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    Who will Trump pick as his 2024 running mate? A VP shortlist

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    Donald Trump has secured the necessary delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive election. That result was never in much doubt, but the contest to be Trump’s running mate is harder to predict. Once again, the Republican primaries demonstrated his strength among white men in rural areas, leading to speculation that he will choose a woman or person of colour to broaden his appeal in November.Here are some factors to consider and a look at the likely contenders.Why does Trump need a new running mate?Former vice-president Mike Pence was a useful ally during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, a Christian conservative who shored up support among Republicans suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. But Pence’s refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the 2020 election led to a falling out and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists. After a failed bid for president in 2024, Pence recently said in an interview that he will not be endorsing Trump.What is Trump looking for in a 2024 VP?He may decide he needs a female running mate to make himself less toxic to suburban women, especially with abortion rights looming large as an election issue. But history suggests that he will have three priorities: a person who displays loyalty; a person who looks like they are from “central casting”; a person who knows their place and will not outshine him on the campaign trail.Will Trump’s VP pick matter in the 2024 election?Probably not a lot. There is little evidence that a woman on the ticket draws more female voters or that a running mate’s home state will necessarily back them. Dan Pfeiffer, a White House communications director under President Barack Obama, told the New York Times: “The vice-presidential pick is something that generates a massive amount of press coverage but has the most minimal of impacts on the election.”But perhaps a bad pick can do damage: Republican nominee John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 probably didn’t help. This year, however, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are, again, the two oldest candidates in history, giving new meaning to their VP picks being only “a heartbeat away from the presidency”.How many VPs have gone on to become president?Fifteen. Eight of these succeeded to the office on the death of a president, including Lyndon Johnson, who was sworn in onboard Air Force One after the assassination of John F Kennedy. Gerald Ford was the only unelected vice-president and president following the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama, who was succeeded by Trump, who was then defeated by Biden for the presidency.What to know about the Republicans on Trump’s vice-president shortlistView image in fullscreenGreg AbbottAge: 66Occupation: Governor of TexasThe Texas politician is a Trump loyalist and hardliner on border security who has fought a series of legal battles with the Biden White House. Trump said he “would very much consider Abbott” for vice-president during a joint Fox News interview in February. Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, said he was “committed to governing Texas” and to his own re-election campaign.View image in fullscreenTucker CarlsonAge: 54Occupation: Conservative political commentator and writerThe former Fox News host is a strong ideological match. Like Trump, he relishes offending liberals, praising autocrats such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orbán of Hungary (he conducted fawning interviews with both) and pushing the far-right “great replacement” theory that western elites are importing immigrant voters to supplant white people. Although Carlson once wrote of Trump in a text message, “I hate him passionately”, more recently he has praised him as “sensible and wise”.View image in fullscreenBen CarsonAge: 72Occupation: Retired neurosurgeonBorn in Detroit to a single mother with a third- grade education who worked multiple jobs to support her family, Carson rose to become a leading neurosurgeon – a life story that the Trump campaign could promote as it seeks to win over aspirational Black votes. As housing secretary, Carson was among Trump’s longest-serving cabinet members. He remained loyal to the outgoing president after the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol and campaigned with him in Iowa before the caucuses.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisAge: 45Occupation: Governor of FloridaDeSantis tried and failed to dethrone Trump as king of the Republican party, flaming out during the primary season. He once made a campaign ad in which he read Trump’s book about getting rich, The Art of the Deal, to one of his children and encouraged them to “build the wall” along the US-Mexico border by stacking toy bricks. But when he ran for president, Trump branded him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and seems unlikely to forgive the perceived disloyalty.View image in fullscreenByron DonaldsAge: 45Occupation: US representative for Florida’s 19th congressional districtThe Freedom Caucus Republican is one of Trump’s most prominent African American supporters and backed him against state governor Ron DeSantis in the primary election. He is short on experience, having only started in Congress in 2021. At an event hosted by Axios, Donalds suggested that he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he were vice-president.View image in fullscreenTulsi GabbardAge: 42Occupation: Rightwing media personality.The former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate has rebranded herself as a rightwing media personality. She campaigned for election-denier Kari Lake and other Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. Her provocative critiques of the western