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      Melania Trump to Attend Fund-Raiser for the Log Cabin Republicans

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      Melania Trump, who has been mostly absent from public view while her husband, Donald J. Trump, campaigns for president this year, will appear at a fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago on April 20 for the Log Cabin Republicans, the group’s president said.The event, which was first reported by Politico, is a return of sorts to the political arena for Mrs. Trump, who has consistently stayed away from campaign events.Mr. Trump has insisted for months that Mrs. Trump would join him on the trail. He invokes her often during his rallies, to cheers from the crowd, even as she has not traveled with him. And she did not join him at a Super Tuesday party at Mar-a-Lago, the couple’s home in Palm Beach, Fla.Last month, Mrs. Trump made a rare public appearance with Mr. Trump, accompanying him when he cast his ballot during Florida’s primary. When asked if she would appear more regularly this year, Mrs. Trump replied, “Stay tuned.”Mrs. Trump remains a popular surrogate for the former president, but she has shown little interest in hitting the campaign trail.The fund-raiser for the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of L.G.B.T. conservatives, will still keep her largely out of the public eye. The group’s president, Charles T. Moran, said that Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, was also set to appear.Mrs. Trump has maintained ties to the Log Cabin Republicans for years. In a financial disclosure last year, she reported receiving a $250,000 payment from the group in December 2022. On Twitter that month, the group posted a photo saying she was the special guest at a “private dinner” and thanking her for “continuing the projects she worked on while in the White House.”Mrs. Trump’s few public appearances over the last year have been largely disconnected to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Last month, she joined Mr. Trump as he hosted Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, at Mar-a-Lago.In January, she delivered a eulogy at the funeral for her mother, Amalija Knavs. And she gave a speech last December at a naturalization ceremony in Washington, where she told new American citizens that citizenship meant “actively participating in the democratic process and guarding our freedom.”In November, she joined Mr. Trump at a funeral for his older sister. And she attended a memorial service for Rosalynn Carter with other first ladies from both parties. It was the first occasion that all of the living first ladies had been in one place since George H.W. Bush’s funeral in 2018. More

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      Florida just crushed abortion rights. But it also created a tool to fight back | Moira Donegan

