As a Florida community mourns the loss of three law enforcement officers killed in a tragic crash last month, one local boy is stepping up to help with a timeless childhood venture — a lemonade stand.

“I saw a need and I just thought that’s what Jesus would do,” 9-year-old Charlie Allsup said during an interview on “Fox & Friends First,” Thursday. “I do what Jesus would do, so I just thought I could help.”

Charlie’s little sister attends the same daycare as the son of fallen Palm Beach Deputy Sheriff Ignacio “Dan” Diaz, which inspired Charlie to set up his lemonade stand to raise funds for the family’s tuition costs.

TRUMP, DESANTIS JOIN THOUSANDS TO MOURN 3 FLORIDA DEPUTIES KILLED IN ROADSIDE CRASH

Diaz, Deputy Sheriff Ralph “Butch” Waller and Corporal Luis Paez were struck by and killed by a Jeep SUV on Nov. 21 while stopped with their motorcycles on the shoulder of Southern Boulevard.

Waller and Paez were pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after the crash, while Diaz was in critical condition and underwent surgery at the hospital, but later succumbed to his injuries. 

Thousands attended a memorial Tuesday morning in West Palm Beach, including President-elect Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

So far, Charlie’s lemonade stand has raised nearly $4,000 — enough to cover several months of daycare tuition for the Diaz family.

President Donald J. Trump, a Secret Service member, his son Donald Trump Jr., Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis attend a memorial service for three fallen Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies at the South Florida Fairgrounds, Tuesday, December 03, 2024, in Palm Beach County. (Bill Ingram/Imagn)

“When families go through tragedies like this, they don’t always know what they need,” said Charlie’s mother, Christina. “What Charlie really did was give the families the ability to focus on the next minute, the next hour, the next day and not have to think of all those other burdens. And he gave our community the ability to contribute as well.”

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office described Diaz as someone who “bravely fought but ultimately lost his battle due to injuries sustained in the tragic crash.” Diaz had served with the department since 2004, spending more than a decade in the motor unit.

Christina, who is married to a law enforcement officer, says watching her son take on this project has been emotional. 

“Parenting is hard, and I think as parents a lot of times we question whether the choices we are making are the right ones for our kids,” she said. “Then when you see something like this it really makes you feel good, like I must be doing something right.” 

Memorial service for three fallen Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputies on December 3, 2024 in Palm Beach County. President-elect Donald J. Trump, his son Eric, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attended the service.  (Bill Ingram/Imagn)

While Washington is enveloped in battles over President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, a different but equally raucous appointments battle boiled over this week just 300 miles down US-1 from the nation’s capital.

North Carolina Republicans, seeing their veto-proof supermajority slip away by a single legislative seat in the state House, are trying to override outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s disapproval of a bill that would move gubernatorial authority over the NC Board of Elections to the State Auditor’s office.

The Senate overrode the veto but not without an uproar that led to the gallery being cleared. The House is poised to attempt its complementary override, but the GOP’s plans have hit a snag there.

The proposal was part of a bill chiefly geared toward Hurricane Helene relief, and was lambasted by Democrats as a power grab, in part due to the fact the GOP flipped the executive branch office with Auditor-elect Dave Boliek – but failed to see their gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson best Gov.-elect Josh Stein.

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However, Robinson – as the Senate’s presiding officer – moved to clear the gallery after raucous protestations and chants of “Shame, Shame, Shame!” erupted above lawmakers preparing to vote on the veto override. Robinson has thus far had to do so twice, according to Carolina Public Press.

As the eventually successful vote was about take place, a woman shouted “[the law] destroys the will of the voter – it’s voter suppression!”

“It restructures the entire state constitution.”

Robinson, without raising his voice, spoke into his mic that the woman was “disrupting … the legislative process.”

When a gallery-watcher shouted that the bill lacked any “reasonable relief for hurricane victims,” Robinson banged his gavel and called out, “Clear the gallery.”

“Everybody’s gotta go,” he said, as police calmly ushered spectators out, threatening those who remained with arrest.

“You can bang that gavel,” one man was heard taunting Robinson as he left.

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North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

State Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Huntersville, was heard on video captured by the Raleigh News-Observer calling out to Robinson that he could not clear the whole gallery, because many people were respectfully watching the vote, and saying the capitol is “the people’s house.”

Before he vetoed the bill, Cooper told NBC Charlotte that the legislation “really didn’t provide immediate and direct funding to western North Carolina” despite being labeled as Helene relief. He called it a “massive power grab.”

Jim Stirling, a research associate at the North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation, has done a deep dive into the controversy, and his group filed an amicus brief with lawmakers in a recent lawsuit related to the matter.

“It is not under the purview of the governor to execute all laws. The other executive agencies of the executive branch or indeed other executive elected officials are in charge of executing law. Not just the governor,” Stirling said.

“Under [Cooper’s] argument, he says effectively that all appointments must be under him because he’s in charge of executing the law, and he has the power of appointment on this.”

Overriding the veto, however, could render part of the lawsuit moot, he said.

The lawsuit will “probably need to be restarted based on the argument that these appointments must be under the governor, not any other executive agency (like the auditor),” he said.

Neither Cooper nor Robinson responded to a request for comment. 

