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      Republicans Push to Crackdown on Voter Fraud

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      Election fraud is exceedingly rare and often accidental. Still, G.O.P. lawmakers and prosecutors are promoting tough new enforcement efforts.The Florida Legislature last week created a law enforcement agency — informally called the election police — to tackle what Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have declared an urgent problem: the roughly 0.000677 percent of voters suspected of committing voter fraud.In Georgia, Republicans in the House passed a law on Tuesday handing new powers to police personnel who investigate allegations of election-related crimes.And in Texas, the Republican attorney general already has created an “election integrity unit” charged solely with investigating illegal voting.Voter fraud is exceedingly rare — and often accidental. Still, ambitious Republicans across the country are making a show of cracking down on voter crime this election year. Legislators in several states have moved to reorganize and rebrand law enforcement agencies while stiffening penalties for voting-related crimes. Republican district attorneys and state attorneys general are promoting their aggressive prosecutions, in some cases making felony cases out of situations that in the past might have been classified as honest mistakes.It is a new phase of the Republican campaign to tighten voting laws that started after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud following the 2020 election. The effort, which resulted in a wave of new state laws last year, has now shifted to courthouses, raising concern among voting rights activists that fear of prosecution could keep some voters from casting ballots.“As myths about widespread voter fraud become central to political campaigns and discourse, we’re seeing more of the high-profile attempts to make examples of individuals,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center.It’s nearly impossible to assess whether the talk of getting tough on voter crime is resulting in an increase in prosecutions. There is no nationwide data on how many people were charged with voter fraud in 2020 or in previous elections, and state data is often incomplete. The state numbers that are available show there were very few examples of potential cases in 2020 and few prosecutions.Florida election officials made just 75 referrals to law enforcement agencies regarding potential fraud during the 2020 election, out of more than 11 million votes cast, according to data from the Florida secretary of state’s office. Of those investigations, only four cases have been prosecuted as voter fraud in the state from the 2020 election.In Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his new “election integrity unit” in October to investigate election crimes, The Houston Chronicle reported that the six-prosecutor unit had spent $2.2 million and had closed three cases.And in Wisconsin, where a swath of Republicans, including one candidate for governor, are seeking to decertify the state’s 2020 presidential election results on the basis of false claims of fraud, a report released last week by the Wisconsin Election Commission said that the state had referred to local prosecutors 95 instances of felons’ voting in 2020 when they were not allowed to. From among those cases, district attorneys have filed charges against 16 people.“The underlying level of actual criminality, I don’t think that’s changed at all,” said Lorraine Minnite, a Rutgers University political science professor who has collected years of data on election fraud in America. “In an election of 130 million or 140 million people, it’s close to zero. The truth is not a priority; what is a priority is the political use of this issue.”The political incentives to draw attention to the enforcement of voting laws are clear. A Monmouth University poll in January found that 62 percent of Republicans and just 19 percent of Democrats believed voter fraud was a major problem.That may mean the odds of being charged with voter fraud can be linked to the political affiliation of the local prosecutor.In Fond du Lac County, Wis., District Attorney Eric Toney was in office for nine years without prosecuting a voter fraud case. But after he started his campaign for attorney general in 2021, Mr. Toney, a Republican, received a letter from a Wisconsin man who had acquired copies of millions of ballots in an attempt to conduct his own review of the 2020 election. The letter cited five Fond du Lac County voters whose registrations listed their home addresses at a UPS Store, a violation of a state law that requires voters to register where they live.Mr. Toney charged all five with felony voter fraud.A report the Wisconsin Election Commission released last week said that the state had referred to local prosecutors 95 instances of felons’ voting in 2020 when they were not allowed to.Scott Olson/Getty Images“We get tips from community members of people breaking the law through the year, and we take them seriously, especially if it’s an election law violation,” Mr. Toney said in an interview. “Law enforcement takes it seriously. I take it seriously as a district attorney.”One of the voters charged, Jamie Wells, told investigators that the UPS Store was her “home base.” She said she lived in a mobile home and split time between a nearby campground and Louisiana. Ms. Wells did not respond to phone or email messages. If convicted, she stands to serve up to three and a half years in prison — though she would most likely receive a much shorter sentence.In La Crosse County, Wis., District Attorney Tim Gruenke, a Democrat, received a similar referral: 23 people registered to vote with addresses from a local UPS Store, and 16 of them voted in 2020. But Mr. Gruenke said he had concluded that there was no attempt at fraud. Instead of felony charges, the local clerk sent the voters a letter giving them 30 days to change their registrations to an address where they lived.