Florida

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings

      by

      Donald Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation found the 15 boxes the former president returned to the National Archives a year after the end of his presidency mostly contained briefings for calls with foreign leaders, according to a new letter they sent to Congress.The majority of the letter – seen by the Guardian and earlier reported by CNN – served to characterize Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents as inadvertent, and due to White House staffers sweeping all documents into boxes during a chaotic departure at the end of the administration.But the 10-page letter that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral.The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said. More

    • 50 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis’s Puddin’ Head Campaign

      by

      WASHINGTON — Back in the more openly sexist days of Hollywood, writers would get notes on their scripts about women characters. The studio suits would ask questions like, “Can they go to a strip club here?” or “Can you chain her to a wall?”The most common note from male executives was, “Make the girl more likable.”No doubt Ron DeSantis’s advisers are getting notes from donors these days with the message, “Make the guy more likable.”As David Axelrod told me, the Florida governor is coming across like “the high school quarterback who throws the geek against the lockers to get a laugh from the cheerleaders — and that’s not a good look.”He said DeSantis is learning a lesson: “The kind of tricks you use to get elected to other offices don’t work in a presidential race because you get scrutinized so closely.”Even in a world made crueler by social media and Donald Trump, DeSantis seems mean, punching out at Mickey Mouse, immigrants, gays and women; pushing through an expansion of his proposal to ban school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity to include all grades, as well as a draconian ban on abortion after six weeks. He even admonished some high school kids during the pandemic for wearing masks. On Thursday, DeSantis signed a bill cutting the number of jurors needed to give a defendant the death sentence from 12 to 8.DeSantis seems contrived with Tucker Carlson, weak against Robert Iger, robotic against Trump and inept with potential donors and endorsers. The 76-year-old Trump and the 44-year-old DeSantis can both be nasty, but Trump’s base finds him entertaining, with his “DeSanctimonious” and “DeSanctus” nicknames for the rival he deems “dull.”Trump is so eager to trash DeSantis that he jumped in on the side of woke Disney and later posted an MSNBC headline on his social media site, “Ron DeSantis’ D.C. charm offensive was a massive failure.”On Friday, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event outside D.C., DeSantis took a shot at Trump, saying he could send Florida workers to finish Trump’s wall.But as Axelrod dryly noted, “If they’re going to get into a food fight, Trump always comes with more food.”Trump 2024 put out a slashing attack on DeSantis the same day, describing Florida as tumbling into destruction (even though Trump seems quite happy living there), harkening back to Bush père’s vicious attacks on Massachusetts when he ran against Michael Dukakis.The bitchy Trump has plenty of ammunition when DeSantis wears white boots redolent of Nancy Sinatra, as Jimmy Kimmel said, to tour Southwest Florida after a hurricane; or when a report alleges (denied by the governor) that DeSantis ate chocolate pudding with his fingers. (Trump backers already have an ad up about that beauty.) DeSantis let Fort Lauderdale go underwater, inundated by flash floods, while he gallivanted around testing the waters.The word “likable” became a flashpoint for Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, with some women supporters claiming it was sexist to talk about that with women candidates.But as Jerry Brown once told me: “I think we’re always judged on likability and I think that’s something a lot of politicians don’t want to admit. But I can tell you, when they throw you out, most times they didn’t like you. They got tired of you.”Ken Langone, a Republican megadonor who gave $200 million to the N.Y.U. medical center, told The Washington Post that he was concerned about DeSantis’s rigid manner and his strict abortion ban. Former Representative David Trott, a Michigan Republican, told Politico’s Playbook that in the two years he sat next to DeSantis on the Foreign Affairs Committee, “he never said a single word to me,” even hello. “If you’re going to go into politics, kind of a fundamental skill that you should have is likability,” Trott said, adding, “He’s just a very arrogant guy, very focused on Ron DeSantis.”Representative Greg Steube of Florida also told Playbook that the governor had never reached out to him — or replied to his efforts to get in touch — even when he was in the hospital after falling 25 feet off a ladder in January. Trump was the first to call him, he said. Trump has also wined and dined Florida lawmakers at Mar-a-Lago.On Monday, Steube endorsed Trump (as of Friday, 11 Florida representatives were for Trump and one for DeSantis) and he later tweeted, “Sad to see the Florida House and Senate, two bodies I had the honor to serve in, carrying the water for an unannounced presidential campaign.”DeSantis had declared himself “kind of a hot commodity” to The Times of London. Now the governor is prowling in that uncomfortable place best conjured by Hemingway in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”People are wondering: What is that leopard doing at this altitude?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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Rough week, Ron? DeSantis flounders with Disney feud and abortion stance

