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      Republican’s non-profit paid PR firm that also represents her for-profit work

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      The legal non-profit the Center for American Liberty, helmed by Harmeet Dhillon, paid more than $132,000 to a public relations firm that simultaneously represents the California Republican national committeewoman in her capacity as head of her own for-profit law firm and Republican activist.According to a client list published by Praetorian Public Relations, whose proprietor is Matt Shupe, the Contra Costa county Republican chair, the firm also represents other partners and associates of Dhillon Law, other state Republican officeholders, and individuals at the center of the Center for American Liberty’s culture-war driven lawsuits.The revelations further blur the lines between Dhillon’s non-profit work, her legal career and the political ambitions that saw her challenge the incumbent national RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel, in an election held last January.Dhillon is also a rising media star on the Republican right.Asked about the ties between CAL and Praetorian PR, Joan Harrington, a fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at the Santa Clara University and an expert on non-profit law and ethics, said: “Every way in which [Dhillon] is benefiting from the non-profit should be considered compensation,” adding: “it should be disclosed.”The Guardian previously reported that the CAL’s IRS filings showed that CAL had paid Dhillon Law $1.32m in fees, and that according to the 2021 filing, Dhillon additionally drew a $120,000 salary for a two-hour weekly commitment.In that reporting, the executive director of CAL, Mark Trammell, wrote: “The 2021 Form 990 should show Ms Dhillon working 40 hours per week. That correction will be made shortly through an Amended Form 990.”At the time of reporting, CAL had removed the 2021 IRS filing from its website. But a copy of the filing lists Praetorian alongside Dhillon Law, Blitz Digital and Eimer Stahl LLP as one of the four biggest contractors to the organization.Praetorian’s client list includes Trammell, who is billed as “executive director and general counsel to the Center for American Liberty”. The list bills Dhillon, however, as “Managing Partner, Dhillon Law Group”, “Chairwoman, Republican National Lawyers Association”, “California’s RNC National Committeewoman”, and only lastly as “Founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty”.The client list also includes Dhillon Law attorneys who have worked on CAL cases, including Krista Lee Baughman and Ron Coleman.It also includes CAL clients: the rightwing Internet personality Andy Ngo (billed as an “investigative reporter”); 18-year-old “detransitioner” Chloe Cole; and “Social Media and Cultural Influencer” Rogan O’Handley, who posts on various social media sites under the handle “dc_draino”.CAL is assisting Ngo in a suit against Rose City Antifa which has been running since 2020, and whose delays led an Oregon judge to award a limited judgment last February, and forced Ngo’s team to move that the judgment be vacated. The Guardian contacted Ngo’s attorney, James Buchal, to ask about the delays but received no response.CAL is sponsoring O’Hanlon’s suit against the California attorney general over O’Hanlon’s Twitter ban in 2020, and Chloe Cole’s suit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-affirming care she received in her early teens.Neither CAL’s filings nor the Praetorian PR client list specify whose efforts CAL is paying for.In response to questions about the relationship between CAL and Praetorian PR, and on whether CAL was paying for promoting Dhillon’s non-CAL work, Trammell, CAL’s executive director, wrote in an email: “The Center for American Liberty compensates Praetorian Public Relations only for services rendered to the Center for American Liberty.”Trammell continued: “Any services that Praetorian Public Relations renders to its many other clients are not paid for by the Center for American Liberty. Any assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”He added: “GuideStar awarded the Center for American Liberty with a Gold rating for its commitment to transparency.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Guardian pressed Trammell to clarify whether CAL paid for none, some, or all of Dhillon’s PR services with Praetorian, but received no response.The Guardian also emailed Praetorian and the CAL clients Ngo, Cole and O’Hanlon, asking each whether they were paying for Praetorian’s themselves, or being subsidized by CAL.Although Ngo frequently screenshots and pastes reporters’ questions to his 1.3 million-follower Twitter account, neither he nor the other CAL clients responded.Social media posts suggest Shupe, the Praetorian boss, and Harmeet Dhillon have a warm personal friendship.In a January 2022 Instagram post, Shupe described Dhillon as “my favorite client”. The same month, Dhillon described Shupe on Twitter as the “best PR pro in CA”. In another Shupe Instagram post the previous October, the pair posed, smiling with the far-right congressman and former Ohio State assistant wrestling coach, Jim Jordan.Apart from managing PR for CAL, Dhillon, attorneys from her law firm and CAL and Dhillon Law clients, Praetorian lists various west coast Republican officeholders as clients, including Dhillon’s California RNC colleague Shawn Steel.According to his LinkedIn page, Shupe has been a Republican party office holder since 2011, serving variously as vice-chair of the California College Republicans, executive director of the San Francisco Republican party, and as chair of the Contra Costa county Republican party since 2018. He was communications director for the failed California gubernatorial campaign of John Cox in 2018, and a consultant in the former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s failed attempt to displace Gavin Newsom in a 2021 recall election.Shupe did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Harrington, the non-profit ethics expert, explained that financial transparency was not just important for donors, and that “the public has an interest” in knowing how the finances of tax-exempt organizations are run.“Non-profits have the luxury of being tax exempt,” Harrington said, adding that “the rest of us pay more tax to support non-profits” as a result.“Transparency is important so that the world knows that this money is being spent properly.” More