“It didn’t seem to me there was any attempt to defraud,” Mr. Gruenke said. “It would be a felony charge, and I thought that would be too heavy for what amounted to a typo or clerical error.”Mr. Toney linked his decision to his views about the 2020 election in Wisconsin, which the Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., won by more than 20,682 votes out of 3.3 million cast.While he had never challenged Mr. Biden’s win, he said he believed that “there is no dispute that Wisconsin election laws weren’t followed and fraud occurred.”“I support identifying any fraud or election laws not followed to ensure it never happens again, because elections are the cornerstone of our democracy,” Mr. Toney said.(Ms. Wells, one of the voters Mr. Toney has charged, also said she believed something was amiss in the 2020 election. “They took it away from Trump,” she told investigators.)Mr. DeSantis in Florida is perhaps the best-known politician who is promoting efforts to bolster criminal enforcement of voting-related laws. The governor, who is up for re-election in November, made the new police agency a top legislative priority. .The unit, called the Office of Election Crimes and Security, takes on work already done by the secretary of state’s office, but reports directly to the governor.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Disney staff stage walkouts over Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill

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      Disney staff stage walkouts over Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ billDisney and its CEO, Bob Chapek, spoke out against the bill in an internal staff email but refused to publicly condemn it Disney staff members this week and next are staging walkouts over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.The Parental Rights in Education bill, which critics have dubbed as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, was recently passed by Florida Republicans but has not yet been signed into law. The controversial bill bans all discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools.Disney and its CEO, Bob Chapek, spoke out against the bill last week in an internal staff email but refused to publicly condemn the bill, prompting the staged walkouts from employees.Chapek said Disney’s leadership “unequivocally stand” with LGBTQ+ employees but said that corporate statements “do very little to change outcomes or minds”, adding that “they are often weaponized by one side or the other to further divide and inflame”.Chapek’s statement sparked backlash within the company, which employs more than 75,000 staff members in Florida. Many condemned Chapek’s silence, to which he responded: “Speaking to you, reading your messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our silence was.“You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry,” he said, adding that Disney will be “pausing all political donations in the state of Florida”.Since then, Disney employees have been organizing 15-minute daily walkouts and “sickouts”, according to the Twitter page @DisneyWalkout launched in response to the bill. Staff members will stage a full-day walkout on 22 March.In an open letter on the accompanying website, WhereIsChapek.com, Disney employees criticized Disney’s leadership, saying: “As a community, we have been forced into an impossible and unsustainable position. We must now take action to convince TWDC to protect employees and their families in the face of such open and unapologetic bigotry.”On Wednesday, Marvel Studios, which is owned by Disney, denounced the bill and said that it “proudly” stands with the community and pledged to continue its support and allyship.The bill requires the implementation of “procedures to reinforce fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding upbringing and control of their children”.In addition to allowing parents to launch legal actions against school boards if they believe policies overstep that “fundamental right”, the bill bans teachers from discussing in classrooms LGBTQ+ topics “not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students”.TopicsFloridaWalt Disney CompanyLGBT rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ron DeSantis Is Gambling on Out-Trumping Trump

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      Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, is giving Donald Trump a run for his money as the most divisive politician in America.“We want people that are going to fight the left, and that’s what we need to do in this country,” DeSantis declared in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 8. “That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms. We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”In a Nov. 5, 2021 article on the liberal Daily Beast website, “Desperate, Deranged DeSantis Devolves Into Dumb Troll,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote that DeSantis “is a terrible governor who is failing his leadership course with flying colors. Driven only by politics and naked ambition, he pursues reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them in danger.”The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups, Navarrette continued, “because he apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office.”On Jan. 17, 2022, The Guardian followed up from the left:In a red-meat-for-the-base address at the opening of Florida’s legislature last week, themed around the concept of “freedom” but described by critics as a fanfare of authoritarianism, DeSantis gave a clear indication of the issues he believes are on voters’ minds. They include fighting the White House over Covid-19, ballot box fraud, critical race theory in schools and defunding law enforcement.The view from the right is starkly different.On March 14, Rich Lowry, editor in chief of National Review, heaped praise on DeSantis as “the voice of the new Republican Party,” a politician who “opens up a vista offering an important element of Trumpism without the baggage or selfishness of Trump.”Lowry argues that DeSantis has strategically positioned himself on the cutting edge of a political movement with the potential to have “broad appeal to GOP voters of all stripes without the distracting obsessions of the former president.” This “could be one of the most persuasive arguments to Republican voters for Trump not running again — not that he needs to go away so the old party can be restored, but that he’s unnecessary because a new party has emerged.”DeSantis’s political strength among conservative voters — and the reason for the unanimous hostility toward him on the left — lies in his capacity to stay relentlessly on message.His dealings with the press result in headlines that are red meat to his conservative loyalists: “Ron DeSantis Berates Reporter Over Question About Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill,” “AP urges DeSantis to end bullying aimed at reporter,” and “DeSantis and the Media: (Not) a Love Story.”