The Florida Legislature is back in session to finalize a congressional redistricting plan. But Gov. Ron DeSantis authorized lawmakers to also consider a bill revoking Disney World’s status as a “special district” operating outside of municipal jurisdictions, and they quickly passed it Thursday.
This unusual – but not unique – quirk of state and local government largely goes unnoticed in Florida and beyond, so most people have never even heard of it. But this week it has been dominating headlines, so we wanted to take a closer look.
Since 1967, Disney World has acted as a self-governing entity, exempt from some regulations and running its own municipal programs. Officially, the zone is known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District, and through it Disney World levies its own taxes, runs its own emergency response units and controls construction permits and planning.
For 55 years, legislators have allowed this arrangement to continue, easily approving renewals on a regular basis. And it is one of nearly 2,000 such zones in Florida. But after the private company came out against a new state law regulating discussion of sex and gender in schools (known as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”), Republicans have changed their tune.
"What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power," DeSantis said last month.
In a clear signal that he is targeting Disney, DeSantis on Tuesday called for an end to special districts established prior to 1968, affecting just a handful of Florida’s special districts. (DeSantis made the announcement about his directive to lawmakers during a press conference held in The Villages – a heavily Republican community that is itself a special district established in 1922.)
The massive complex – approximately 40 square miles – straddles Osceola and Orange counties. If the special district is indeed dissolved, those counties and two very small towns would become responsible for municipal services. According to the Miami Herald, Reedy Creek has an annual budget of $355 million and nearly $1 billion in debt.
Residents would most likely see an increase in their taxes to cover the added government responsibility, University of Central Florida professor James Clark told The New York Times.
Florida isn’t the only state with special districts. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, every state has at least one.
In 2017, the Census Bureau catalogued every special district in every state. At the time, Florida had fewer than 1,200 – not even cracking the top 10.
Between 2012 and 2017, approximately 1,500 special districts were created and about 1,250 were dissolved, according to the agency.
“In some cases, states create them to provide services to newly-developed geographic areas,” the Census Bureau explained. “In other cases, the special purpose activity or services already exist, but residents expect a higher level of quality.”
While many only exist for a short period of time to accomplish specific goals, Disney World’s has been in operation for more than a century. The state Senate approved DeSantis’ bill Wednesday and the House did the same Thursday, sending it to DeSantis for his signature. Reedy Creek will continue to operate until the summer of 2023, allowing time for negotiations on a new agreement.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.