      by

      One of the most entertaining Ron DeSantis stories of the week was only a parody, although he might wish it was not so. The satirical website The Onion had Florida’s rightwing governor settling his ongoing feud with Disney by taking a guest role in its hit Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.Behind the mocking comedy was hard truth for a vain politician embroiled in the energy-sapping scrap with Florida’s biggest private employer over LBGTQ+ rights.There’s clear evidence the Disney fight, and his numerous other cultural battles, including his signing of an extreme six-week abortion ban, are costing DeSantis significant political capital on the national stage as he prepares a likely presidential run. And while the road to the 2024 Republican nomination is likely to have many ups and downs ahead, there is little doubt DeSantis has hit a rough spot.He has fallen well behind Donald Trump in the polls, can’t seem to find a Florida congressman to endorse him, and is hemorrhaging support from influential Republican donors.But there’s no easy way out, even if he wanted to find one.“It’s a combination of vanity and vengeance for him. He suffers from what a lot of politicians do, which is vanity, and this is about retribution,” said David Jolly, a Republican former Florida congressman who served with DeSantis in the House, and was briefly a rival in the 2016 race for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat until the incumbent reversed his decision to stand down.“On Disney, his ego’s gotten the best of him and he’s been called out for it. He has to win this [but] the momentum is going in the wrong direction, and it’s getting serious.“To use a hockey analogy, he’s always known how to skate to where the puck is going. But the puck’s going to the wrong goal right now.”By any measure, DeSantis has had a rough week. It began with a torrent of criticism when he suggested building a state prison on land next to Disney’s theme parks as payback for being outfoxed over control of the company; and continued with a humiliating odyssey to Washington DC in search of congressional endorsements, only to find a succession of former allies defecting to Trump.At home in Florida, there has also been irritation with DeSantis and his extremist agenda, according to Politico.“People are deeply frustrated,” Republican former state senator Jeff Brandes told the outlet, adding that party colleagues he had spoken to felt “they are not spending any time on the right problems”.It’s a view echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor mulling his own challenge for the party’s nomination. DeSantis’s obsession with vengeance on Disney, a private company, for opposing him is not conservative, in Christie’s view.“If you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you?” he told Semafor.“That’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”According to Jolly, however, it’s not attacks by such as Christie that should set alarms ringing for DeSantis’s advisers.“The most damning criticism of him on Disney is from Justin Amash, the founder of the House freedom caucus, who was a colleague of his, and who condemned DeSantis for his take on Disney. That stings for DeSantis that the freedom caucus leader came out against him on it,” he said.“He also goes to Washington and four of his Florida colleagues turn around and endorse his competitor.“A lot of politicians are affable, some are cerebral [but] from the time he stepped on the stage, DeSantis has been a loner. He considers himself the smartest person in the room, but has not built relationships or loyalty and in return there are no loyal members of the delegation to him now.“The credit to him is it works. He’s the governor of the third largest state and could be the next president. So it’s an observation of his personality more than a criticism, but it’s no surprise that now when he needs people they’re not there for him.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUltimately, Jolly believes, DeSantis might not be ready for the demands of the national stage.“His confidence for the past few years has been because everything has been scripted, with friendly crowds. He doesn’t speak to the press, and when he does it often becomes adversarial,” he said.“The question is, how long can he run out that model in a presidential race before he really has to suffer the spotlight? His greatest strength nationally is not polling, it’s that he’s a fundraising juggernaut who for five years has captured the attention of the nation’s largest Republican donors.“If they’re worried about either his culture war overreach, or that he’s unprepared for the national stage, that’s real. They want a winner.”Some analysts believe the feuding with Disney, which began last year with the company promising to help overturn DeSantis’s flagship “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender preference, could be a campaign killer.“He declared thermonuclear war on a cartoon mouse,” the Orlando Sentinel political columnist Scott Maxwell wrote.“The governor’s scriptwriters seemed to envision this as the ultimate power play. They’d teach Disney a lesson, rev up the base and show every other employer in Florida what happens if they don’t bow down before DeSantis.“Instead, he became a punchline. This may be remembered as the moment the wheels came off.”Others are more cautious. Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida, warned that “one bad week is not enough” to discount a candidate’s viability.“If you decide to run for president, and everyone assumes [he will], you know going into it you’ll have bad weeks and good weeks, and DeSantis has never been a traditional campaigner,” she said.“There are different portions of the electorate for whom things resonate more, so some Republicans were disappointed that he was going after Disney and making a joke about the jail. Others were disappointed by his statement about Ukraine way back, others about the endorsements.“But in the big picture, it’s way too soon to tell the damage done by one week, nine months ahead of the primary season, and the first Republican debate scheduled for August.“As an analyst, I can see people’s assessment of this as a bad week. But as someone who studies historical presidential campaigns, I don’t see it as an end-all week.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      DeSantis Greets a Friendly Crowd After a Strong Week for Trump