“If the corporate press nationally isn’t attacking me, then I’m probably not doing my job. So, the fact that they are attacking me is a good indication that I’m tackling the big issues,” DeSantis tweeted on Jan. 7.A Yale graduate with a law degree from Harvard, DeSantis served as an attorney in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq as a senior legal adviser to SEAL Team One. He is smart and disciplined and runs his political career like a military campaign. Lacking Trump’s impulsiveness and preference for chaos, a President DeSantis, with his attention to detail and command of the legislative process, might well match or exceed Trump as liberals’ worst nightmare.Susie Wiles, a Republican consultant who helped guide the last month of DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor, described the candidate as a “workhorse.”“It’s like watching an actor who can film the whole scene in one take,” Wiles told the Miami Herald. “He can gobble up a whole issue in one briefing, and when I saw that on my second day, I thought, ‘This is a whole different kind of thing.’ ” Wiles added, “If he doesn’t have a photographic memory, it’s close.”I asked a number of Democratic strategists which 2024 Republican nominee worried them most, Trump, DeSantis or Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.Paul Begala, a national Democratic strategist, argued by email thatDeSantis seems to be the furthest down the track on replicating Trump’s politics of grievance and bullying. For a great many Republicans, politics is no longer about allocating resources in the wisest, most equitable way. It is instead about “owning the libs.”Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, compares DeSantis to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and finds both men disturbing. “DeSantis and Cotton are dangerous because they are both true-believer ideologues who would be smarter and more disciplined than Trump about using the levers of power to push their right-wing agendas,” Garin wrote by email, before adding:Each of them are lacking in personal charm and I don’t think voters would find either one to be particularly likable or relatable over the course of a long presidential campaign. DeSantis’s meanness in particular could come back to haunt him in a national campaign.DeSantis relishes using the state to enforce his aggressive social agenda and has consistently plotted a hard right course on issues from critical race theory to transgender rights.For example, DeSantis sponsored and pushed through the legislature the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act” — or the Stop Woke Act for short — which now awaits his signature.The measure not only bans teaching what is known as critical race theory but also gives parents the right to sue public schools accused of teaching the theory and cuts off public funds to schools that hire critical race theory “consultants.”Among the new state guidelines:An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.A second bill, the Parental Rights in Education Act, is also on DeSantis’s desk for signature. The measure declares thatClassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3” and that “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.At a March 4 news conference, DeSantis told reporters: “Clearly, right now, we see a lot of focus on transgenderism, telling kids that they may be able to pick genders and all that. I don’t think parents want that for these young kids,” before adding, “I think it’s inappropriate to be injecting those matters, like transgenderism, into a kindergarten classroom.”On April 10, 2021, DeSantis signed the “Combating Public Disorder Act,” a conservative response to Black Lives Matter and other protests that turn violent or destructive. On Sept. 9, 2021, however, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked enforcement of the law because a person of “ordinary intelligence” could not be sure if he or she broke the law while participating nonviolently in a protest that turned violent:The vagueness of this definition forces would-be protesters to make a choice between declining to jointly express their views with others or risk being arrested and spending time behind bars, with the associated collateral risks to employment and financial well-being.DeSantis has capitalized on Florida’s outdoor culture to become the nation’s leading opponent of mask mandates and lockdowns of schools and businesses, including a May 3, 2021, executive order declaring:In order to protect the rights and liberties of individuals in this State and to accelerate the State’s recovery from the Covid-19 emergency, any emergency order issued by a political subdivision due to the Covid-19 emergency which restricts the rights or liberties of individuals or their businesses is invalidated.For DeSantis, the pandemic offered the opportunity to distinguish himself from Trump. In January, Jonathan Chait described his strategy in New York Magazine:Where Trump was tiptoeing around vaccine skepticism, DeSantis jumped in with both feet, banning private companies like cruise lines from requiring vaccination, appointing a vaccine skeptic to his state’s highest office, and refusing to say if he’s gotten his booster dose.DeSantis “may or may not actually be more delusional on Covid than Donald Trump,” Chait wrote, “but it is a revealing commentary on the state of their party that he sees his best chance to supplant Trump as positioning himself as even crazier.”Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, has a similar take on the Trump-DeSantis Covid feud, writing on Jan. 18:What’s suddenly intriguing is that DeSantis has decided to try to outflank Trump, to out-Trump Trump, in terms of his hard-trolling of the libs on the vaccine question. And it’s Trump —Donald Trump! — who is playing the role of civilizing, normalizing truth teller.Politically speaking, however, DeSantis’s stance on Covid policy, together with his culture war agenda, has been a success. His favorability ratings have soared and in the third quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, Florida’s gross domestic product grew by 3.8 percent, third fastest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, behind Hawaii and Delaware.DeSantis’s aggressive posture and threats to bring legal action have created anxiety about retribution in some quarters. In January, for example, Dr. Raul Pino, the administrator for the Florida Department of Health’s office in Orange County, wrote his staff to say that only 77 of 558 staff members had received a Covid-19 booster, 219 had two doses of the vaccine and 34 had only one dose, according to reporting by my colleague Patricia Mazzei in The Times. “I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Dr. Pino added. He went on: “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50 percent. Pathetic.”Shortly afterward, Pino was put on administrative leave for a month. Jeremy T. Redfern, the press secretary for the Department of Health, said when the leave of absence was announced that the department was “conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case.” Redfern said in a statement that the decision to get vaccinated “is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers.”This and other similar developments have certainly not hurt DeSantis’s poll numbers. The latest survey released Feb. 24 by Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida not only found that “of the elected officials on this survey, Governor Ron DeSantis had the highest job approval rating at 58 percent, with 37 percent disapproval,” but also that Florida Republicans preferred DeSantis over Trump 44-41 as their presidential nominee.John Feehery, a Republican lobbyist who previously worked for the party’s House leaders, argues that DeSantis isattuned to the libertarian impulses of an electorate that simply doesn’t trust the conventional wisdom coming out of Washington. DeSantis also seems willing to court cultural conservatives in ways that most Washington politicians don’t, like with the sex education bill that he signed. DeSantis also seems willing to take on big corporations for their wokeness, a potent issue among the G.O.P. base.Feehery described DeSantis as “a wild-card,” noting “he was also right on Covid, which took an incredible amount of courage.”As governor, DeSantis is wary when he senses the potential for blowback, waiting days before commenting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When he finally did so, his comments were largely focused on domestic politics.At a Feb. 28 news conference, DeSantis placed blame for the invasion on the “weakness” of the Biden administration while lavishing praise on Trump: “When Obama was president, Putin took Crimea. When Trump was president, they didn’t take anything. And now Biden’s president and they’re rolling into Ukraine,” DeSantis said, arguing that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a “total catastrophe” that emboldened Putin.Along with supporters, DeSantis has many harsh critics.Nancy Isenberg, a historian at L.S.U. and the author of “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America,” wrote by email that “DeSantis is yet another Ivy League graduate of Yale and Harvard, pretending to be one of the people,” adding thatDeSantis represents a tried and true feature of American politics: You pretend to care about the “common man,” speaking his language, and while his gaze is captivated by the dazzling show, as Lyndon Johnson remarked of poor white rage, “he won’t notice you’re picking his pockets.”Anthony Brunello, a professor of political science at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., wrote in an email that “Ron DeSantis is like Trump in that he is a creature of power.” Brunello posed the question, “Who believes in their ideology more — Trump or DeSantis?” DeSantis, he answered:His conservative values lean against responding to climate change, dealing with environmental problems, providing health care, establishing disaster insurance on a statewide basis, improving social services, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, improving the foster care system, protecting the ocean and coastline and fisheries, moving on prison reform, protecting the right to vote and so on. DeSantis has no plans to do any of those things in a state that needs them all. Instead, he is deep into culture wars, battling against critical race theory — and backing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation — because it will win votes and hold that conservative core. He calculates Trump will fade in the months to come and he will pick up the pieces.DeSantis is running for re-election this year and is clearly favored to win a second term. He has raised more than $86 million, dwarfing the seven-figure totals collected by the two leading Democratic contenders, former governor Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried, the Florida commissioner of agriculture.Campaign finance in Florida is a major deregulated industry in itself.Large donors to DeSantis, according to the website Florida Politics, include:$200,000 from a single source, West Palm Beach-based company Kane Financial. Two political committees also wrote six-figure checks. The Strong Communities of Southwest Florida PC and The Committee for Justice, Transportation and