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      Los Angeles councilman faces criminal charges including embezzlement

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      Prosecutors charged a Los Angeles city councilman with 10 counts, including embezzlement and perjury, on Tuesday in the latest criminal case to upend the scandal-plagued governing board of the nation’s second-largest city.Curren Price Jr faces five counts of embezzlement of government funds, three counts of perjury and two counts of conflict of interest, according to the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office.Price was charged for having a financial interest in projects that he voted on as a council member, and having the city pay nearly $34,000 in medical benefits for his now wife while he was still married to another woman, the Los Angeles county district attorney, George Gascón, said in a statement.Between 2019 and 2021, Price’s wife allegedly received payments totaling more than $150,000 from developers before Price voted to approve projects, according to Gascón’s statement. He also is accused of failing to list the money his wife received on government disclosure forms.“This alleged conduct undermines the integrity of our government and erodes the public’s trust in our elected officials,” Gascón said.Price called the charges “unwarranted”.In a letter to the Los Angeles city council president, Paul Krekorian, Price said he was stepping down from committee assignments and leadership responsibilities “while I navigate through the judicial system to defend my name”.“The last thing I want to do is be a distraction to the people’s business,” he wrote.The council and city government have been shaken by a series of recent scandals.In March, former Democratic city councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas – a one-time legislator, county supervisor and a fixture in local politics for decades – was found guilty in federal court of seven felonies, including conspiracy, bribery and fraud.Last year, a racism scandal that shook public trust in Los Angeles government triggered the resignations in October of then city council president Nury Martinez and a powerful labor leader, Ron Herrera.After an FBI investigation, two other former city council members pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in recent years.Former mayor Eric Garcetti, who left office in December, was shadowed by sexual harassment allegations against one of his former top aides.To residents, the cumulative effect “makes the whole body politic of LA look rotten, look illegal”, said Jaime Regalado, former executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.At a time when the city is struggling with an out-of-control homeless crisis, crime, and soaring housing and rent costs, “it makes everything harder,” Regalado said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA criminal complaint said a consulting firm operated by Price’s wife received a series of payments from companies incorporated or co-owned by Thomas Safran & Associates, GTM Holdings/Works and GTM Holdings, before the councilman voted to approve funding for the companies’ projects.Emails seeking comment from those entities were not immediately returned on Tuesday evening.Price was first elected to the council in 2013 and currently serves as its president pro tempore. His district includes South Los Angeles and parts of the city’s downtown. His term is set to expire in 2026.Price, who is Black, has successfully navigated changing demographics in his district – which has become increasingly Latino – and is known for being attentive to communities that are diverse.The councilman had attended a city council meeting earlier on Tuesday.Mayor Karen Bass’s office said in a statement that she had not seen the charges but was “saddened by this news”.Price’s attorney, David Willingham, declined to comment, saying he had not seen a copy of the criminal complaint.The charges were first reported on Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times. More

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      Democrat Barbara Lee on righting the wrongs of US history: ‘When we tell the truth, healing occurs’