      by

      Speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Florida governor doubled down on his 2024 pitch, ignoring headlines about worried donors and Republican consolidation behind Donald Trump.After a week in which little seemed to go his way, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida got back into his comfort zone: talking up his lengthy list of policy achievements in front of a receptive conservative audience outside Washington.“We’ve really become the beating heart of the conservative movement in these United States,” Mr. DeSantis said of his state on Friday morning as he addressed the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank celebrating its 50th anniversary. “Florida is the state where our shared ideas and values actually become political reality.”But outside that packed Maryland ballroom — where the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, suggested Republicans were “craving a bold and visionary leader” like the Florida governor — the conservative movement has signaled some hesitation about Mr. DeSantis as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid. Prominent donors have expressed concern, and Florida Republicans in Congress have so far shown little inclination to back him.Underscoring Mr. DeSantis’s biggest challenge is his continued avoidance of mentioning former President Donald J. Trump, who is well ahead in polls and has kept up a whirlwind of attacks on his potential rival. Even as Mr. DeSantis spoke, Mr. Trump shared several critical posts about him on Truth Social, the former president’s social media website.Mr. Trump’s posts focused on days of negative headlines challenging Mr. DeSantis’s political acumen and his handling of the fallout from a huge rainstorm in South Florida. The storm, which hit last week, flooded the Fort Lauderdale area and set off a severe gas shortage in the state’s most populous region.Both of Florida’s Republican senators, in implicit swipes at Mr. DeSantis, have complained about the lack of fuel.“They’ve got to get this thing fixed, this is crazy,” Senator Marco Rubio said in a video on Twitter, without naming the governor. Senator Rick Scott wrote that “Florida families shouldn’t have uncertainty about their next tank of gas.”Jeremy Redfern, the governor’s deputy press secretary, defended the way the state had handled the gas shortage.“At the direction of Governor DeSantis, the state emergency response apparatus has been at work since the flooding occurred and continues in full swing, responding to the needs of the localities as they are communicated to us,” he said in an email.At the Heritage event, which was attended by a mix of policy professionals, conservative activists and think-tank donors, the crowd greeted Mr. DeSantis with a standing ovation. Organizers estimated that roughly 1,000 people had shown up to hear him.In his remarks, Mr. DeSantis leaned into his pitch that he would be the most electable Republican in 2024: He won the governor’s office in a tight 2018 race, governed aggressively as a conservative and then earned a landslide re-election that included flipping liberal Miami-Dade County to the Republican column.“We reject the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years,” he said before cycling through conservative highlights of his record, including his decision to reopen Florida’s economy early in the coronavirus pandemic, his handling of Hurricane Ian and his signing of a new law prohibiting abortion in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.Despite his electoral success, Mr. DeSantis has at times faced criticism for lacking a personal touch on the campaign trail. On Friday, he spent a few minutes shaking hands with attendees after his speech, at one point affably helping a woman navigate the camera on her phone for a selfie.Ross Schumann, an attendee from Midland, Texas, who said he worked in the oil and gas industry and who ran for Congress in 2020, managed to get a brief handshake with the governor as his security detail ushered him toward the exit. He said Mr. DeSantis had hit all the right notes in his speech. But Mr. Schumann did not think the time was right for Mr. DeSantis to run for president.“He’s been very strong on getting policy wins, but this primary is Trump’s to lose,” he said.Mr. DeSantis is learning just how tightly the party is wedded to the former president.On Tuesday, he traveled to Washington seeking to court Republican members of Congress. But so far, the effort has resulted in little success. Several representatives, including some from Florida, have instead endorsed Mr. Trump. One of those lawmakers, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, tweeted a photo from a celebratory dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach residence, where the former president hosted members of Florida’s congressional delegation on Thursday night.Other vulnerabilities have emerged as well. Potential rivals for the White House are slamming Mr. DeSantis over his fight with Disney, one of Florida’s economic engines.All of it is having an effect on the race for dollars. A prominent conservative donor, Thomas Peterffy, told The Financial Times last week that he was putting his donations to Mr. DeSantis “on hold,” citing the governor’s far-right stance on social issues.Even little things seem to be going awry. Early Thursday morning, the state mistakenly sent a noisy emergency alert message to cellphones across Florida — waking up startled residents and leading Mr. DeSantis to promise “swift accountability” on Twitter. (The state soon announced that it had terminated its contract with the software firm responsible.)Soon after the governor ended his speech at the Heritage event, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said in an email that Mr. DeSantis had “spent more time playing public relations games instead of actually doing the hard work needed to improve the lives of the people he represents.”Still, Mr. DeSantis’s allies have dismissed recent skepticism of his prospects as Beltway hand-wringing that will not matter when voting begins in the early primary states next year.“If you ask an Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada voter if he had a bad week, they won’t see it that way,” said Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who is leading Never Back Down, the main super PAC backing the governor’s expected presidential bid.Mr. Cuccinelli, who served in the Trump administration, said conservative voters were responding to Mr. DeSantis’s record as governor and his biography as a veteran, husband and father.“When we tell that story, people get very excited,” he said. “They see the fighter. They see the winner.”Although polls show the governor lagging well behind Mr. Trump, he is often pegged as voters’ second choice — suggesting he could coalesce support should the former president falter. Mr. DeSantis will next seek to elevate his foreign policy credentials on a state trade mission to Japan, South Korea, Israel and Britain that will start Monday.And he retains the backing of the political donor Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas real estate and aerospace mogul. Mr. Bigelow donated $20 million to Never Back Down — roughly two-thirds of its recent fund-raising — according to a person familiar with the super PAC’s activities.“I will give him more money and go without food,” Mr. Bigelow told Time magazine.While the Heritage event focused on the conservative policies that the group hopes the next Republican administration will embrace — the think tank is working to build a database that could help staff the next G.O.P.-led White House and federal agencies — it also demonstrated how conspiracy theories continue to course through parts of the party’s base.Before Mr. DeSantis arrived, an audience member raised a question during a panel discussion on the Justice Department, falsely telling the speakers that the Sept. 11 attacks had been an inside job.The panel’s moderator, the conservative writer Mollie Hemingway, interrupted to ask for the next question. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      DeSantis v Disney feud escalates as Republicans advance takeover plan