Business, both chaired by lobbyist David Ramba, each donated $150,000. Floridians for Positive Change and Focused on Florida’s Future PC, two other Ramba-headed political committees, also wrote $75,000 checks to Friends of Ron DeSantis this month.DeSantis has dismissed speculation that he will run for president in 2024 as “nonsense,” but Trump does not believe him. How do we know this? Because Trump has issued a series of direct and indirect hostile comments targeting DeSantis, but often without naming him.On Jan. 12, Trump criticized “politicians” who refuse to say whether they have been vaccinated: “The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless.”Axios reported on Jan. 16 that Trump was telling associates that DeSantis is “an ingrate with a ‘dull personality’ and no realistic chance of beating him in a potential 2024 showdown.”Trump, whose own interest in running for president grew after Barack Obama baited him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ dinner, should know better than to toss insults at a politician like DeSantis — a bulldog who does not back down from a fight.As Rich Lowry, whose admiration for DeSantis I discussed earlier, wrote in Politico on Jan. 20, 2022:The Trump-DeSantis story line is inherently alluring, considering the chances of a collision between two men who have been allies and the possibility of the subordinate in the relationship, DeSantis, eclipsing the figure who helped to elevate him into what he is today.Some version of what DeSantis represents, Lowry continued, “has the greatest odds of coaxing the party away from Trump and forging a new political synthesis that bears the unmistakable stamp of Trump while jettisoning his flaws.”Lowry even suggested a line of attack: that Trump “elevated Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, early in the pandemic and listened to his advice for too long”; that “despite all his talk of building a border wall, Trump didn’t get it done and left a desperately flawed immigration system intact, even though he had two years of a Republican Congress”; that Trump “rattled China’s cage but didn’t make fundamental changes”; and that Trump “lost to Joe Biden, a desperately flawed candidate who only made it into the White House because Trump made himself so unpopular.”For DeSantis, there is nothing to gain by declaring now what he will do in 2024. Instead, he continues to gain national stature as his builds a powerful fund-raising base, stressing themes that draw support from conservatives in Florida and from across the nation.In one fund-raising solicitation, DeSantis warns of “cultural Marxism,” according to the website Florida Politics, telling prospective donors: “We delivered on a promise to the people of Florida by banning critical race theory. This ‘curriculum’ of hate and divisiveness has no place in society, let alone our schools. Critical race theory indoctrinates our children and teaches them to judge each other as ‘oppressors,’ ‘inherent racists’ and ‘victims.’”A second DeSantis fund-raising letter reads: “Joe Biden might want Governor DeSantis to get out of the way so he can impose his radical agenda, but Governor DeSantis will not kowtow to authoritarian bullying from Joe Biden or anyone else.”Not only do these themes stand ready for use in a presidential bid, but their very pugnacity suggests that Trump may want to reconsider his provocative bullying strategy when it comes to DeSantis.DeSantis has a wide range of options. He has positioned himself as a leading 2024 presidential candidate, if Trump falters. If Trump does run and looks unbeatable in the race for the nomination, DeSantis can hold back and wait until 2028, when he will be 50 — the prime of life for a presidential candidate.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

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida bill

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida billEntertainment giant suspends political donations as CEO apologises for silence and governor hits back with ‘communist’ barb The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, claimed the Walt Disney Company was too cozy with communist China, as the chief executive of the tourism and entertainment criticized a state bill that bars teachers from instructing early grades on LGBTQ+ issues.Disney accused of removing gay content from Pixar films Read moreDeSantis, who has not yet signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, also reportedly criticized Disney as “woke”, after the company’s leader opposed the legislation.Controversy surrounding the bill could cut off a significant fundraising pipeline for Florida Republicans: Disney said it would suspend political donations in the state.The move came after the Disney chief executive, Bob Chapek, experienced extensive blowback for not using the company’s influence to thwart the controversial bill.“I do not want anyone to mistake a lack of a statement for a lack of support,” Chapek said early this week in a memo obtained by USA Today.“We all share the same goal of a more tolerant, respectful world. Where we may differ is in the tactics to get there.“And because this struggle is much bigger than any one bill in any one state, I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse community organizations we support.”Chapek’s first public statements on the bill came in a shareholder’s meeting on Wednesday.“We were opposed to the bill from the outset but we chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind the scenes engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” he reportedly said.Chapek claimed such efforts had taken place for weeks. The executive said he had called DeSantis to express Disney’s “disappointment” with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.Chapek posted a statement online and emailed staffers on Friday, saying Disney was wrong to stay silent as the Republican-majority Florida legislature greenlit a bill he called “yet another challenge to basic human rights”.Republicans contend that parents, not educators, should discuss gender issues with children in early grades. The bill bars prohibits instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through grade three.DeSantis, who has indicated that he supports the measure, has chafed at calls for a veto. A potential frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he sent a fundraising email that said: “Disney is in far too deep with the communist party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”The statement shocked Republicans and Democrats. Disney theme parks are a multibillion-dollar economic engine for Florida. The company has given outsize amounts to state parties and politicians and holds significant influence in state government.DeSantis also criticized Disney at a campaign event in South Florida Thursday.