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      It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the Florida state supreme court would not have allowed Governor Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban to go into effect. In a challenge to a previous 15-week ban, the court’s seven judges, all of whom were appointed by DeSantis, overturned 35 years of precedent this week in order to find that the right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, as Florida state law has acknowledged it does since 1989.The court’s approval of the 15-week ban will allow a stricter, previously stayed six-week ban to go into effect on 1 May. Justice Charles Canady did not recuse himself from the case, despite calls for him do so from no less an authority than the Florida supreme court’s former chief justice, Barbara Pariente. Justice Canady’s wife, the state representative Jennifer Canady, is a legislative co-sponsor of the newly approved six-week ban. There is no rape or incest exception.The harm this decision will do to women across the American south is immeasurable. Like many states, Florida dramatically restricted access to abortion in 2022, in the wake of the US supreme court’s Dobbs v Jackson decision that overturned Roe v Wade. Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, signed into law by DeSantis in April 2022, went into effect just days after the ruling. Despite those new restrictions, however, abortion remained much more available in Florida than it did elsewhere in the south.The south-east corner of the continental United States is home to some of the most restrictive abortion bans. A woman living in Florida finds herself without a right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy as far west as Texas and Oklahoma and as far north as Missouri, Indiana and West Virginia. Abortion is also banned outright in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee; it is banned after six weeks in Georgia and South Carolina. Florida’s 15-week ban was a dramatic reduction of women’s healthcare rights from the pre-Dobbs status quo. But due to the even more sadistic anti-choice zealotry of its neighbors, it was among the most permissive states in the region.Under these circumstances, Florida became a haven for abortion seekers. Despite the new 15-week ban, abortions soared in Florida in the year after Dobbs, as women from across the south fled their homes in search of the care that was still legal in the Sunshine state. According to the abortion and contraception data project #WeCount, the number of abortions in Florida increased by a total of 20,460 in the 12 months following the Dobbs decision. Now, both Floridian women and those who traveled from out of state for care will be forced to look further afield, to more distant and more expensive locations, in search of legal abortions. Many will not be able to get them.View image in fullscreenBut in addition to this catastrophe for women’s rights, the Florida court also upended this fall’s election in the state. That’s because, in a narrow vote, the justices allowed a ballot measure to appear before voters this fall that would enshrine abortion rights explicitly in the state constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would declare Floridians have a right to an abortion before “viability”, the medically imprecise but politically palatable standard that governed the Roe v Wade legal regime for 30 years and is usually interpreted to allow abortion until about 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, women whose medical providers declare their pregnancies a danger to their health would also be able to receive abortions.The ballot measure would need to receive approval from at least 60% of Florida voters in order to be enshrined in the state constitution. But if the measure is successful, it would invalidate both the six- and 15-week bans, and could theoretically be used to expand abortion access even beyond pre-Dobbs levels.The addition of the abortion rights ballot measure to the November election has dramatically changed the political calculus in Florida overnight. Long the home of a growing sunbelt Republican base and an uncommonly weak state Democratic party, Florida has been considered a shoo-in for Donald Trump, who won the state by three points in 2020. But abortion ballot measures have proven a persistent electoral winner, with measures to preserve or expand access to the procedure winning every time they have been put to voters since Dobbs – including in heavily Republican districts such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio, as well as in swing states like Michigan.And the salience of abortion to an election has been an excellent predictor of Democratic success since Dobbs, with the 2022 midterms and subsequent special elections all delivering Democratic victories whenever the abortion question is at the front of voters’ minds.In Florida, the new ballot measure may not just influence the presidential election, but the re-election bid of the Republican senator Rick Scott – a one-time governor and fierce abortion rights opponent who has said that he would have signed the six-week ban if he were still in the governor’s mansion. That stance has come under harsh criticism in Florida, where even the comparatively less strict 15-week ban has had horrible human costs.Anya Cook, a Florida woman whose water broke too early in her pregnancy, almost died from blood loss after the 15-week ban prevented her doctors from administering miscarriage care. Deborah Dorbert was forced to remain pregnant for months after her fetus was given a fatal diagnosis; she delivered an infant who died in her arms. These stories have made an indelible impression on the public. In Florida, more than 60% of voters say that they oppose the six-week ban. Now that it is slated to actually go into effect, that opposition is likely to grow.If the post-Dobbs era has shown us anything, it is that abortion is controversial only in theory. When faced with the material consequences of banning it, Americans find themselves unequivocally on freedom’s side.Democrats, then, may find that they have an unusual asset in the Republican opposition to abortion. The bans are consistently unpopular, and the issue has proved persistently salient, moving voters to the polls even two years after the Dobbs decision. But this political boon for the Democrats has come at an unbearable cost: women’s health, happiness and freedom.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect

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      The evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.Theresa LePore, who designed Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, with old ballots three years after the 2000 election. David FriedmanWe’re still in a post-primary lull before the campaign starts to heat up — and before Donald J. Trump goes on trial. Here are a few quick notes to end the week.Joe Lieberman and the butterfly ballotJoe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator, died this week at 82. He was Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, when the Gore-Lieberman ticket came less than 600 Florida votes away from winning the White House.We’ll never know what would have happened if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue. But I don’t think it’s always appreciated that we probably do know that Mr. Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the presidency, if it weren’t for the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County.If you don’t remember — it has been a while — the butterfly ballot was very unusual. Candidates were listed on both sides of the ballot, and voters cast a ballot by punching a corresponding hole in the middle. What made it so unusual was that the ordering of the candidates on the ballot didn’t have the same logic as the corresponding punch hole: George W. Bush and Mr. Gore were the first two candidates listed on the left-hand side, but they corresponded to the first and third hole on the punch. The second punch corresponded with the first candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot: the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, running as a Reform Party candidate.After the election, many voters from Palm Beach claimed they had inadvertently voted for Mr. Buchanan when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore. This is clear in the data. Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than he did on the other side of the county line. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than any politically or demographically comparable area in the country.You can see this pattern quite clearly in this map, courtesy of Matthew C. Isbell, a Democratic data strategist and consultant:We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden and Trump shift to new phase of urgent fundraising in 2024 US election

