It was a busy week here in Washington. I spoke at the Everglades Restoration Task Force meeting to discuss the Army Corps’ plan to discharge water from Lake Okeechobee into our estuary. What the Army Corps is doing is nothing short of a middle finger to our community ahead of the holiday season.

The Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual (LOSOM) promised a real shot at cutting back these harmful discharges. But now, barely four months since LOSOM was locked in on August 12, the Army Corps is already pulling a 180 with “recovery operations” that threaten its mission. Instead of letting LOSOM do its job, the Army Corps wants to dump 300 to 500 cubic feet per second of Lake Okeechobee to the St. Lucie estuary between now and July.

Let’s be clear—over months of dumping at this rate, the lake will only drop by a lousy three inches. That’s not a strategy; it’s like leaking a septic tank into someone’s home—just enough to ruin the place but not enough to solve the problem. It’s time for the Army Corps to regroup and reverse course—immediately.

This week, I also met with the heads of the new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. They outlined their plan to make America a democracy again, instead of a bureaucracy. I can’t wait to continue the work on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to get rid of wasteful spending.

To learn more about what happened these week, watch the latest #WeekInReview.