Greg Steube represents Florida's 17th District — all of Sarasota and Charlotte counties, plus part of Lee County. It's the Suncoast: retirees, small businesses, fishing, tourism, and communities that keep getting hammered by hurricanes.

Here's some of what he's been doing with the job.

He tried to name the ocean after Donald Trump

On June 14, 2024, Steube introduced H.R. 8750, a bill "to designate the exclusive economic zone of the United States as the 'Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States.'"

The exclusive economic zone is the stretch of ocean where the U.S. controls the natural resources off its coasts. By Steube's own description, it's 4,383,000 square miles — bigger than the entire land mass of the United States. His bill would have required every law, map, regulation, and government document referring to it to use Trump's full name instead.

He timed it. WFLA reported that the bill's introduction "coincides with Trump's 78th birthday."

Steube's explanation was that Trump is a man who cares deeply about the sea:

"Floridians know the great value of our coastal natural resources and how important it is to have a president who cares about the strength and resilience of our oceans."

That's a striking thing for Steube in particular to say. The League of Conservation Voters scores every member of Congress on their environmental votes. Steube's score is 0% for 2025, and 1% for his entire career. Not a low score — very close to the lowest score it is mathematically possible to have.

So the man telling us that Florida's coastal resources are precious has voted with those coastal resources roughly one percent of the time. He just wants the water named after somebody.

The bill was referred to the House Natural Resources Committee on the day it was filed and never moved again. Two years later, congress.gov still lists its status as "Introduced."

Then he went after a subway his constituents will never ride

On May 29, 2025, Steube filed the Make Autorail Great Again Act — H.R. 3660.

The bill does exactly one thing. Read the actual text: it blocks all federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority until WMATA renames itself the "Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access" — WMAGA — and renames the Metrorail the "Trump Train."

That's it. The whole bill is two pages: a short title, and one section that withholds the money until the name changes. No safety requirements. No audits. No service standards. No oversight provisions. The entire "reform" is the new name.

Steube's own press release put a number on the hostage: until WMATA changes its name, it "will be ineligible for approximately $150 million in annual federal funding it currently receives through federal formula matching programs."

And here's how he described what he was doing:

"In the spirit of DOGE, this bill demands accountability by conditioning federal funding on reforms that signal a cultural shift away from bureaucratic stagnation toward public-facing excellence and patriotism."

Read that again slowly. He is calling a name change a "reform." He is calling it "accountability." The word "patriotism" is doing the work that an actual policy would normally do.

He added that the new names "serve as a bold rallying point for much-needed reform," and pointed to Washington hosting the 2027 NFL Draft and FIFA Club World Cup matches as the reason the capital's transit system "must meet the highest standards."

The highest standards. Achieved by calling it the Trump Train.

Like the ocean bill, it went nowhere. It was referred to a subcommittee on May 30, 2025, and it has sat there ever since.

Nobody in Sarasota rides the Metro

WMATA runs trains and buses in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia. It does not serve Sarasota, Charlotte, or Lee County — or anywhere else in Florida.

So this wasn't constituent service. It wasn't even ideology. It was a press release with a bill number attached.

And there's a date worth sitting with. Four weeks before Steube filed the Trump Train bill, his own constituents were standing outside his Sarasota office asking him to talk to them.

On May 1, 2025, protesters gathered on Fruitville Road demanding a public town hall. The Democratic Women's Club of Sarasota County said that "despite repeated requests for a meeting, the only response Steube and his staff have given is that he and his staff are too busy to meet with constituents."

Too busy. Then, on May 29, he found time to write legislation renaming a subway he doesn't ride.

His office's response to the protest was one sentence: "While we have no comment, we encourage constituents of Florida's 17th district to contact our office to share their concerns with the Congressman."

He's not incapable. That's the part that stings.

It would be easier to write Steube off as a backbencher who can't get anything done. But that's not true, and the record proves it.

In May 2024, Steube pulled off something almost nobody in Congress manages: a successful discharge petition. He forced a floor vote on his own bill to give tax relief to victims of natural disasters — a real issue for a district that has been repeatedly torn up by hurricanes. Axios reported it was "the first time since 2015 that such a petition has gotten the 218 signatures needed to force a vote." Around two dozen Republicans signed it; the rest of the signatures came from Democrats.

So he knows how to legislate. He knows how to build a coalition. He knows how to fight for something his district actually needs.

Then, one month later, he filed the ocean-naming bill.

What Florida needed instead

While Steube was workshopping acronyms, real things were happening to the people he represents.

KFF estimates that about 990,000 Floridians would lose health coverage under Trump's budget bill — with rural hospitals warning they may have to close. About 3 million Floridians rely on SNAP to buy groceries every month. One in five Florida kids faces hunger.

None of those people needed the ocean renamed. None of them needed a DC subway rebranded.

This is what "currying favor" looks like

Steube's ocean bill wasn't an isolated stunt. It was part of a wave. USA TODAY counted them up in June 2024: Rep. Paul Gosar's bill to put Trump on a revived $500 bill, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna's push to give Trump the Congressional Gold Medal, a bill to rename Dulles airport after him — and Steube's ocean.

Fred Upton, a Republican who served 26 years in the House before retiring in 2023, told the paper what these bills are for:

"They're all trying to curry favor from the former president. They want to be recognized by him."

That's the whole thing. These bills were never meant to become law. They were meant to be seen by one man.

Steube has a vote in Congress. He has a staff, an office, and a district full of people dealing with insurance costs, grocery bills, and storm damage. He spent that power trying to get Donald Trump's name on 4.3 million square miles of seawater and on the side of a train in another state.

He was too busy to hold a town hall. He wasn't too busy for this.

Source

Primary reporting: Donald Trump Airport? Trump on the $500 bill? Republicans can't stop honoring ex-president — USA TODAY, June 18, 2024. Bill texts and quotes are from congress.gov and Steube's own congressional press releases.