      by

      The Republican-dominated legislature in Florida has moved quickly to amplify Governor Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney over LGBTQ+ rights, advancing a proposal to overcome the company’s thwarting of his earlier plan to seize control of the theme park giant.DeSantis, a likely candidate for the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nomination, was outfoxed by Disney after installing a hand-picked board of directors with oversight of the state’s biggest private employer. At its first meeting, the board discovered a last-minute deal between Disney and outgoing directors had rendered it in effect impotent.Now, in a move Democrats say is unconstitutional, lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a measure handing the DeSantis loyalists retroactive power to nullify the agreement by amending a land use law relating to special taxing districts.And in its own separate meeting the same day, the new board laid out its plans for Disney, including a huge increase in taxes and building low-income housing on land adjacent to its popular theme parks.Earlier this week, DeSantis had touted building a new state prison there, among other proposals.The escalation comes amid growing evidence that DeSantis’s focus on punishing Disney for speaking out against his “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion on LGBTQ+ issues is harming his political standing.Although he has yet to declare his candidacy, he trails former president Donald Trump by a significant margin in Republican polls for the White House nomination; is struggling to attract endorsements of Florida’s congressional delegation; and has lost the backing of influential donors.He is also under fire from Republicans who have derided his “unconservative” attacks on a private business as an act of revenge.“That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] and negotiating our next agreement with China,” the Republican former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a possible rival for the nomination, told Semafor.“Or sitting across from [Vladimir] Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine. If you can’t see around a corner that [Disney chief executive] Bob Iger creates for you, I mean, I don’t think that’s very imposing.”The latest Disney measure is expected to become law. Republicans in the Florida legislature, who secured a supermajority at the same time DeSantis was re-elected by a 19% margin last November, have so far been compliant with every item on the governor’s cultural wishlist.As well as lawmakers advancing the land use amendment on Wednesday, the Florida house passed a bill banning children from drag shows, and DeSantis’s board of education approved an expansion of the “don’t say gay” law outlawing classroom conversations on sexual orientation and gender identity to all grades.Also this session, the legislature passed a six-week abortion ban and permitless carry for firearms, and it is mulling DeSantis’s extremist immigration agenda that would make it a felony for anyone to knowingly transport an undocumented person.Democrats say the Disney proposal, which would give DeSantis’s allies on the central Florida tourism oversight district the authority to overturn any agreements made in the three months before it took power, contravenes the Florida constitution.“I’m all about corporate accountability, but this isn’t it,” state congresswoman Anna Eskamani said, according to the Miami Herald. “And it continues to be a distraction for us to focus on real-life issues by continuing the Disney versus DeSantis drama.”But in a tweet lauding the move, Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’s deputy press secretary, said Disney’s deal with the outgoing board was an “illegal and unconstitutional effort” to evade oversight. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Republicans Hit DeSantis Over Disney Feud