foreign policy establishment, and her overtures to dictators such as Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, are likely to resonate with Trump. Asked in March by Fox News if she would consider a vice-presidential slot, Gabbard replied: “I would be open to that.”View image in fullscreenMarjorie Taylor GreeneAge: 49Occupation: Republican congresswomanThe far-right flamethrower from Georgia personifies the age of Trumpism with her pugnacious style, bizarre conspiracy theories, indications of support for political violence, and racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements. She once suggested that, if she had led the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the mob would have been armed and victorious in its efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (she later claimed this was “sarcasm”).View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyAge: 52Occupation: Politician.The former South Carolina governor was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations and, as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, could help neutralise charges of sexism and racism against him. But her persistence as his most durable opponent during the Republican primary, in which she questioned his age and mental acuity, would be hard for Trump – who called her “Birdbrain” – and the Maga base to forgive. They are also at odds on aid to Ukraine.View image in fullscreenKari LakeAge: 54Occupation: Candidate for US Senate in Arizona.The firebrand former TV anchor was the breakout Republican star of the midterm elections but lost the race for governor of Arizona, a result she has never accepted. She was endorsed by Trump and continued to repeat his election lies while campaigning as a surrogate for him during the Republican primary. But she may be seen as more valuable running for Senate because she could help Republicans take control of that chamber if she wins.View image in fullscreenKristi NoemAge: 52Occupation: Governor of South Dakota.The former pageant queen and congresswoman is serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. She quashed speculation about her own presidential ambitions by endorsing Trump early. But her conservative stance on abortion – and media reports of an affair with the former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski – could be an electoral liability.View image in fullscreenVivek RamaswamyAge: 38Occupation: Business executive.The former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is a political neophyte who shook up the Republican primary debates, acting as unofficial Trump surrogate and earning the scorn of Haley. Trump condemned Ramaswamy as “not Maga” when he gained traction in the opinion polls but has since praised the biotech entrepreneur, who dropped out and threw his weight behind the former president. Ramaswamy is a young person of colour, although his views on the climate crisis are out of step with young voters.View image in fullscreenSarah SandersAge: 41Occupation: Governor of Arkansas.She was a devoted White House press secretary, tirelessly promoting Trump’s agenda and insisting that he was neither racist nor sexist. Last year she was inaugurated as the first woman to serve as governor of Arkansas and she is currently the youngest governor in the country. Her father, former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is the creator of The Kids Guide to President Trump and an ex-pastor who might help shore up the Christian evangelical vote.View image in fullscreenTim ScottAge: 58Occupation: Senator for South Carolina.The Black evangelical Christian made his own bid for the presidency but dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses, endorsing Trump and telling him: “I just love you.” The senator might be seen as a way to build on Trump’s recent progress among male African American voters. Asked about potential running mates during a Fox News town hall in February, Trump pointed to Scott and said: “A lot of people are talking about that gentleman right over there.” Scott is single but, with impeccable timing, recently presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring.View image in fullscreenElise StefanikAge: 39Occupation: US representative for New York’s 21st congressional districtThe New York politician is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump. Once a moderate, she gained national prominence last year after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. She has also parroted Trump’s use of the term “hostages” to describe those convicted of crimes on January 6.View image in fullscreenJD VanceAge: 39Occupation: US senator for OhioThe venture capitalist rose to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. A one-time Trump critic, he is now an ardent supporter and claims to be fighting for the working class by taking on liberals who “populate the upper echelons of American government, business, media, entertainment and academia”. He echoes the former president’s populist views on immigration and an “America First” foreign policy on Ukraine. Donald Trump Jr told Newsmax in January: “I’d love to see a JD Vance. People who are principally in alignment as well as aggressive.” More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Biden, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is under way, with Donald Trump the lone Republican candidate left seeking to unseat the sitting president, Joe Biden. After the pandemic changed the way Americans campaigned and voted four years ago, and three years after thousands of rioters waged violent protest at the nation’s Capitol to upend the last election’s results, the US will face new obstacles in carrying out the democratic process.Here is the list of candidates in the primary elections as of Super Tuesday.@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline 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      Donald Trump
      Former president of the United States