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump are entering a new phase of a heavyweight election fundraising smackdown after the US president raised a record $26m at a glitzy event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, while Trump’s Republican campaign tried to steal Biden’s thunder by claiming it would outdo him next week with a $33m event.Biden and his Democratic predecessor headlined a star-studded fundraiser with Clinton at the Radio City Music Hall event in New York, hosted by Mindy Kaling and featuring Lizzo and Queen Latifah, while the TV satirist Stephen Colbert interviewed the three men on stage in front of an audience that paid up to $500,000 for a ticket.Obama and Biden flew from Washington to New York on Air Force One together on Thursday in a show of unity and Democratic campaign heft as the 2024 election enters an important phase between the main primary season and the summer nominating conventions, which are expected to anoint Biden and Trump as their parties’ candidates for the November vote.The glittering Democratic fundraiser was punctuated by protests inside the sold-out auditorium, as attendees rose at several different moments to shout over the discussion, referencing Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.“Shame on you, Joe Biden,” one yelled, according to Reuters.Obama said Biden had “moral clarity” on the Israel issue and was willing to listen to all sides in this debate and find common ground.When a protester inside the theater interrupted Obama, the former president said: “You can’t just talk and not listen … That’s what the other side does.”The protests drew a pledge from Biden to keep working to stop civilian deaths, particularly of children. But he added, “Israel’s existence is at stake.” Hundreds more protested outside in the drizzling rain, many demanding a ceasefire and waving Palestinian flags.On the money raised during the event, which had been estimated at $25m and then came in at a record-breaking $26m for a single campaign event, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul turned Biden campaign co-chair, said: “This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built.”But on Friday, it was reported that Trump believes he can out raise the Biden event with a billionaires’ power party at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort club in Palm Beach, south Florida, on 6 April, where tickets will run from $250,000 to more than $800,000, the Financial Times first reported and Politico later detailed.The Trump campaign’s goal is at least $33m, with featured super-rich American business leaders such as the casino and hotel developer Steve Wynn, the hedge funder John Paulson and Robert Bigelow, a property and aerospace billionaire with an offbeat obsession with the paranormal and UFOs.Trump has been struggling for money and owes hundreds of millions in fines in civil cases he has lost, on top of sky-high legal bills, for which he is paying with funds from donors. Biden’s campaign had $71m in available cash at the end of last month, more than twice as much as Trump, with the Democratic National Committee also swilling with more than double what is in the Republican National Committee’s coffers, the Hill reported.On Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser said the candidate would not be able to match Biden’s totals, blaming the disparity on the Democrat’s “billionaire” supporters and painting a picture of a Trump campaign as being fueled by grassroots, working-class supporters. However, the Trump campaign is suffering from both large and small donor fatigue, CNBC has reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a wake on Thursday for a police officer shot dead on duty in New York, Trump called for a focus on “law and order” even though he stands to be the first former US president to be a defendant in a criminal trial and is facing a total of 88 charges across four cases, relating to campaign finance impropriety, election interference and hiding classified documents after leaving office.At the Democratic fundraiser, the presidents toggled between humor and campaign talk. Biden lit into Trump, recalling how he pleaded with the then occupant of the White House on 6 January 2021, to “call these people off” when his supporters invaded the US Capitol in an insurrection to try, in vain, to stop the certification of Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 election.“He sat there in the dining room off the Oval Office for several hours and watched [the attack on TV], didn’t do a damn thing,” Biden said.He pointed out how Trump was proud to have tilted the supreme court so that it ruled to take away the national right to abortion, with the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, while Democrats defend reproductive choice, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, taking a lead on the issue on the campaign trail.Biden also challenged Trump to golf, but only if his rival carried his own bag.Biden, Obama and Clinton ended the night donning Biden’s trademark aviator-style sunglasses.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      A New Law Would Remove Many Architectural Protections in Miami Beach

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      Lawmakers say preservationists held too much power over decisions on whether buildings should be demolished and what should be allowed to replace them.The oceanfront Eden Roc Hotel is an icon of Miami Modernist architecture, a style that epitomized the postwar glamour and grandeur of Miami Beach. Two turquoise panels wrap the white facade. The oval canister perched atop the building resembles a cruise ship’s funnel. Crooners like Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, and Sammy Davis, Jr., stayed and played there.But a new Florida law could make it easier for hotels like the Eden Roc and other architectural icons along Miami Beach’s coastline to be demolished. The battle pits the pressures of development and climate change against the benefits of historical preservation, in a city that has long paved over its past and prizes the new, shiny, and glitzy.Supporters say the law addresses environmental and safety challenges of aging properties after the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo. But critics believe the legislation is a pretext to facilitate the demolition of historical buildings — ones that give Miami Beach its distinct look — to make way for high-rise luxury condos.The new law effectively strips Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board of its long-held power to say whether historic structures can be demolished and, if a structure is knocked down, to ensure that at least some elements of its design are preserved or replicated. “Let’s just bulldoze the past — that’s their idea,” said Daniel Ciraldo, the executive director of the nonprofit Miami Design Preservation League. “I don’t think we’ve seen such an attack on our local controls since the 1980s, back when the city first started to do historic preservation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DeSantis Signs Social Media Bill Barring Accounts for Children Under 14