“Companies that have made a fortune catering to families should understand that parents don’t want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom,” DeSantis said. “Our policies will be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not the musing of woke corporations.”Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative now part of the Lincoln Project, told the Associated Press: “The weird hypocrisy of Florida politics right now is DeSantis has been happy to take Disney’s money but to pass a bill that’s anathema to the values of their customers and their institution.”A Republican lawmaker who didn’t want to be named because he or she did not want to comment publicly against the governor told the same outlet Disney was the third-highest contributor to state Republican candidates. Disney has given millions to both Democrats and Republicans.Disney opened a theme park in China six years ago and has landed access to that country’s booming film market. It has also been accused of altering content to satisfy China’s leaders.DeSantis’s critics charged that he was opposing Disney out of his ambition to win the Republican primary.“It’s really pretty shocking,” former Republican governor Charlie Crist, now a Democratic congressman who hopes to challenge DeSantis, told the AP.Outcry as Georgia lawmakers aim to pass Florida-style ‘don’t say gay’ bill Read moreCrist noted that DeSantis has gone head-to-head with other industries important to Florida, pointing to a legal fight with cruise companies which wanted passengers to show proof of Covid-19 vaccinations.“Now it’s Disney. Who’s next on the hit list for this governor?” Crist commented.The Democratic US congressman Darren Soto also questioned the governor’s attack.“This is another strike in the hate agenda that Governor DeSantis is pushing right now,” Soto said, noting that Florida’s budget relies heavily on sales tax generated by Disney and other theme parks.“Now he’s putting that in jeopardy because he wants to attack LGBTQ+ families, families that make up a fundamental part of the Disney atmosphere.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisRepublicansLGBT rightsWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Florida Senate Passes Voting Bill to Create Election Crimes Agency

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      The bill would make Florida one of the first states to have a force dedicated to election crimes and voter fraud, despite such offenses being exceedingly rare.The Florida Senate passed a sweeping new bill overhauling the state’s electoral process, adding new restrictions to the state election code and establishing a law enforcement office dedicated solely to investigating election crimes.The bill, which passed 24-14, now goes to the state’s House of Representatives, where it could pass as soon as next week and land on the desk of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who is expected to sign it. One Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandes, voted against it. A Democratic senator, Loranne Ausley, initially voted yes, but immediately posted on Twitter that she “pushed the wrong button” and has since changed her vote.Though Republicans in the state had passed another sweeping voting law in May of last year, Mr. DeSantis made election reform one of the top priorities for this legislative session as well. Both efforts come after the 2020 election in Florida was without any major issues, and Republicans in the state touted it as a “gold standard” for election administration.The legislation is poised to become the first major election-related bill to pass this year in a critical battleground state, and it would indicate no sign of cresting for the wave of new election laws, adding more restrictions to voting, that began last year — with 34 laws passed in 19 states.The core of the bill is the establishment of a permanent election crimes office within the Department of State, which would make Florida one of the first states to have an agency solely dedicated to election crimes and voter fraud, despite such offenses being exceedingly rare in the United States. An investigation last year by The Associated Press found fewer than 475 potential claims of fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.The new office would assist the secretary of state’s office in investigating complaints and allegations, initiating their own independent inquiries and overseeing a voter fraud hotline. It would include an unspecified number of investigators, and Mr. DeSantis would also appoint at least one special officer in each of the regional offices of the State Department of Law Enforcement to investigate election crimes.The bill would also raise the penalties on those collecting and submitting more than two absentee ballots from a misdemeanor to a felony.Voting rights groups are worried that the continuing criminalization of the voting process could both frighten voters away from participating and leave election officials fearing prosecution over honest mistakes.