, but also put the focus on a familiar theme from his last campaign: law and order.

With a new sweeping immigration plan from the White House, the border became the focus of this latest visit.

Trump contrasted his campaign with that of the current president’s and said since he left office, things are not only more expensive but more dangerous.

On the heels ofreports that he called Milwaukee a “horrible city,”the former president, who held a rally at Racine Festival Park, wasted no time walking back those words.

“I said we’ve got to fix the crime — we all know that,” Trump said. “We’ve got to make sure the election is honest, but I’m the one that picked Milwaukee.”

The Republican National Committee, however,picked Milwaukee in August of 2022, long before Trump became the party's presumed nominee for president.

Whether in context or not, the comment and the host city for the upcoming 2024 RNC didn't seem to concern supporters.

“He is right about some of those things,” Franksville resident Tammy Lameer said. “Racine does need a lot of work, in my opinion. He supports all law and order, which is what we need in order to run a successful nation.”

“In 2016, I voted for President Trump somewhat reluctantly,” said Scott Milheiser, of Manitowoc. “I wasn’t sure, but I could not support Hillary Clinton. But our economy thrived under President Trump, our borders were closing, (and) the world was at peace.”

The southern border became a big talking point for Trump on Tuesday as President JoeBidenannounced plans to offer potential citizenship in the coming months to half a million immigrants without legal statusin the United States.

“We should not be talking amnesty,” Trump told the crowd. “We should be talking about the invasion instead. This is an invasion.”

The presumed Republican nominee also raised concerns about crime and chain migration.

“People come into our country, but they have to come in legally,” Trump said. “We have to send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home where they belong.”

Meanwhile, Democrats used the rally to contrastthe scaled-back Foxconn project in Racine County, whichTrump promised would be the “eighth wonder of the world”when he was in office,with Microsoft's $3.3 billion investment to build a new data center in the same spot.

The project is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs over time, whichBidenannounced last month.

“Today, Donald Trump returns to the scene of his Foxconn failure for the first time since 2018 — when he stuck a golden shovel in the dirt and promised Wisconsinites the eighth wonder of the world," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement. "Trump’s Foxconn boondoggle saw the largest attempted government handout to a foreign company in American history, reflecting perfectly what the MAGA Republican Party is all about: sweetheart deals for wealthy special interests at the expense of everyone else."