      by

      As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida escalates a fight against his state’s largest private employer, his potential rivals for the White House see an opening to attack.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is taking heat from fellow Republicans over his feud with Disney, as his potential rivals for the White House see an opportunity to call him out as flouting traditional conservative values.Former President Donald J. Trump this week slammed the governor’s efforts as a “political stunt” and said Mr. DeSantis was being outplayed by the company.“DeSanctus is being absolutely destroyed by Disney,” Mr. Trump wrote on Tuesday on Truth Social, his media site, using a dismissive nickname for the governor. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey also took a shot, suggesting Mr. DeSantis’s talk of punishing a business defied principles about small government.“I don’t think Ron DeSantis is conservative, based on actions towards Disney,” he said at an event on Tuesday hosted by the news outlet Semafor. “Where are we headed here now that, if you express disagreement in this country, the government is now going to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did, and now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”The criticism reflects a growing effort by Mr. Trump and other prospective candidates to try to undermine the core argument of Mr. DeSantis’s case for the nomination: that he is the Republican most likely to win a general election. Advisers to Mr. Trump and other possible rivals believe moves like going after Disney will be damaging in a general election, if not necessarily in the G.O.P. primary.Some Republican strategists even argued that the move risked turning off the party’s primary voters, saying they were confused by Mr. DeSantis’s decision to dig into a fight against a company with broad appeal and considerable resources to fight back.The dispute between Mr. DeSantis and Disney — Florida’s largest private employer and corporate taxpayer — started when company officials criticized a bill that Mr. DeSantis signed into law last year. The law, which critics called a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, curtails instruction and discussion of gender and sexuality in some elementary school grades. (It was extended to cover all grades, including high school, on Wednesday.)In response to the criticism, Mr. DeSantis moved to exert greater control over the company through a district board, but officials at the company quietly found a way to strip that board of power. Mr. DeSantis has since moved to try to take control again, and floated the possibilities of imposing new taxes on Disney — which would most likely be passed along to people using Disney’s park — as well as building a state prison nearby.A spokesman for the governor said Mr. DeSantis believed Disney had “an unfair special advantage” over other businesses in the state.“Good and limited government (and, indeed, principled conservatism) reduces special privilege, encourages an even playing field for businesses, and upholds the will of the people,” said Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary.In his post, Mr. Trump suggested that the threats could backfire and that the company could respond by pulling out of Florida. “Watch!” he wrote. “That would be a killer. In the meantime, this is all so unnecessary, a political STUNT!”The former president himself has never shied away from attacking companies he doesn’t like.Despite a steady stream of criticism from fellow Republicans — former Vice President Mike Pence, who is considering a campaign of his own, chided Mr. DeSantis on the issue in February — it’s not clear that Mr. DeSantis’s actions have hurt him uniformly on the right.The Wall Street Journal editorial board, on Tuesday evening, criticized the governor for the arc of the feud with Disney but took greater issue with Mr. Trump for his attack.“You’d think the former president would be critical of Disney’s woke turn, but his only abiding political conviction is personal advantage,” the board wrote. More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Florida board approves expansion of ‘don’t say gay’ ban to all school grades