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      When the California congresswoman Barbara Lee first introduced a bill proposing a national commission on racial healing, the US had erupted in grief and rage over the murder of George Floyd.Since then, the movement to provide restitution and reparations to Black Americans has gained momentum. As has the backlash.Several US cities are exploring similar efforts to acknowledge and apologise for systemic injustices. And in Lee’s home state, a taskforce has suggested billions in compensation to Black residents for decades of state-sanctioned discrimination.Meanwhile, Florida blocked the teaching of AP African American studies, book bans sweeping US school districts have targeted writings about race, and nearly two dozen US states have tried to stifle attempts to teach an honest version of American history by banning the teaching of “critical race theory”.Lee, the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to Democratic leadership in the House and a candidate for the US Senate, told the Guardian that she was undeterred. Last month, she and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey reintroduced the legislation to create a commission of “truth, racial healing and transformation” that would work in conjunction with other congressional efforts to study reparations and educate the public about the historic atrocities undertaken and sanctioned by the US government.The bill establishes the arrival in America of the first ship carrying enslaved Africans as the event that “facilitated the systematic oppression of all people of colour”. And it tasks a commission of experts with memorialising the injustices inflicted on Black Americans as well as the abuse of Native Americans, the forced removal of Mexican migrants, the discriminatory ban against Chinese labourers and the colonisation of the Pacific.The Guardian spoke with Lee about the country’s long road to accountability. This interview has been condensed and edited.What does it mean to push for this commission on truth and racial healing, and to push for reparations amid unprecedented rightwing efforts to erase African American history from schools and public libraries?I think what gets lost is that people need to see this as a unifying movement.A lot of people push back on reparations because they get defensive, thinking it’s about them.But this was a government-sanctioned system of slavery. It was a policy of the United States government to enslave Africans. So we’re talking about policies that have brought us to this point of systemic racism. And so the government has a responsibility, and the private sector has a responsibility to step up and repair the damage. There’s no need to get defensive.I find that more people are beginning to understand. To the legacy of slavery, all you have to do is look at the disparities in criminal justice, in mass incarceration, in healthcare and employment. There’s generational trauma as well as generational impacts which we see each and every day in this country.You have people who are racist and uncertain about African Americans, for example, and who don’t know the history, who don’t know the context. But once the truth is told, healing occurs – that’s a human phenomenon. Once you have the truth told, then you can move towards unification. As Americans, you can move towards healing.How do you get such an effort going amid a growing, extreme rightwing movement in Congress?Well, this is the moment to push it forward. There’s no better moment given what we see taking place in terms of trying to deny and destroy our history in this country, and before we were brought here, enslaved. You have to keep educating the public.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnd you just have to keep going. Just like Dr King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice – and we have to believe in that.This idea of a truth commission first emerged in South Africa, and now more than 40 countries have launched similar efforts.This is not a unique concept. This is an international concept of what the right thing to do means. And it’s already happened here, in our own country.The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians investigated the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war, and formed the basis of 1988 Civil Liberties Act to grant survivors a public apology and monetary reparations.And I’m so proud of the fact that Japanese Americans are supporting the reparations movement for African Americans.And I’m really proud of California. We had legislation, which Governor Newsom signed, to establish a taskforce, which is coming forward with some recommendations on how to repair the damage in California. And I think California has established a model for the country, and I think other states need to do this as well.And that model is having a government-sanctioned entity that has certified experts, activists and academics, elected officials who go around and listen to people, listen to the descendants of slavery, listen to what the laws were and policies were, and listen to how they are impacting people today. And I think that once that happens, then, again, you have the healing that can take place.Your bill to set up a truth commission complements another bill, HR 40 – the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act – which has been reintroduced every year since 1989. Do you see a future in which monetary reparations might be provided for Black Americans?Whatever the commissions come up with is the appropriate form of reparations – whatever the experts come up with will help repair this damage, I support. More

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      As Prosecutors Revisit Police Killings, Charges Are Still Rare