“Involving law enforcement with this sort of vague mandate obviously creates issues and can have certainly a detrimental effect in terms of the ability of voters to cast ballots if they’re worried about law enforcement involvement,” said Daniel Griffith, the policy director at Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization focused on elections and voter access. “And it has a detrimental effect on election officials if they’re worried that there’s going to be law enforcement over their shoulder.”Previously, investigations into election fraud were handled by Florida’s secretary of state, the Department of Law Enforcement and the attorney general. Democrats argued that the bill effectively creates a new agency to do work that was done by existing agencies. The agency’s creation, Democrats say, is just a political ploy to signal that Florida and Mr. DeSantis are staying tough on an issue core to both the Republican base and to former President Donald J. Trump.“Why are we doing this?” said State Senator Lori Berman during debate on Friday. “The only thing I can think is that we’re motivated by the ‘Big Lie’ that the elections nationwide didn’t take place in a proper manner. But we know that is not true.”State Senator Travis Hutson, the sponsor of the bill and a Republican, defended it during debate on Friday, stating that having a dedicated force would both uncover more fraud and make the state able to handle more allegations.“We did have great elections, the governor mentioned that,” said Mr. Hutson. “But I would submit to you that we can always do better.”He added: “I will say there is no voter intimidation or no suppressing votes in this bill.”The new election office drew criticisms from some Republican members as well, who argued that it was unnecessary.“For 15 people to go after what is potentially a handful of complaints that will ultimately be substantiated is just absolutely almost comical,” said Mr. Brandes during debate on Friday, referring to suggestions from the executive branch that they assign 15 investigators to the office. “So I am not going to support this bill today.”Uniformed law enforcement officials have been used in the past to deter and suppress voters. In 1982, the Republican National Committee dispatched a group of armed, off-duty police officers known as the National Ballot Security Task Force to linger around New Jersey polling locations during a closely contested governor’s election. The Democratic National Committee sued, forcing the R.N.C. into a consent decree to ban such tactics.Those memories appeared to be still on the minds of lawmakers in the Florida legislature. During debate on Thursday, State Senator Victor Manuel Torres Jr. asked Mr. Hutson, the sponsor of the bill: “Will these individuals be in uniform or civilian attire?”Mr. Hutson responded that the current enforcement arm of the secretary of state dresses in civilian attire, and that members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are likely to be uniformed.In addition to the new Office of Election Crimes and Security, the bill adds other new restrictions to voting, including banning ranked-choice voting; raising the cap on fines of third-party registration groups from $1,000 to $50,000; extending a ban on private funding for election administration to include the “cost of any litigation”; and replacing references to “drop boxes” with “secure ballot intake stations.” More

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      Ron DeSantis suggests France would ‘fold’ if it was invaded by Russia

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      Ron DeSantis suggests France would ‘fold’ if it was invaded by RussiaThe 2024 presidential nominee contender also angrily chastised students on stage with him for wearing masks as ‘Covid theatre’

      Ukraine crisis – live news
      Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has said France would not put up a fight if Russia invaded, as it did in Ukraine.White House unveils new Covid strategy including ‘test to treat’ plan – liveRead more“A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity,” DeSantis told reporters at a press event at South Florida University in Tampa on Wednesday.“I mean can you imagine if he [Vladimir Putin] went into France? Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”The governor also began the event by angrily attacking students present on the stage with him for wearing masks against Covid-19. “You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said, pointing a finger.“I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything and we’ve gotta stop with this Covid theatre. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”Federal authorities have relaxed mask guidance in much of the US but the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 950,000 – and more than 70,000 in Florida alone.Anyone French who saw DeSantis’s remark might remember the bad jokes (“cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) and Orwellian doublespeak (french fries renamed “freedom fries”) that followed Jacques Chirac’s refusal to back the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.Amid much online mockery of DeSantis’s remarks, Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, tweeted: “He went to Yale.”DeSantis also went to Harvard, to study law. Before entering politics, he was a Jag or US navy lawyer in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. He regularly polls second in surveys of likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, behind Donald Trump.On Wednesday, after dissing the whole of France, he had praise for Ukrainians fighting the Russian invasion.“And so those folks are stepping up,” he said, “but it’s, there’s a lot of problems I think between now and then and I think unfortunately it’s going to end up very, very ugly over the next weeks and months.”He also offered his view of Putin’s psyche, the evils of communism and whether the US should develop its own energy resources, at the expense of federal lands and efforts to fight the climate crisis, in order to lessen reliance on Russia.“Look at what’s going on and someone like Vladimir Putin,” he said. “You know, I analogise him to basically an authoritarian gas station attendant.“You look at their country, it’s a hollowed-out country but for the energy. And yes they have legacy nuclear weapons, which makes them much more dangerous than if they didn’t have those.“And so [Putin is] being fueled because America is not serious about energy independence. Right now Europe is not serious at all. So Europe is funding this guy. So he has the ability now to go in and flex muscle.”DeSantis also said Republicans under Trump “funded a lot of weapons for Ukraine … that has helped them put up a fight”.He did not mention that Trump’s first impeachment trial was for seeking dirt on his political rivals by withholding military aid – to Ukraine.TopicsRon DeSantisUS politicsRepublicansFloridaUkraineFrancenewsReuse this content More