      Former president Donald Trump is the top contender for the Republican party nomination, even as he faces several legal hurdles, including federal charges over obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act. Trump, a longtime businessman, unsuccessfully ran for re-election as president in 2020, and refused to accept the outcome of the results. Trump most recently said he is pro-life, and would continue his hardline immigration stance in a second term if elected. He has also renewed attacks on trans people, especially athletes, and his anti-China agenda.
      Trump won big in Iowa, with 51% of votes – full Republican results
      In New Hampshire, Trump beat Haley by 10 points – full New Hampshire primary results
      Trump wins Nevada caucuses in effective one-horse race – Nevada primary results in full
      Trump beat Haley in her home state – full South Carolina primary results
      Trump defeats Haley in Michigan – full Michigan primary results
      Trump swept to victory in states across the US on Super Tuesday – full primary results
      Back to topDemocrats@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) 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      Joe Biden
      President of the United States

      Joe Biden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for Biden remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Biden has served in politics for over five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.
      Biden took 96.2% of the vote in a write-in campaign in New Hampshire – full primary results
      Biden easily won first Democratic contest in South Carolina – full primary results
      Biden won the Democratic vote – full Nevada primary results
      Biden won but sheds support over Gaza – full Michigan primary results
      Biden swept to victory in states across the US on Super Tuesday – full primary results
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      Cenk Uygur
      Political commentator and media host

      Cenk Uygur announced the longest of long-shot campaigns in October. Now 53, the outspoken host of the progressive Young Turks TV show has no experience in elected office – though he did run for Congress in California in 2020 – but perhaps more importantly he was born in Istanbul, Turkey. Most legal scholars would say that makes him ineligible to be president, under article II, section I, clause 5 of the US constitution, which says only “natural born citizens” can hold the office. Uygur says otherwise, and promises to prove it in court. 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      Marianne Williamson
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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

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      LGBTQ+ people protest in Florida over Republican conversion therapy bill

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      Hundreds of LGBTQ+ people gathered on the steps of the Florida state house on Wednesday to protest against a first-in-the-nation bill that critics say would raise health insurance costs for all state residents.The Republican-backed proposal, house bill 1639, mandates that insurance carriers cover conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice whose practitioners falsely claim to be able to change the sexual orientation or identity of LGBTQ+ people.“We hope that legislators wouldn’t vote for a health insurance mandate that would increase everyone’s costs as a way to just demonize LGBT people,” said Quinn Diaz, public policy associate for Equality Florida. “But we really don’t have any faith in this state government, at this point.”Diaz said the proposed legislation would also force trans people to “out themselves” on state-issued identification cards, requiring Florida residents to list the sex they were assigned at birth on their driver’s licenses.The bill comes amid a mounting assault by Florida Republicans on LGBTQ+ rights, a legislative project that has cost Florida taxpayers millions in legal fees. Last year, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the so-called “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Earlier this year, the Florida legislature introduced and advanced 11 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights, including a proposed ban on Pride flags in public buildings, schools, and universities across the state.Now, Florida leaders have opted to focus on driver’s licenses and healthcare. Just last month, a leaked internal memo from the Florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles revealed that the state would no longer allow trans residents to change the gender marker on their driver’s license.“Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record,” said the memo, written by the deputy executive director of the Florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles, Robert Kynoch.Kynoch warned that “misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license” amounts to fraud and “subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties”.LGBTQ+ advocates say the quiet rule change has sown fear and confusion among trans and non-binary people across Florida.“Folks were afraid to just drive their car and go pick up their kids from school, because if they get a traffic infraction and are pulled over, ‘would I be automatically arrested for fraud by the police officer who checks my license?’” said Diaz.Though there is no legal way to retroactively prosecute a trans driver for the gender marker on their license, Diaz said, “the point of that memo was to make people scared.”Protesters at Wednesday’s rally also expressed outrage that the bill will probably raise health insurance costs.The Florida legislature passed a statute last year that requires lawmakers to commission an economic impact study any time a bill proposes the creation of a health insurance mandate. According to the 2023 law championed by Florida Republicans, any proposed “mandate that certain health benefits be provided by insurers” needs to first be assessed by the Florida agency for healthcare administration, so that the state can understand how the bill will “contribute to the increasing cost of health insurance premiums”.But House Republicans have not commissioned an economic impact study to understand how mandating conversion therapy might raise monthly insurance premiums, according to Equality Florida.Despite widespread criticism, the bill’s lead sponsor, the state representative Doug Bankson, said during a house committee hearing earlier this month that his proposal did not target transgender people.“It doesn’t mean we’re standing here and saying that the people in this room don’t have the right to seek their wholeness,” Bankson said. “This bill is about making sure that everyone has the right to seek that wholeness.”He described gender as a “subjective issue that is going on socially”, arguing instead that a driver’s license should display a person’s sex, “something concrete medically”.Florida Democrats remain unconvinced by Bankson’s characterization of the proposed legislation as the “compassion and clarity” bill.“What’s going on in the Florida capitol? We should be moving forward as a state, not going backwards,” said the state representative Anna Eskamani, speaking at Wednesday’s rally.Testifying against the bill earlier this week, Eskamani said Bankson’s proposal was a poorly disguised way to score political points with other Florida conservatives.“When we get in between people and their doctors and start to decide what coverage is appropriate versus not, it’s not about safety, now it’s just about political parties, it’s about the latest Fox News headline,” she said. “Nobody is asking for this.”As protesters marched through the streets of Tallahassee on Wednesday, the memory of Nex Benedict – a non-binary teenager who died last week following a fight in their public high school bathroom – loomed overhead.Angelique Godwin, a trans activist and drag artist who helped organize Wednesday’s rally, thought of Benedict’s early death as she looked up at protest signs with the words “Let Us Live” emblazoned on the blues and pinks of the transgender Pride flag.“The tragedy of Nex’s death is something that I think has lit a fire in all of us,” said Angelique Godwin. “We want justice for Nex, and we are also aware that their death is a warning of what could happen here in Florida if they continue to push the anti-trans narrative in legislation.” More

