President-elect Trump picked Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama.

Calling the Miami-Dade County Commissioner a “fierce fighter,” Trump said that he would advance the “MAGA agenda” to the Central American country.

“Kevin is a fierce fighter for America First principles. As a Miami-Dade County Commissioner, and Vice Chairman of the International Trade Consortium, he has been instrumental in driving Economic growth, and fostering International partnerships,” Trump wrote in the Wednesday announcement. “In 2020, Kevin did an incredible job as my Florida State Director and, this year, advanced our MAGA Agenda as a Member of the RNC Platform Committee.”

“Few understand Latin American politics as well as Kevin – He will do a FANTASTIC job representing our Nation’s interests in Panama!” he said.

GET TO KNOW DONALD TRUMP’S CABINET: WHO HAS THE PRESIDENT-ELECT PICKED SO FAR?

The announcement came after Trump said that Panama was “a Country that is ripping us off on the Panama Canal, far beyond their wildest dreams.”

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump also accused Chinese soldiers of illegally operating the canal and “always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything.’”

President-elect Trump on Wednesday nominated Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera to serve as ambassador to Panama. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

In a statement on X, Cabrera thanked Trump for the nomination.

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“I’m humbled and honored by your nomination to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Panama,” he wrote. “Let’s get to work!”

President-elect Trump was honored on Tuesday with a street renamed after him in Miami-Dade County, Florida. (X/@KMCabreraFL)

Cabrera won his county election two years ago following an endorsement by Trump. 

He also served as the Florida state director for Trump’s 2020 campaign and was a member of the RNC Platform Committee.

Is Donald Trump a NIMBY or a YIMBY? Given that the housing crisis is a front-and-center issue throughout the country, whether or not the president-elect reflexively favors housing development is an important question.

But Trump is all over the place on the housing issue, as he is on so many others. It’s hard to know where he really stands.

The idea of undoing zoning restrictions to produce more housing has enjoyed support in both parties at the federal level for decades. In a 1991 report titled “Not in My Backyard: Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing,” a bipartisan commission appointed by then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp noted that “across the country, local governments employ zoning and subdivision ordinances, building codes, and permitting procedures to prevent development of affordable housing.” But the feds don’t control local zoning, so their influence is limited.

As a former real estate developer — and an advocate of deregulation in general — Trump ought to be a YIMBY, the yes-in-my-backyard, pro-housing opposite of a NIMBY. In fact, in an interview last summer with Bloomberg, he railed against zoning, calling it a “killer” and promising to bring housing costs down.

Except, apparently, when doing so threatens suburban neighborhoods with single-family zoning, the most sweeping restraint on development in California and beyond. Trump has consistently said that the idea of high-density housing in the suburbs threatens the American way of life. “The suburb destruction will end with us,” he vowed during his first term.

NIMBYism crosses traditional political lines, suppressing housing in some of California’s most ostensibly liberal enclaves, but it also overlaps plenty with Trump’s coalition. MAGA activists who like their suburban homes and neighborhoods are increasingly at war with the YIMBY movement, as the staunch resistance to more housing in places such as Huntington Beach has shown.

Lately Trump and company have taken to blaming the housing crisis on illegal immigration, suggesting the real estate market will be just fine once they deport 10 million or so immigrants. But unauthorized immigrants tend to occupy the low end of the housing stock, often in crowded conditions. So even if mass deportation occurs, it’s not likely to help millions of native-born Americans locked out of the market suddenly realize the dream of suburban homeownership.

One of the few specific ideas Trump has proposed for increasing the housing supply is opening up federal land for residential development. Last year, he floated the idea of using federal land to build “freedom cities,” a kind of unregulated enterprise zone for housing, business and flying cars.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s choice for Interior secretary, could be crucial to any administration housing strategy. Burgum would control the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which have vast land holdings in California, nearly half of which is federally owned, and throughout the West. (The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, also claims much of the state and region.) While much of the news coverage of Burgum’s appointment has concerned the prospect of more fossil fuel extraction from federal land, Burgum could also be key to plans to build housing on U.S. property.

But developing federal land is legally difficult, as is transferring such land to local governments that may want to build on it. The Bureau of Land Management, for instance, does constant battle with Clark County, Nev., over whether more land should be made available for development in the Las Vegas area. Moreover, much of the federal government’s land is mountainous, remote or both.

Burgum has been a strong advocate not only of zoning reform and housing development in general but also of building more high-density housing in cities and suburbs, which seems to be at odds with the MAGA agenda in some respects. A wealthy tech entrepreneur, Burgum has poured millions of dollars of his own money into revitalizing the downtown area in his hometown, Fargo.

Of course, the federal government also owns lots of land in urban and suburban locations. But that land would be beyond Burgum’s control, and federal agencies with other missions have proven extremely resistant to yielding their property for housing, as the recent battle over the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A. revealed.

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also promoted the idea of building a lot of housing on federal land, in both suburban and rural locations. Although the effort generated some innovative ideas, only a few subdivisions were ultimately built.

Trump’s freedom cities are likely to meet the same fate. It’s just hard for the federal government to bring about local zoning reform and housing development. It’s even harder when the president can’t decide where he stands on the issue.

William Fulton is the editor and publisher of “California Planning & Development Report.” He is a former mayor of Ventura and a former San Diego planning director.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is calling for the swift trial, conviction, and execution of the man charged in connection with the gruesome murder of a woman burned alive on a New York City subway.

The outspoken Republican took to social media on Tuesday to address the incident, in which Guatemalan national Sebastian Zapeta, 33, is accused of setting a woman on fire while on a train in Brooklyn.

“Death penalty, don’t waste money on a lengthy trial. Convict him and finish him. What he did is so incredibly evil,” Greene declared in a post on X. “I can’t watch the video anymore. And how it seems like no one tried to save her is beyond me. Maybe they did but it doesn’t seem like it.”

Zapeta faces charges of first- and second-degree murder, and first-degree arson, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment with no parole.

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Greene is not the only member of Congress to weigh in on the case.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., also called for capital punishment. 

“Death penalty,” she tweeted.

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Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., declared in a post on X, “A woman was intentionally lit on fire on the subway today. Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies do not work.” 

Sebastian Zapeta, accused of setting a woman on fire inside a New York City subway train, appears in court, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Curtis Means via Pool)

CRITICS WARN OF ‘DANIEL PENNY EFFECT’ AFTER WOMAN BURNED ALIVE ON NYC SUBWAY CAR AS BYSTANDERS WATCHED

New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch noted during remarks on Sunday that Zapeta allegedly “used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds.” Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg alleged in court on Tuesday that the suspect fanned the fire with a shirt.

Zapeta’s next court appearance is scheduled for December 27, according to online records.

Sebastian Zapeta, accused of setting a woman on fire inside a New York City subway train, appears in court, Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Curtis Means via Pool)

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A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson said in a statement that Zapeta had been removed from the U.S. in 2018 and then  re-entered the country illegally at some point “on an unknown date and location.”

Fox News’ Bill Melugin and the Associated Press contributed to this report