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      A new Florida law also requires apps like TikTok and Snapchat to obtain a parent’s consent before giving accounts to 14- and 15-year-olds.Florida on Monday became the first state to effectively bar residents under the age of 14 from holding accounts on services like TikTok and Instagram, enacting a strict social media bill that is likely to upend the lives of many young people.The landmark law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is one of the more restrictive measures that a state has enacted so far in an escalating nationwide push to insulate young people from potential mental health and safety risks on social media platforms. The statute both prohibits certain social networks from giving accounts to children under 14 and requires the services to terminate accounts that a platform knew or believed belonged to underage users.It also requires the platforms to obtain a parent’s permission before giving accounts to 14- and 15-year-olds.In a press conference on Monday, Mr. DeSantis hailed the measure, saying it will help parents navigate “difficult terrain” online. He added that “being buried” in devices all day long was not the best way to grow up.“Social media harms children in a variety of ways,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement. The new bill “gives parents a greater ability to protect their children”Mr. DeSantis had vetoed a previous bill that would have banned social media accounts for 14- and 15-year-olds even with parental consent. The governor said the earlier bill would impinge on parents’ rights to make decisions about their children’s online activities.The new Florida measure is almost certain to face constitutional challenges over young people’s rights to freely seek information and companies’ rights to distribute information.Federal judges in several other states have recently halted less-restrictive online safety laws on free speech grounds in response to lawsuits brought by NetChoice, a tech industry trade group that represents firms including Meta, Snap and TikTok.Judges in Ohio and Arkansas, for instance, have blocked laws in those states that would require certain social networks to verify users’ ages and obtain a parent’s permission before giving accounts to children under 16 or 18. A federal judge in California has halted a law in that state that would require certain social networks and video game apps to turn on the highest privacy settings by default for minors and turn off by default certain features, like auto-playing videos, for those users.In addition to social media age restrictions, the new Florida statute requires online pornography services to use age-verification systems to keep minors off their platforms.Apps like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram already have policies prohibiting children under the age of 13. That is because the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires certain online services to obtain parental permission before collecting personal information — like full names, contact information, locations or selfie photos — from children under 13.But state regulators say millions of underage children have been able to sign up for social media accounts simply by providing false birth dates. More

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      US primary elections: Biden and Trump notch wins with surprises in store down ballot

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden swept up more delegates in Tuesday’s primary elections as they set their sights on a rematch in November.Trump and Biden picked up wins in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio. Trump also won the Republican primary in Florida, where the Democrats are not holding a primary.In Ohio, Illinois and Florida, the former South Carolina governor and presidential candidate Nikki Haley still captured a sizable fraction of the Republican vote, despite no longer being in the race.The president and former president had already won enough delegates to capture their parties’ presidential nominations, and most of their challengers have dropped out. Trump’s last Republican challenger, his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, ended her presidential campaign after Super Tuesday. Biden’s long-shot challenger, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, dropped out as well.With the presidential nominating contests clinched, the candidates were focusing on campaigning in swing states they will need to win the general election in November.In recent days, Biden visited Arizona and Nevada, where he is looking to shore up the support of young and Latino voters who could be key to his re-election. Biden is touting economic policies and attacking Trump on immigration and abortion as he seeks to win over wavering voters and waning enthusiasm among groups that backed him in 2020.Democrats seeking to register frustration with Biden over his handling of the war in Gaza are urging supporters to vote for the self-help guru Marianne Williamson in Arizona – as she, unlike Biden, has called for a permanent ceasefire. Pro-Palestinian protesters in Ohio, meanwhile, are urging supporters to “Leave It Blank”.Trump, meanwhile, has continued to court controversy on the campaign trail amid ongoing legal troubles. He claimed that Jewish people voting for Democrats “hate their religion” and Israel, in an interview on Monday – drawing outrage. As he criss-crosses the country to rally supports and raise funds, he has also increasingly made the January 6 attack on the Capitol a cornerstone of his campaign, saluting rioters as heroes.In Illinois, Ohio, Illinois and California, a few key down-ballot races have been hotly contested.OhioIn Ohio, Bernie Moreno, whom Trump endorsed, has won the Republican US Senate primary, and will face the Democratic incumbent, Sherrod Brown, in November, the AP projects. Moreno, a wealthy former car dealer who has never held an elected office, was leading in polls ahead of election day, edging out the state senator Matt Dolan and the secretary of state, Frank LaRose.Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, had the backing of establishment Republicans, including the governor, Mike DeWine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMoreno’s candidacy had been weighed down by questions about his qualifications and lack of experience. Having espoused virulently anti-LGBTQ+ policies, he was also the subject of an Associated Press report that found his work email was used to create an account on an adult website seeking “men for 1-on-1 sex” in 2008. Moreno had denied the report.Republicans have targeted Brown’s seat as one they could flip in November – he is Ohio’s only statewide elected Democrat in a state that has moved dramatically to the right in recent years.IllinoisIn Illinois, the 82-year-old Democratic incumbent congressman Danny Davis will defend his seat in November after fighting off a progressive challenge, the AP projects. Davis was backed by the state’s governor, JB Pritzker, and the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, but faced a tough challenge from the community organizer and gun-control advocate Kina Collins, a community organizer and gun control advocate.
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 8-9.15pm GMT, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      ‘Greatest first amendment sin’: appeals court condemns Florida’s Stop Woke Act