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      Professors’ union sanctions Florida college over ‘political’ DeSantis takeover

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      A national university professors union has voted to sanction New College of Florida, the former liberal arts school where Ron DeSantis orchestrated an unprecedented “aggressively ideological and politically motivated” takeover by a group of ultra-conservative cronies.The vote to sanction New College came after an investigation by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which has placed only 12 other universities on its sanctioned list since 1995.The AAUP created a special committee to investigate the “apparent pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education” by DeSantis, the far-right Florida governor who waged war on so-called “wokeness” at schools and colleges after his resounding re-election in 2022.The investigation was launched in January 2023 after DeSantis appointed six allies to the school’s board of trustees, which at breakneck speed restructured academic courses without meaningful faculty involvement, eliminated the gender studies major, and cancelled a slew of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including canceling meals during Ramadan, the holy month of daytime fasting for Muslims.The new board imposed the sweeping reforms after ousting the president and inserting a confidant of DeSantis – at double the predecessor’s previous annual salary.AAUP sanctions have no regulatory consequence, but they are published on the union’s website “for the purpose of informing association members, the profession at large, and the public that unsatisfactory conditions of academic government exist at the institutions in question”. Sanctions can also be removed.In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, a New College spokesperson, Nathan March, said the union “lacks the authority” to issue sanctions and called the announcement “a headline grab, echoing the sensationalistic tone of their report”.DeSantis, in conjunction with Republican-controlled state legislatures, targeted K-12 and college level education in the run-up to his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, dismantling DEI initiatives and disciplines that offended ultra Christian rights groups.According to the AAUP’s final report, the assault by the state government “reflects not only a blatant disregard for academic standards of governance and academic freedom but also a discriminatory and biased assault on the rights of racial minorities and LGBTQ communities”.“It represents a throwback to Florida’s darker past that must be repudiated,” the report said.“What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror,” LeRoy Pernell, a law professor at Florida A&M Law, told the inquiry. “There is a tremendous sense of dread right now, not just among faculty; it’s tangible among students and staff as well. People are intellectually and physically scared. We are being named an enemy of the state.”Another faculty member and union leader said: “The human toll in Florida is catastrophic. We are tired of being demonized by our government. Many of us are looking to leave Florida, and if we don’t, we will leave academia, and nobody wants our jobs. Faculty are suffering. And when we leave, our communities, our students, families – they will all suffer. So, when we fight for faculty, we are also fighting for the people in our communities.”The AAUP report also found that “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history, which, if sustained, threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country”. More

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      Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo has close ties with ‘dissident right’ magazine

