The Insurrectionist in the Flower Shop
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MIDLAND, Texas—On a 95-degree April day, a florist named Jenny Cudd parked her red pickup and strode up to the local FBI office, her Let’s Go Brandon earrings swinging. She was there to pick up two phones that the authorities had seized—“stole,” according to Cudd—after she stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
An agent named Scott greeted her briskly and slid the phones across the desk. He seemed torn between West Texan politeness and West Texan toughness-on-crime.
“How’s the flower business?” Scott asked.
“Great,” Cudd said dryly.
“Selling flowers?”
“Yep.”
“Good luck … with the rest of your life, I guess,” he said as Cudd walked out.
“What a stupid thing to say,” she tweeted later. In the replies, her followers advised her to throw the phones away—the feds had probably bugged them, they speculated.
This is just how Cudd, 38, is acting these days, nearly 18 months after the Capitol siege: following the law, but alleging it’s biased. Saying she regrets her actions, but indignant at her treatment. Claiming to put January 6 behind her, but vowing to keep fighting.
Cudd is serving no jail time after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge. Her life is back to normal. She wakes up in a modest old house and has two cups of coffee with her dogs, Freedom and Justice. Then she heads to her shop, Becky’s Flowers, where customers are greeted with pastel-hued hydrangeas alongside pocket Constitutions, a Donald Trump bobblehead doll, and a painting of Trump holding a vase of flowers. She inputs orders for prom corsages and funeral wreaths while drinking from a mug that says blood of my enemies. In the next room an employee named Mo calls customers to remind them that it’s almost Mother’s Day.
Rather than chastening her, Cudd’s experience since January 6 has only made her more committed to fighting what she sees as election fraud—and more dedicated to educating others about the cause. Though she swears she won’t unlawfully enter any government buildings again, she still thinks the 2020 election was stolen