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      Pamela Price, a new district attorney in Northern California, is the latest to reopen cases that had seemingly been shut, including one from more than 15 years ago.Agustin Gonsalez was shot dead in 2018 by police officers in Hayward, Calif., when he refused to drop a sharp object during a confrontation on a dark street.Andrew Moppin-Buckskin was killed by Oakland officers in 2007 after he ran away following a car chase, hid under a vehicle and failed to comply with their demands.Two years ago, Mario Gonzalez died after he was pinned on the ground for more than five minutes by officers in Alameda, Calif.In all three cases, prosecutors determined that the police should not be criminally charged, seemingly closing the book.But shortly after she became the district attorney of Alameda County in January, Pamela Price initiated a new review of those cases and five others in one of the most extensive re-examinations of police killings launched by progressive prosecutors.Ms. Price’s review is notable because her predecessors had already cleared the officers of wrongdoing and two of the reopened cases occurred more than 15 years ago.As high-profile instances of police brutality shocked the public in recent years and raised questions about official law enforcement accounts, liberal prosecutors campaigned on the promise that they would review cases that they felt were hastily closed without charges. Their efforts to revisit old cases have won praise from the activists and liberal Democrats who voted for them.But the re-examinations so far have rarely led to criminal charges.“To reopen a police use-of-force case is, in many ways, a herculean task,” said Steve Descano, the commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County, Va. He lost in court after he charged two federal Park Police officers for the 2017 shooting of a man who fled a car crash, a case that the Justice Department previously reviewed and declined to pursue.The incidents almost never have evidence as stark as the bystander video showing George Floyd being pinned to the ground in 2020 for more than nine minutes by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.The circumstances often are more ambiguous, the footage less telling. And once a district attorney writes a lengthy memo detailing why criminal charges are unjustified against a police officer, it can be difficult for a successor to overcome those arguments, absent new evidence.“Everybody is going to go through it again, and the outcome in all probability is going to be the same,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “And what’s Einstein’s definition of insanity?”The biggest hurdle for pursuing criminal charges is the wide latitude that officers have to use force. State legislatures, including California’s, have tried to narrow that ability. But officers generally can still use lethal force when they feel they or others could be killed, a level of immunity that law enforcement officials say is necessary to ensure the public’s safety.Pamela Price, the new district attorney of Alameda County, Calif., announced this year that she would review eight police killings, including one dating to 2007.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAlameda County, Ms. Price’s jurisdiction, covers a large swath of the East Bay across from San Francisco, containing 14 cities and numerous police departments. In the county seat of Oakland, where the Black Panther Party emerged in the 1960s, a legacy of radical politics is intertwined with a troubled history of law enforcement. The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight for more than two decades.Ms. Price campaigned on a liberal platform that, besides reviewing old cases, included removing local residents from death row and resentencing inmates serving life sentences — an effort, she said, to restore public trust. Since taking office, she has directed her staff to seek the lowest possible prison sentence for most crimes.She said that in the past, prosecutors routinely gave officers a pass when they killed someone on the job, and she wants questionable police killings to face the same rigor that other criminal cases get.“Every case that we’re looking at now was determined under a double standard,” Ms. Price said in an interview. “Police officers received a different standard of justice than everyday people.”Ms. Price is among a growing cadre of progressive prosecutors elected over the last decade, beginning with the 2016 elections of Kim Foxx in Chicago and Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, on promises of reducing jail populations and holding police accountable. The movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder.Some prominent district attorneys have since faced a backlash over crime concerns. Chesa Boudin was recalled last year in San Francisco, while Ms. Gardner resigned last week as she faced criticism for her handling of violent crime. Ms. Foxx is not running for re-election next year and has endured criticism from moderates and conservatives, especially for her support of eliminating cash bail statewide.In Maine, a police officer has never been prosecuted for an on-duty killing. But in July 2020, Natasha Irving, the district attorney for four counties, said she would seek charges for the 2007 police shooting death of Gregori Jackson, who was drunk and ran away after a routine traffic stop in Waldoboro, the town where Ms. Irving grew up.Three years later, however, Ms. Irving said that based on the attorney general’s review of the forensics from the case, she will not file charges.“It’s just not going to be a provable case,” she said in an interview.Karla Gonsalez stood at a memorial to her son at the site in Hayward, Calif., where he was shot and killed by police officers.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn the Virginia case pursued by Mr. Descano, Bijan Ghaisar, 25, was involved in a minor car crash and then fled in his Jeep, pursued by two officers who cornered Mr. Ghaisar in a residential neighborhood. When the vehicle moved toward a police car, they opened fire, killing him.Mr. Descano brought a case, but a judge dismissed the charges, ruling the officers reasonably feared they were in danger. His efforts to pursue the case further were rejected by the state’s attorney general and the Justice Department.Such reviews offer the possibility of justice for still grieving families but also may unrealistically raise their hopes. Karla Gonsalez, the mother of Mr. Gonsalez, the man who was killed in Hayward, said she was torn when she heard Ms. Price was reopening her son’s case.Television outlets began replaying the body camera footage of Mr. Gonsalez’s confrontation with police. For his family, all of the anger, grief and unresolved questions came rushing back. Why had the officers not tried to de-escalate the situation?“I was excited to know that it was going to be opened up again,” Ms. Gonsalez said. “At the same time, I was very nervous that it was going to be another roadblock, another failure.”Less than 2 percent of police killings result in charges, according to Philip M. Stinson, a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. That figure has not budged since 2020. The number of people killed by the police is holding steady — last year it was 1,200, compared with 1,147 in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence.“From where I sit, nothing has changed,” Mr. Stinson said.In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor declined to file charges.Ryan Young for The New York TimesIn Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who was elected district attorney in 2020, appointed a special prosecutor to reopen four cases in which his predecessor, Jackie Lacey, declined to file charges. He also asked an independent team of experts to review more than 300 previous use-of-force cases to see if the evidence warranted criminal charges.The special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, had secured convictions in a 1993 federal trial against Los Angeles Police Department officers for beating Rodney King. In the new cases, he has secured indictments against two officers in the 2018 shooting death of Christopher Deandre Mitchell, who was driving a stolen vehicle and had an air rifle between his legs when he was confronted by officers in a grocery store parking lot. (“Both officers’ use of deadly force was reasonable under the circumstances,” Ms. Lacey wrote in a 2019 memo.)The re-examinations themselves take time, and liberal prosecutors may yet file criminal charges against more officers in past cases. But they said that charges should not be the only benchmark of whether their reviews are worthwhile.“I think there is huge value to reopening a case if there is probable cause, or if there is evidence that seems compelling in any way,” Ms. Irving, the prosecutor in Maine, said. “Yes, part of it is to send a message to people who would be bad actors. Part of it is to send a message to families that have lost loved ones, or individuals who have been harmed, that they count.”Ed Obayashi, a California-based expert in use of force who trains law enforcement, said in 2021 that Mario Gonzalez did not seem to be a threat to the public in Alameda and questioned why officers restrained him before he died. The police had responded to a call that Mr. Gonzalez, 26, was acting strangely in a park and talking to himself.Mr. Obayashi said this week that he did not fault Ms. Price for reviewing the case, but he also felt that if there was consensus in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office under her predecessor, Ms. Price should not have reopened it.“It’s a big concern to law enforcement because these types of decisions, to revisit old cases that former prosecutors have decided that no charges should be brought against the officer, it’s political,” Mr. Obayashi said. “It’s politically driven.”Ms. Price’s review also includes two cases from 15 years ago that occurred seven months apart and involved the same officer killing men who ran away after traffic stops, including Mr. Moppin-Buckskin. The officer, Hector Jimenez, was cleared in each case and remains with the Oakland Police Department.“For the life of me I can’t understand what Ms. Price thinks she’s doing with those kinds of cases, some 15 years after they occurred,” said Michael Rains, a lawyer for Mr. Jimenez.In Hayward, the city agreed to pay $3.3 million to settle a federal lawsuit with Agustin Gonsalez’s family but said it was a way to support his children rather than an admission of wrongdoing. The city said in April that there appeared to be no new evidence that warranted reopening the case.Mr. Gonsalez was shot in November 2018 after police officers confronted him. He was suicidal and was holding a razor blade. He refused to drop the blade and approached the officers with his arms outstretched. That’s when the two veteran police officers shot him 12 times.Karla Gonsalez recently sat in her sister’s kitchen and described her son as a father of two who was an Oakland sports fan and often drove nearly 400 miles south to Disneyland with his season pass. In the corner of her living room was a makeshift shrine, with a flickering candle and a crucifix draped over his portrait.Cynthia Nunes, Mr. Gonsalez’s cousin, said her family was grateful his case was being reopened. But they want more.“Charges actually have to be brought forward, too,” she said. “The system needs to change.”Julie Bosman More