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      Chris Rufo, a rightwing culture-war celebrity and close Ron DeSantis ally, has maintained a close relationship with IM-1776, a “dissident right” magazine that regularly showers praise on dictators and authoritarians, puffs racist ideologues, and attacks liberal democracy.The outlet’s editors and writers – many of them so-called “anons” working under pseudonyms – have variously advocated for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act; celebrated figures such as the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the proto-fascist Italian nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio; and advanced conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, and what they term the “regime”, a leftist power structure that they imagine unites the state, large corporations, universities and the media.Rufo and IM-1776The Guardian has previously reported on Rufo’s links with an outlet that experts described as pushing scientific racism; with a Danish data scientist who had previously co-authored scientific-racist papers; and on co-hosting an audio stream on X in which one participant advocated cooperating with a hypothetical white nationalist leader.Rufo, who played a leading role in the downfall of Harvard president Claudine Gay, has said such reporting is “guilt by association”, but his relationship with IM-1776 is explicitly collaborative and supportive, and the association is apparently mutually beneficial.Last month a “manifesto” written by Rufo – The New Right Activism – ran in the online and print versions of IM-1776, and Rufo has publicly urged his audience to buy and subscribe to the outlet. He has also co-hosted a series of Twitter spaces with the magazine’s editors, beginning in July last year.In one of them, recorded in October, he indicated an interest in incorporating the “dissident right” more fully in mainstream political discourse, saying: “I think there is a room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right. I think we need to have a bridge between the two and and engage in thoughtful dialogue.”More recently, he has expressed a personal interest in expanding the range of acceptable political discourse.On the Pirate Wires podcast earlier this month, he told host Mike Solana of his own activism: “I try to play that game, I try to lay traps, I try to provoke certain reactions, I try to launder certain words and phrases into the discourse.”The Guardian emailed Rufo detailed questions about his relationship with IM-1776, what if any concerns he had about content on the site, and which words or phrases he had laundered into the discourse, but received no response.Dr Julian Waller, a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses and a professorial lecturer at George Washington University, said: “Rufo is very intentionally acting as a bridging actor between people to his right – in a variety of dimensions and different ideological segments – and the more institutional establishment world: the harder right of American politics.”He said: “In the American context, the closest thing we have to a post-liberal government – and I won’t say dissident right, I’ll say post-liberal – is the DeSantis administration in Florida, and Chris Rufo’s activist legislative packages have been used by that state forthrightly.”Mark Granza, by his own account an Italian national living in Hungary, is the founder and editor-in-chief of IM-1776. He has returned Rufo’s public admiration. Granza was interviewed in February last year by the conservative Rod Dreher in the Hungarian Conservative, an outlet aligned with the authoritarian government of Viktor Orbán where Dreher writes as a fellow of the state-funded Danube Institute.Granza said of Rufo that “he doesn’t care about convincing the other side, or battling in the ‘marketplace of ideas’. He’s going to tell you what he’s going to do, and then do it, whether you agree with him or not.”Granza added: “That’s what I believe conservatives should do: use whatever power they have or can get and impose their views on to society.”Authoritarian sympathiesAuthoritarian sentiments like this also feed into IM-1776’s political enthusiasms.The magazine has been especially supportive of El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, who suspended civil liberties in 2022 as part of a crackdown on alleged gang members that has seen about 75,000 people arrested without charge – more than 1% of the country’s total population.The Guardian previously reported warnings from Salvadoran opposition figures, human rights groups and journalists that Bukele’s populist, bitcoin-fueled presidency is in danger of developing into an authoritarian state: Bukele has referred to himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”.On Twitter in September 2022, Granza characterized Bukele and Orbán’s authoritarian moves on crime and immigration as reminders of “the existence of the deep state in the west”. In March last year he posted: “America needs its own Bukele. Build massive prisons and start by throwing in every single regime apparatchik.”Political figures who receive regular praise in IM-1776 include the Italian proto-fascist D’Annunzio, who was the subject of a three-article “symposium” on the site in 2021.D’Annunzio, a poet and a first world war pilot, led Italian nationalists in