In moving election boards’ appointment power to the state auditor’s office, the state board’s activities would remain independent of Boliek and the executive branch, but his office would control its appointments and funding, according to NBC Charlotte.

What would change would be the current Democratic control of the elections board, an official told the outlet. The state auditor would also be able to appoint chairpersons in all 100 Tarheel State counties.

Currently, Cooper – and would-be Stein – also appoint the state board’s members, who must consist of three majority-party and two minority-party individuals.

Attempts to move appointment powers away from the governor’s office have been subject to lawsuits in recent months and years. The most recent ruling, in Cooper v. Berger, held that an attempt to move appointment powers to the legislature unlawfully infringed on the executive branch’s express power in that regard.

A prior case, McCrory v. Berger – bearing the name of Cooper’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Patrick McCrory – resulted in a state supreme court ruling holding that some appointments made by legislators violate separation of powers.

In the state House, three Republicans from the Helene-ravaged western part of the state voted against the bill, with one, Rep. Mark Pless of Canton, saying it had nothing “that was going to send money to the many needs in Western NC – it was simply moving money from one account to another.”

Pless, however, said the election board appointments portion appears “allowable by the legislature,” according to FOX-8. The veto-override in the lower chamber, therefore, could come up just short if the trio do not change their original positions.

Back in January of 2017, my wife Leela June and I were driving from Washington, D.C., to the Snowshoe ski resort in West Virginia.  Just two months earlier, then New York City businessman Donald J. Trump had shocked the nation and the world with his well-deserved – and desperately needed – election as president of the United States.

As I have written about in the past for this site, I had long been a fan of businessman Trump. In 1987, while a writer in the White House of President Ronald Reagan, I read Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” and honestly believed it to be one of the best “real-world” business books ever written.

As my wife and I continued our drive that day in 2017, most of the conversation centered on Trump and his pending transition to president. As my wife drove, I went into my regular lecture that “Billionaire Trump needed none of this.”

“Why should he enter the political arena when he can live a life of peace and luxury while growing his global business empire?” I asked. “Why should he subject himself to partisan attacks, false hoaxes and personal smears by an entrenched elite fearful that they could not control or sway him? Why should he risk all that he built over the last few decades in the pursuit of an office so many told him was unattainable?”

AFTER LOSING EVERYTHING, HELENE SURVIVORS GIVE TO OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD DURING NATIONAL DONATION WEEK

While watching the road, my wife smiled and said: “Now go ahead and answer your own questions.”

I smiled back and gave her the answer she had heard numerous times before: “Because, as then businessman Trump looked around and saw the country he loved falling apart at the seams, he asked himself two questions: ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?’ Precisely because he had decades of unrivaled success and experience and precisely because he had made himself a multibillionaire, he did come to believe he had the gifts, the intelligence, the experience, the connections, and the patriotism to turn the country around.”

As we continued our drive and got deeper into – and higher – into West Virginia, the temperature continued to drop while the landscape transitioned into a winter wonderland of snow-covered trees as far as the eye could see. That spectacular vision immediately refocused my mind on Christmas.

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As a child, I grew up in abject poverty and was homeless often. As a 6-year-old, I had obtained a tiny plastic Nativity scene that came to mean everything to me and launched my spirituality. That same year, during the Christmas season, when the constables came to evict us yet again, they found me hiding in a closet clutching that Nativity scene to my chest.

As I got older, Christmas for me became about helping the least among us. 

President Trump speaks on the phone sharing updates to track Santa’s movements from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Jumping back to the drive to the ski resort in West Virginia, as I continued to look in awe at the snow-covered landscape, I suddenly turned to my wife and blurted out: “What if a multi-billionaire used his gifts to save Christmas for the neediest among us?”

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We had printed out driving directions and I immediately flipped the paper over to its blank side and began to furiously sketch out the plot for such a story.

That plot involved multibillionaire main character Christian Nicholas, whose life has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. As Christian struggles to find real meaning in life despite his vast wealth, his older brother Paul, a minister in Texas, reminds him of the one and only time in Christian’s life when he was truly happy.

That time was when, as a small boy, he saved every penny all year to buy and deliver Christmas presents for needy children on the Army base he lived on with his military parents. His brother then implored Christian to “become like Santa Claus all over again. Save yourself by helping others.”

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“Saved” by his minister brother’s desperately needed reminder, the literal-minded billionaire decides that his life’s mission will now be to build a real-life “Santa’s Workshop” at the North Pole. A flight of imagination that will not only save him, but also a select number of adults from around the world who have applied to be his “Santa’s Elves.” Adults from every walk of life who have also lost their way and are in anguished need of salvation.

The multibillionaire then uses his vast experience, wealth and drive to reach out to his vast array of contacts in the private and governmental sector to assemble the team needed to build such a complex. Together, all soon experience firsthand the faith, hope and charity that unites us as human beings, while bringing joy to thousands of needy and abandoned children the world over.

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump cheer after lighting the 2017 National Christmas Tree. (AP)

That story, inspired by the conversation about then President-elect Trump, became the book: “The North Pole Project: In Search of the True Meaning of Christmas.”

We all have gifts which can make a difference. Fictional Billionaire Christian Nicholas used his to bring hope and joy to thousands of children and adults. President Trump is using his to try and save a nation.

This Christmas season – and beyond – which gifts of yours can make a difference for those most in need? Merry Christmas.

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