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      With Migrant Flights, Ron DeSantis Shows Stoking Outrage Is the Point

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      The flights to California illustrate the broader bet Gov. Ron DeSantis has made that the animating energy in the G.O.P. has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism.Ron DeSantis’s decision to send migrants from near the Mexico border to the capital city of California is at first glance the latest in a series of escalating clashes between the Florida governor and his Democratic counterpart, Gavin Newsom.But the performative gambit in the early days of Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 presidential run is better understood as an opening bid to prove to Republican primary voters that he can be just as much a provocateur, and every bit as incendiary, as former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, the flights illustrate the broader bet he has made that the animating energy in the Republican Party today has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism. And that in this new era, nothing is more fundamental than picking fights and making the right enemies, whether it’s the migrants who have slogged sometimes thousands of miles to slip through the border, the news media or the chief executive of the biggest blue state on the map.Mr. DeSantis has used this playbook before. He ordered up flights from the Texas border last year to the symbolically liberal hamlet of Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that drew exactly the outrage he sought. Those flights are now a staple of his stump speech, usually to cheers from the crowd. His allies in the Florida Legislature earmarked $12 million of taxpayer money into the state budget this year for just this purpose.“The easiest way to prove one’s tribal loyalty in 2020s America is by theatrically hating the other tribe,” said Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today and the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.A private charter plane that carried more than a dozen migrants, at Florida’s direction, at a Sacramento airport on Monday.Andri Tambunan for The New York TimesIn recent days, two charter flights orchestrated by the DeSantis administration carried roughly three dozen migrants from a New Mexico airport to Sacramento. The migrants, who are mostly Venezuelan, said they had been recruited from outside a shelter in El Paso, with promises of employment that California officials have said amounted to deception. Mr. Newsom, the California governor who is a potential future presidential contender himself, has suggested that the affair could merit “kidnapping charges,” calling Mr. DeSantis in a tweet a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Moore said he believed “that migrants and asylum seekers are created in the image of God and shouldn’t be mistreated or treated as political theater for anybody.” But he could also see the more crass calculations that Mr. DeSantis is making in a polarized era where politicians are most clearly defined not by what they’re for, but who they’re against.“The one heresy that no tribe seems to allow is a refusal to hate the other tribe,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. DeSantis, who flew to Arizona on Wednesday for a border event, is not a trailblazer in this regard. It was Mr. Trump who began his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, who promised to “build the wall” and later pitched a Muslim ban, making an “America First” approach to immigration a central theme of the party. And it was Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas who first began busing immigrants to blue cities and states last year (an idea Mr. Trump floated as president in 2018 but never pursued). Mr. DeSantis later one-upped Mr. Abbott’s buses with the dramatic flights to Martha’s Vineyard, which are now the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit.At the demographic and geographic epicenter of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential candidacy is an effort to appeal to deeply conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contest begins. Evangelical voters helped propel the Iowa victories of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in the last three open contests.Yet the DeSantis campaign and its allies see fighting the left as the fastest way to appeal to those voters rather than overt displays of religiosity. “Christians aren’t looking for a savior to be a president, they already have one,” said one DeSantis adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly to discuss strategy, explaining how Mr. Trump has dominated that voting bloc despite concerns about his moral character.Kevin Madden, who served as a top adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said transporting migrants, however cynical, allowed Mr. DeSantis to agitate all the right people.Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, praying at a campaign stop in Iowa last month.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“He’s provoking Gavin Newsom,” Mr. Madden said. “He’s provoking the most extreme liberal voices to attack him. He is provoking media voices. And that works to his favor because it endears him to the forces on the right who want to see a clash of political civilizations.”Outrage sells. Campaign contributions have repeatedly surged to the fury merchants on the right, whether the politicians selling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen or the G.O.P. hard-liners who battled Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ascent to the House speakership. An “own the libs” mentality has come to drive, if not define, the right online.On the left, Mr. Newsom has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too. He ran a television advertisement in Florida attacking him last year. He challenged him to a debate. He traveled this spring to the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution where Mr. DeSantis is engineering a right-wing intellectual takeover. In his personal Twitter account, Mr. Newsom has slammed Mr. DeSantis by name at least 20 times.“I think I’m being generous — ‘small and pathetic’ — very generous,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” broadcast on Wednesday. He accused Mr. DeSantis of using migrants as “pawns,” adding, “He’s just weakness masquerading as strength.”Mr. Newsom’s new PAC has been running a rotation of online fund-raising ads that attack Mr. DeSantis. “In my book, a bully and a coward doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the free world,” Mr. Newsom says of Mr. DeSantis in a video ad that began running on Facebook on Wednesday.Mr. DeSantis’s round-table discussion in Arizona on border security was a government event underwritten by taxpayers, not his campaign. After days of mystery, Mr. DeSantis’s administration took credit for the Sacramento flights on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he did not mention Mr. Newsom by name, though he said “sanctuary jurisdictions” had “incentivized” illegal immigration.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a possible eventual presidential hopeful, has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen Mr. DeSantis shifted to pick another fight with President Biden. “I don’t know how you can just sit there and let the country be overrun with millions and millions of people coming illegally,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis has become expert at agitating the right’s boogeymen. He once called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, a “little elf” who needed to be chucked “across the Potomac.” And when Mr. DeSantis’s motives are questioned by reporters, his snapbacks have been quickly packaged and posted on social media in hopes of generating viral hits.If he were to become president, Mr. DeSantis has made plain he would use the White House’s powers to the fullest. He is fond of saying that although he first won the governorship in 2018 with barely 50 percent of the vote, that victory came with 100 percent of the executive authority.As governor, he proudly used the power of the state to overrule local governments, ousting a prosecutor and prohibiting school districts from imposing mask mandates. Such actions are a departure from the limited-government conservatism of yesteryear. His allies say it is a vivid signal to voters that Mr. DeSantis will leverage the powers of government to battle their enemies, at a moment when many Republicans feel that their values and nation are under siege.Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who, two decades ago, served as the top domestic policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, said that “Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave using taxpayer dollars” to fly migrants from one faraway state to another.“DeSantis’s move is part of a growing strain in conservatism, endorsed by younger conservatives, to aggressively use the power and resources of government to achieve — or coerce — policy goals,” Mr. Conda said. “The ‘less government, lower taxes, more freedom’ mantra of conservatism is becoming quaint and old-fashioned, unfortunately.”Shawn Hubler More