seizing the city of Fiume after it had been given to Croatia in the Versailles settlement. In the months in which he governed it as an independent regency, D’Annunzio’s innovations included the use of Roman salutes, balcony speeches to crowds, and deploying black-shirted followers to repress opponents. All of these and more were later taken up and used by Mussolini’s fascist regime.Another favorite is Russian president Valdimir Putin, of whom a pseudonymous author asked at IM-1776 this week: “Is this the last real statesman?”RehabilitationsIM-1776 regularly runs articles that attempt to rehabilitate lesser known far-right thinkers and even convicted terrorists.Benjamin Braddock bylined a May 2022 interview with Renaud Camus, the French novelist, white nationalist and conspiracy theorist who coined the “Great Replacement” as a book title and as description of a purported plot by “replacist elites” to substitute immigrants for white Europeans.Camus’s slogan inspired white nationalist chants at Charlottesville, Virginia; was borrowed as the title of the manifesto written by the man who massacred 52 Muslims in two mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019; and also motivated the man who killed 10 Black people in the car park of a market in Buffalo in May 2022.In Braddock’s deferential interview, Camus characterizes these “replacist” elites as “Davos, bankers, international finance, multinational companies, pension funds, hedge funds, big five, and all kind of more or less private powers”.Last June, IM-1776 published an obituary of Ted Kaczynski by another pseudonymous author calling themselves “The Prudentialist”.Kaczynski died in a federal prison last year at the conclusion of a life sentence he received for a 17-year mailbombing campaign that killed three of his targets and injured 23 others.Describing Kaczynski as “allegedly a lone wolf terrorist, but also a mathematical genius”, the IM-1776 author relativized his crimes and explained that Kaczynski’s “iconic status on the contemporary right can be partly attributed to the devastating critique of the left included in his famous manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future”.Charles HaywoodOther IM-1776 contributors go even further in rhetorical attacks on the left.One regular contributor to and apparent funder of IM-1776 is the former shampoo manufacturer and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood. Haywood is bylined in six articles published on the IM-1776 website.In several of these articles, he uses eliminationist language in relation to his perceived enemies.In one, a dialogue with fellow IM-1776 regular Daniel Miller, Haywood writes that the goal of the right must be “the total, permanent defeat of the left, of the ideology at the heart of the Enlightenment”, and later that “our society is commanded to excise the limitless, satanic evils brought on us by the left”.Elsewhere, in a glowing review of Rufo’s book, America’s Cultural Revolution, Haywood says that it shows that “we might have to accept we can’t live with these people, the five or ten percent of our nation who lead or are most active in supporting the left”, and goes on to demand the repeal of the “so-called Civil Rights Act”.Waller, the political analyst, included Haywood as one of three case studies in a working paper on writers providing “advocacy in favor of genuine authoritarian regimes – ones which outright reject the basic structural and constitutional premises of modern electoral democracy”.In conversation he said that he included Haywood in the paper as one of the writers who “ … think democracy is bad, and that actually an authoritarian regime is good … it’s rare in the contemporary period for someone to be that open about these sorts of things.”In a separate review of First Do No Harm, a book on Covid by a pseudonymous author who claims to be a doctor, Haywood claims that Covid “‘vaccines’ aren’t vaccines at all, but prophylactic/therapeutic drugs of very limited efficacy”.In October 2022, Granza was interviewed on the YouTube channel of the Afrikaner nationalist activist Ernst van Zyl. In the interview, Granza indicated that beyond writing for IM-1776, Haywood stepped in at a crucial moment to keep IM-1776 alive.During the pandemic, Granza said, he was “completely incapable of continuing to fund the project. I had to find another job, and Charles Haywood pitched in.”Donations via ClaremontBeyond asking for subscriptions, IM-1776 solicits donations on a page on their website, but potential donors who click on the “tax deductible donations” are routed to a form on the rightwing Claremont Institute’s website, where Claremont advises: “The Claremont Institute is serving as a fiscal sponsor of IM-1776/the Art & Literature Foundation until they get fully established as a non-profit. Their commitment to the promotion of cultural work that draws on and promotes the beauty and truth of the natural order is well within the Claremont Institute’s mission.”The Guardian emailed Mark Granza with questions about content on the site and his own political sympathies. He did not respond directly but sent a reply email with an attached image of a hackneyed meme.The Guardian also emailed Charles Haywood with questions about funding arrangements at IM-1776, content on the site, and their own public pronouncements, but received no response. More