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie

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      Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lie Analysis: His British friend tried to help but the former president did not want to forget his voter fraud obsession and focus on the future. CPAC loved it but Republicans hoping to take Congress know they are courting disasterThe sagest advice given to Donald Trump all week came from a man who is neither a Republican nor an American.Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bidRead moreNigel Farage, the British politician, broadcaster and demagogue whose Brexit campaign coincided with Trump’s rise to power, warned his old pal against endlessly fixating on the 2020 election.“This message of a stolen election, if you think about it, is actually a negative backward looking message,” Farage told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida.“There is a better, more positive message the Republican party needs to embrace and it’s this: ‘We are going state by state, vote by vote to make sure that America has the best, the cleanest, the fairest election system anywhere in the western world.’”Urging an end to the “big lie” obsession is heresy at places like CPAC, the Woodstock of the red meat right. Perhaps no pro-Trump Republican would dare breathe it to the former president, lest he slap them with a demeaning nickname, endorse a primary opponent or blackball them from his luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.But Farage, as foreigner and fellow traveller, may have felt liberated to speak an inconvenient truth: that endlessly re-litigating the last election with false claims of voter fraud could prove a serious liability for Republicans in November’s midterms.The former UK Independence party and Brexit party leader went on: “That negative anger must be turned into a positive. You’ve got to offer the voters of this country a shining city on the hill. You’ve got to give them a vision. People want dreams, people want hopes, and the deliverers of that message are you guys.”The audience sounded receptive enough. And while some CPAC speakers did promulgate “the big lie” – Ohio Senate hopeful Josh Mandel declared, “I want to say it very clearly and very directly: I believe this election was stolen from Donald J Trump” – they generally gave greater emphasis to winning Congress in 2022 and, of course, Trump returning to the White House in 2024.Jim Jordan, an Ohio congressman and close Trump ally, declared: “I believe President Trump is going to run again … I think if he runs, he’s going to win.”But the annual CPAC straw poll testing who should get the Republican nomination raised more questions than answers. Of course Trump won with more votes than everyone else combined. But his 59% was not quite the overwhelming show of force he might have hoped for in what is usually the capital of Trumpistan.There is now a clear alternative. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, finished second on 28%, well clear of Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, on 2%.In a separate poll where Trump was removed from the equation, DeSantis won by a landslide 61%.On the other hand, Florida is DeSantis’s home state, so he might expect to punch above his weight here. The governor gave a well received speech on Thursday that notably failed to mention Trump. But the audience for Trump’s address on Saturday was appreciably bigger and brimming with “Trump 2024” badges and caps.Even those sporting DeSantis regalia were not quite ready to back him. David Duffy, 57, a retired insurance worker sporting a giant “DeSantisLand” flag, said: “We want to keep President Trump as our president. We believe he still is our president and, with DeSantis being 42 years old, we want to give him a little bit more time.”Asked for her 2024 preference, Marnie Allen, wearing a “DeSantisLand” cap, said: “Trump, only because I owe him. I think we all owe him to make up for the disasters and because he’s going to go in with a vengeance this time and take care of our fourth level of government: career bureaucrats. He will go in this time and he will take a machete to them.”The 51-year-old from Orlando, who works in higher education, felt compelled to add: “Not a real machete, of course, but a figurative machete.”Unless something dramatic happens – a criminal indictment in New York, say – the nomination remains Trump’s to lose. On Saturday he dropped his strongest hint yet that he does intend to pursue it.The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracyRead moreHe clearly did not get Farage’s memo. Trump told the audience: “The Rinos [Republicans In Name Only] and certain weak Republican politicians want to ignore election integrity also but we cannot ignore it. We have to fix it. Make no mistake, they [Democrats] will try to do it again in ’22 and ’24, and we cannot let them do that.“And the way we [let them do that] is to come to a very powerful conclusion as to what happened in 2020. We stand down to stop talking about it, we stop making Americans aware of the cheating and corruption that went on. That’s really saying, ‘It’s OK, you can do it again.’ We can’t let that happen.”The slapping sound you heard was a hundred Republican midterm candidates planting their hands on their foreheads. Trump is coming to a district near you, with a big lie to tell. It remains Democrats’ best hope of a midterm miracle.TopicsDonald TrumpCPACUS politicsRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024Ron DeSantisanalysisReuse this content More