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      in US Politics

      Florida confirms it was behind flights that left asylum seekers in California

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      Florida confirmed on Tuesday that it was behind two private jet flights that brought three dozen people seeking asylum from the US southern border to California amid accusations that the individuals were coerced to travel under false pretenses.The state’s division of emergency management said in a statement that the passengers all went willingly, and refuted allegations from California officials such as the governor, Gavin Newsom, who had threatened Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, with kidnapping charges.Two planes arrived in Sacramento on 2 and 5 June, each carrying people seeking asylum, mostly from Colombia and Venezuela. The individuals had been picked up in El Paso, Texas, taken to New Mexico and then put on charter flights to California’s capital of Sacramento, said Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general. Bonta, who said Florida would be guilty of “state-sanctioned kidnapping” if it was found to be behind the flights, is investigating whether any violations of criminal or civil law occurred.Alecia Collins, a spokesperson for the Florida division of emergency management, said in a statement that “through verbal and written consent, these volunteers indicated they wanted to go to California”. She also shared a video compilation that appeared to show people signing consent forms and thanking officials for treating them well.The clips had no time stamps, and Collins declined to share additional details about when and where they were recorded.It was the DeSantis administration’s first acknowledgment that it coordinated the flights.This isn’t the first time the DeSantis administration has transported migrants from Texas to other states. Last fall, Florida flew 49 Venezuelans to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard. This week a Texas sheriff filed acriminal case over the flights to Martha’s Vineyard – the sheriff has previously said the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” into traveling to the wealthy liberal town.Last month, DeSantis, who recently announced a presidential bid, signed into law a bill approving $12m for a program to relocate migrants, even if they never step foot in Florida.Bonta, who met with some of the migrants who arrived on Friday, said they told him they were approached by two women who spoke broken Spanish and promised them jobs in El Paso. The women traveled with them by land from El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, where two men then accompanied them on the flight to Sacramento. The same men were on the flight on Monday, Bonta said.He said the asylum seekers have court dates in New York, Utah and Colorado and carried a document that “purports to be a consent and release form” that is designed to shield Florida from liability.“Of course, what’s important is what is actually said and represented and told to the individuals, and we’ve got good indications of what that was and the fact that it was false, misleading and deceptive,” Bonta said.Darrell Steinberg, Sacramento’s mayor, said faith-based groups are working together to help the newcomers, who are staying at two undisclosed locations in the city and have been given food, clothing and cellphones to contact their families.Gabby Trejo, the executive director of Sacramento ACT, a collaboration of religious congregations in the Sacramento area, said all of the arrivals had already been given pending court dates by US immigration officials before they were approached in Texas by people promising jobs. Trejo said that they had been “lied to and deceived”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNewsom’s office, meanwhile, doubled down on its criticism of DeSantis.“This is exploitative propaganda being peddled by a politician who has shown there are no depths he won’t sink to in his desperate effort to score a political point,” said Anthony York, a spokesperson for Newsom.Newsom indicated in a tweet on Monday that California may consider kidnapping charges against DeSantis. Such charges would likely be extremely difficult to prove, particularly given that the migrants signed waivers.DeSantis’s latest apparent move to send migrants to California’s capital city appears to be a direct shot at Newsom. Though Newsom has not announced any plans to run for president in 2024, he and DeSantis have frequently sparred on immigration policy, abortion access, LGBTQ+ and civil rights, and a host of other cultural issues.It’s not yet clear if the new arrivals in Sacramento plan to stay in California or will eventually seek to go elsewhere, advocates said. Four who arrived on the first flight on Friday have already been picked up by friends or family members, but the rest remain in the care of local advocacy groups.The faith-based coalition is also connecting the migrants with medical and legal services, said Shireen Miles, a longtime Sacramento ACT volunteer. She said several people have court hearings as soon as next week in places such as Chicago, New York and Denver, which immigration attorneys are working to reschedule. More

