Florida is weird. And, with a leg up from Covid, it’s working.

In a story titled “How Florida Beat New York,” the journalist Jerusalem Demsas put it well: “At the heart of a prosperous society is people, and lots of them.” Between 2020 and 2023, about a million people moved to Florida, seeking housing affordability, tax relief, and, according to Byron Donalds, a Florida Congressman who’s running for governor next year, freedom (people just wanted to be left the hell alone).

“Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut — they're oppressive. They tax everybody to death. They have rules all over the place about the silliest things in the world. How they handled COVID was oppressive. And I think people just had enough,” Donalds told me. “You couple the fact where it's like, man, Florida is great. Great weather. As long as I'm not harming another person, I can largely just do what I want.”