      by

      Florida’s board of education has approved the expansion of the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which now prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity at school across all grade levels.Wednesday’s approval came at the request of the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who in the past two years has waged what critics call a “culture war” across the state through his bans on gender-affirming care, Covid-19 precautionary measures and abortion rights, among other facets.According to an education department spokesperson, the proposal will take effect after a procedural notice period that lasts about a month, the Associated Press reports.The rule states that Florida educators “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades four through 12 on sexual orientation or gender identity unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards … or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend.”Previously, the Parental Rights in Education law focused on banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity only from kindergarten through third grade.Parents are allowed to sue school districts over violations and educators who violate the ban risk having their licenses revoked.The expansion is a part of a series of anti-LGBTQ+ being proposed in Florida, including a ban on gender affirming care that would allow the state to take “emergency” custody of a child whose parents allow them access to such care.Other bans include curtailing drag performances, banning pride flags from public buildings, as well as removing college majors and minors on gender studies and critical race theory, among other similar disciplines.In a statement to the Associated Press, Florida’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr, said: “We’re not removing anything here. All we are doing is we are setting the expectations so our teachers are clear: that they are to teach to the standards.”As a result of DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” bill and his culture war against “wokeness”, the governor, who is widely expected to launch his 2024 presidential run, has found himself going head to head with Disney, one of the state’s largest private employers.Last month, Disney pushed back against DeSantis’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights by announcing its plans to host a major LGBTQ+ conference at Walt Disney World in Orlando. The announcement was widely regarded as a defiant response to DeSantis who assumed new powers in February that allow him to appoint members of the development board that supervises the theme park and its self-governing district. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge who denied girl abortion over grades shortlisted for Florida’s top court

      by

      A Florida judge rejected by voters after denying a teenage girl an abortion citing her poor school grades is in line for a seat on the state supreme court as the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, continues to turn the bench to the right.Jared Smith will be interviewed alongside 14 others next month by a nominating commission that will make recommendations to DeSantis, who last week signed a six-week abortion ban into law.The governor appointed Smith to the newly established sixth district court of appeal in December, four months after voters in Hillsborough county ousted him from the circuit court following his controversial ruling.Smith said the 17-year-old was unfit to obtain an abortion as he questioned her “overall intelligence, emotional development and stability”. The decision was overturned by a three-member appeals court that said Smith abused his judicial discretion.DeSantis’s decision to disregard that rebuke was the second time he had looked favorably on Smith, having first appointed him to the circuit court in 2019.The Florida supreme court seat opened up last month when the long-serving justice Ricky Polston announced he was standing down. Filling the vacancy will mean DeSantis will have picked five of the court’s seven members, a potentially crucial factor for the future of abortion laws in the state.The panel is expected to hear arguments later this year in a lawsuit challenging the validity of Florida’s existing 15-week abortion limit. A ruling to endorse it would open the way for the more extreme six-week ban to take effect.The Tampa Bay Times on Wednesday named other candidates vying for the seat, including Meredith Sasso, chief judge of the sixth district court of appeal, of which Smith is a member; and another appellate court judge, John Stargel, a Republican state representative.Significantly, Stargel was the only dissenting vote in the 2-1 decision that overturned Smith’s ruling blocking the teenager’s abortion.DeSantis began his transformation of the Florida supreme court immediately after taking office in 2019, appointing three justices in his first month. John Stemberger, president of the Florida family policy council, said at the time the court had “the potential to have the most reliably consistent and conservative judicial philosophy in the country”.DeSantis’s fourth pick, in August last year, was Renatha Francis, a Jamaica-born immigrant whose first judicial appointment was under DeSantis’s predecessor, Rick Scott, now a Republican US senator.DeSantis tried and failed to elevate her to the supreme court two years earlier, with justices ruling he exceeded his authority by naming a judge lacking the 10 years’ membership of the Florida Bar required by the state constitution.According to the Times, only three candidates applied after Polston, who the newspaper described as “reliably conservative”, announced his resignation in March.A slew of other judges and experienced prosecutors put their names forward on 4 April, when the nominating commission decided to extend the deadline. More