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      Steve Garvey, Former Dodgers All-Star, May Run for Senate in California

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      Mr. Garvey, 74, a Republican, said he would decide in the next few weeks whether to run for the seat of Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is retiring.Steve Garvey, a perennial baseball All-Star in the 1970s and 1980s for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, said on Friday that he was weighing a run for the United States Senate in California as a Republican.He would give the G.O.P. a celebrity name in the high-profile race to replace Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, a Democrat, who is the chamber’s oldest member and is retiring at the end of her term. She has recently struggled with health problems that have prompted calls from some fellow Democrats for her to retire sooner.In heavily Democratic California, the race has drawn tepid interest from Republicans. Only lesser-known candidates have jumped in.California hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1988, and a host of prominent Democrats are waiting in the wings, including Representatives Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.Mr. Garvey, 74, one of the most prolific hitters in baseball before steroids tainted the sport’s record books, said in an interview that he expected to make a decision in the next few weeks. He noted the difficulty of building out a campaign operation.“You can imagine, it’s like getting an expansion franchise,” he said, using a sports analogy. “It’s a daunting task in California.”Mr. Garvey, whose deliberations were first reported by The Los Angeles Times, would be a long shot, but his entrance in the race could scramble the primary. Under the state’s system, the first- and second-place finishers advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.Democrats are so dominant in the state that they are widely expected to win both slots and compete against each other in the general. Having a Republican candidate with some name recognition could make that harder.Being in the public eye has sometimes brought Mr. Garvey unwanted attention. Although he cultivated a reputation for avoiding vices and philandering as a player, shortly after leaving the game he acknowledged he had fathered children by two different women, shortly before marrying a third.When asked on Friday how he felt about the glare of running for office, Mr. Garvey said that it would not discourage him.“I probably had a pretty good spring training over the last 50 years,” he said. More

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      How Hard Will It Be for DeSantis to Beat Trump? Nixon vs. Reagan in 1968 Offers a Clue.