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      In countless campaign appearances during his futile pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, celebrated his state as “the place woke goes to die”.Now, by virtue of a federal appeals court ruling that skewers a centerpiece of his anti-diversity and inclusion agenda, Florida resembles a place where anti-woke legislation goes to die.In a scathing ruling released late on Monday, a three-judge panel of the 11th circuit appeals court in Atlanta blasted DeSantis’s 2022 Stop Woke Act – which banned employers from providing mandatory workplace diversity training, or from teaching that any person is inherently racist or sexist – as “the greatest first amendment sin”.The judges upheld a lower court’s ruling that the law violated employers’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression. They were also critical of DeSantis for “exceeding the bounds” of the US constitution by imposing political ideology through legislation.The panel said the state could not be selective by only banning discussion of particular concepts it found “offensive” while allowing others.“Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not,” Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of Donald Trump, wrote in the 22-page opinion. “Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.“We reject this latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct. By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the act targets speech based on its content. And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints – the greatest first amendment sin.”The ruling, which follows a legal challenge from several small companies in Florida – including the online wedding registry site Honeyfund, and the owners of a Ben & Jerry franchise – was targeted at the workplace provisions of the wider-ranging Stop Woke (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, also known as the Individual Freedoms Act.It reinforced an August 2022 decision by district court judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee that the act unconstitutionally “attacks ideas, not conduct”, and attempted a wide ban on free speech.In a separate ruling three months later, Walker halted part of the Stop Woke Act limiting what Florida’s colleges and universities could teach about racism and sexism.Calling the law “positively dystopian”, Walker invoked George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in his injunction: “‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13,’ and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom,’” he wrote.Free speech advocates welcomed the appeals court ruling. “Today is a good day for the first amendment and the ability of American businesses to speak freely,” Shalini Goel Agarwal, an attorney at the advocacy group Protect Democracy, acting for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.A spokesperson for DeSantis’s office said the governor strongly disagreed with the ruling, and was “reviewing all options on appeal going forward”.“The US court of appeals for the 11th circuit held that companies have a right to indoctrinate their employees with racist and discriminatory ideologies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.“We disagree with the court’s opinion that employers can require employees to be taught – as a condition of employment – that one race is morally superior to another race. The first amendment protects no such thing, and the state of Florida should have every right to protect Floridians from racially hostile workplaces.”When he signed the law in April 2022, DeSantis said his intention was to protect individual freedoms of Florida’s citizens. “We will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” he said at the time.On Friday, in compliance with other “anti-woke” legislation the governor has signed banning institutions of higher education using tax dollars to fund diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the University of Florida terminated all DEI positions.It was the latest development in what has become a nationwide crusade by the Republican party and rightwing allies to tackle perceived wokeness – loosely defined as a raised awareness of social injustices such as racism – by liberal adversaries.The messaging, however, fell on deaf ears during DeSantis’s failed challenge for the Republican presidential nomination, which he had staked almost entirely on anti-wokeness.Even the three appeals court judges, two of which are Trump appointees, appeared to acknowledge that people are growing weary of politicians with extremist agendas. “Intellectual and cultural tumult do not last forever, and our Constitution is unique in its commitment to letting the people, rather than the government, find the right equilibrium,” they wrote. More