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      Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old governor of Florida, has entered the presidential race, establishing himself as the most formidable Republican rival to Donald Trump.Mr. Trump, an inveterate liar who tried to overturn the last election, is alienating to a wide swath of voters, and many establishment Republicans have been happy to hunt out alternatives, particularly in Mr. DeSantis. After a rough midterm for Republicans that included the defeat of several Senate candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump, the former president appeared vulnerable.But since then, it has grown clear that counting him out as the likely Republican presidential nominee is foolhardy. Several factors — among them, the intense support he draws from a sizable chunk of the Republican base and his singular talent for commanding media attention — help explain why Mr. Trump holds a commanding position in the primary. History offers at least one parallel for why it will be so difficult for Mr. DeSantis and other G.O.P. contenders, like Nikki Haley, 51, the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Senator Tim Scott, 57, Ms. Haley’s fellow South Carolinian, to take him down.There was, more than a half century ago, another de facto leader of the Republican Party who reeked of failure. Pundits mocked and dismissed him as a has-been. Rivals across the ideological spectrum no longer feared him and cheered on his slide into irrelevancy.By the end of 1962, few believed there was a future for Richard Nixon, the former vice president. In 1960, he lost one of the closest-ever presidential races to John F. Kennedy, and members of the liberal Republican establishment, including Dwight Eisenhower, were glad to see him fall.After losing to Kennedy, Nixon tried to regroup, entering the 1962 California governor’s race against the well-liked Democratic incumbent, Pat Brown. Nixon, who had served as a representative and senator from the state, was initially expected to triumph and use the governorship as a steppingstone to the presidency. Instead, Brown swatted Nixon away after the former vice president had to endure a bruising primary battle against a Republican who was popular with the sort of movement conservatives who would, in the coming years, seize control of the party.On the morning after his loss to Brown, Nixon famously told the assembled press at the Beverly Hilton Hotel they wouldn’t have him to “kick around anymore.” That November, the journalist Howard K. Smith titled a television segment “The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon.”In the wake of these humiliations, Nixon’s tenuous comeback hinged on persuading both Republican voters, who could find more attractive warriors for their cause, and influential party and media elites that he in fact wasn’t completely finished. In 1964, Nixon flirted with running for president but backed away. (Mr. Trump, of course, did not feel chastened for supporting weak and beatable candidates in the midterms last year, and instead waited roughly a week to announce another presidential run.)Nixon decided to support Barry Goldwater, the far-right Arizona senator who lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic president. Nixon’s attachment to Goldwater won him some plaudits with the base of the party — he had been one of the few prominent Republicans to stick with the senator — but didn’t help alter the perception that he was a serial loser. To complete his rehabilitation, in the 1966 midterms, he strategically stumped for anti-Johnson Republicans who were poised to ride the white backlash to the Great Society and civil rights programs.By 1968, Nixon had established himself as a foreign policy maven, having undertaken many world tours in the 1960s, and cast himself as an arch, erudite critic of the Johnson administration.His period of vulnerability was briefer, but Mr. Trump today, like mid-’60s Nixon, has reasserted himself as a party kingpin. Now he, too, is contending with a popular governor from a large swing state.In the 1968 G.O.P. primary, Nixon actually had to outflank three prominent Republican governors — George Romney of Michigan, Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California — who could offer, in the immediate term at least, more allure.Reagan, who had defeated the formidable California Governor Brown in 1966, was actually older than Nixon but had the swagger and ease of a much younger man, marrying the sort of sunny optimism Nixon could never muster with the raw appeal to a growing reactionary vote that Nixon craved.Just as Mr. DeSantis, with his wars on critical race theory, “woke” Disney and Covid restrictions, is trying to outmaneuver Mr. Trump on the cultural terrain that’s always been so vital in Republican primaries, Reagan outshone Nixon with his open disdain for Johnson’s landmark civil rights agenda, the burgeoning antiwar movement and the emerging hippie counterculture. He railed against the “small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy-speech advocates” upending California and successfully demoralized Brown, who remarked, shellshocked, after Reagan’s triumph that “whether we like it or not, the people want separation of the races.”Nixon rebuffed Reagan and the others in one of the last primaries where delegates and party insiders, rather than the will of voters, played a significant role in determining the nomination.Here the present diverges from history. Nixon was far more introspective, methodical and policy-minded than Trump. He was, by 1968, a significantly stronger general election candidate, winning the most votes — Trump has twice lost the popular vote — despite the segregationist George Wallace’s third-party bid, which ate into Nixon’s support.But just as a divided primary field worked to Nixon’s advantage, so it may for Mr. Trump, especially if several other candidates become viable. In such a scenario, Mr. Trump may need only pluralities in pivotal early states to take the nomination. His core fan base might be enough. Though Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign was often shambolic, it managed a finely tuned nativist, anti-free trade and anti-globalization message that cut through the noise of a chaotic primary season. In Nixonian fashion, Mr. Trump tapped into his party’s reactionaries and delighted the grass roots.The question is whether Mr. Trump can do it again. One of Nixon’s great political strengths was to assume, even at the height of his powers, the position of the aggrieved — to convince a palpable mass of voters that they, and he, were the outsiders. Genuinely self-made, this posture came naturally to Nixon. Mr. Trump, though the son of a millionaire real estate developer, has nevertheless effectively adopted it throughout his political career, once boasting of his love for the “poorly educated.”Mr. DeSantis enters the fray hoping that Mr. Trump’s many flaws, continuing legal troubles and political baggage ultimately render him weaker than he appears today. But looking at the historical parallel, even Reagan, a once-in-a-generation political talent, could not dislodge Nixon. As Mr. DeSantis’s Twitter-launch debacle suggests, he will need to quickly, and considerably, improve his standing. Perhaps then, with the help of a Trump implosion, can he hold out hope for 2024 — or even, as Reagan’s example suggests, a future presidential run.If 1968 is any guide, Mr. Trump will be tough to beat. In a crowded field, among a hungry younger generation of contenders like Mr. DeSantis, he will have to manufacture anew this kind of populism. He might just do it.Ross Barkan is an author and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More