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      A once or future king? Floridians ask if DeSantis is looking forward or back

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      Two weeks have passed since Ron DeSantis crashed out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but many in Florida are questioning if the rightwing governor is still auditioning.On his return to Tallahassee following his national humiliation there was no period of quiet contemplation, or pause to refocus on his day job. Instead, DeSantis got straight down to business, little of it having immediate consequence to Florida or its voters.This week, insisting that the US looked to Florida for “leadership”, he called for constitutional reforms in Washington, including term limits for elected officials. Days later, he announced he was sending the Florida state guard to Texas to “fortify” its battle with the Biden administration over border security.And anybody in his home state figuring DeSantis was ready to move on from his obsession with the culture war issues that helped bring down his White House run was quickly disabused. One month into the year, Florida Republicans’ priorities have included banning Pride flags and stopping transgender drivers from changing their sex on licenses.Prominent questions circulating in the state are, now he is back to serve his final three years as governor: what are DeSantis’s intentions? And what is his ultimate goal?There is no shortage of theories. Some suggest he is ostensibly still in the race for the 2024 nomination, running a shadow campaign that would leave him ready to step in if legal troubles or other factors force Donald Trump out of contention.Others think he’s plotting further ahead. “He’s still running for president, just changed the timeline from 2024 to 2028,” Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor at Nova University, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.Another possibility is gaining traction among those who have studied DeSantis since he evolved from a nondescript and aloof US congressman to the helm of the third largest state: that he simply wants to be remembered for something when he’s termed out of office in January 2027.Such a hypothesis has plausibility if, as some observers believe, his future political career was mortally wounded by the implosion of a profligate presidential campaign that blew through $160m to garner barely 23,000 votes in Iowa, the only state he competed in.“My personal opinion is that he’s finished, that he’s going to go the way of Rick Perry in Texas, Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, all of these great governors who were going to be president, who were like shooting stars and then disappeared into the darkness,” said the political analyst Mac Stipanovich, a former Republican strategist.“If he were to resign today, he would have a legacy in Florida unlike almost any governor in my lifetime. It would be a legacy of anger, outrage and highly centralized top-down vitriol.“He can’t turn on a dime and sprint left because that would make him seem even more inauthentic than he normally does. But if he’s patient, if he takes time, he can move to the center and become, I shouldn’t say more likable, but likable at all since he has been a black hole of anti-charisma.”The “legacy” theory resonates with Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida. “He’s still got a good while in office, and right now he’s carrying on with points he was making on the campaign trail, but this happens with governors that run and come back home after having not done well, governors are always thinking about their legacy,” she said.“Some want to be known as the education governor, the tax relief or tax reform governor, the environmental governor. There’s that possibility, but if he’s going to take that direction it is probably best to just get through this legislative session being consistent with what you’ve been on the campaign trail.“Maybe he’s comfortable with his legacy being the ‘anti-wokeism’ governor, we will see. Some Republicans say they see the environment as a possibility for him, making inroads and having a good legacy because he’s been fairly proactive spending a lot of money on water issues and so forth, but it looks right now there’s been no break in his commitment to anti-wokeism.”To that end, on Wednesday, DeSantis celebrated a ruling by a Trump-appointed district court judge dismissing Disney’s lawsuit against the state for “political retaliation”, the stripping of powers from Florida’s largest private employer for opposing his “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.His backing of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, by sending state and national guard personnel, and law enforcement officers paid by Florida taxpayers, to bolster his fellow Republican’s fight with federal authorities over immigration is to critics another example of DeSantis placing his political agenda above the needs of his own state.There’s also growing evidence it could backfire. A survey by Mi Vecino, a grassroots voter registration and advocacy group, found 58% of Republican respondents rated as “very poor”, and an additional 18% as “poor”, the effectiveness of Florida’s political leaders to handle issues that mattered most to them: in order, the cost of living, healthcare and gun violence.“People are feeling the squeeze. They are struggling with real world issues, and they feel like the governor and the legislature are spending their time on manufactured outrage, and not legislating or improving their lives in any tangible way,” said Alex Berrios, the group’s co-founder.“Ron DeSantis has created an engaged segment of the Republican party that will vote, is involved, and is also incredibly unhappy with him and the Republican legislature. They have become exhausted by this firehose of outrage and legislation and policy.” More

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      Florida’s new anti-gay bill aims to limit and punish protected free speech

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      By day two of Florida’s legislative session, which started last month, lawmakers had introduced nearly 20 anti-gay or anti-trans bills. One such bill, SB 1780, would make accusing someone of being homophobic, transphobic, racist or sexist, even if the accusation is true, equivalent to defamation, and punishable by a fine of at least $35,000. If passed, the bill would severely limit and punish constitutionally protected free speech in the state.Though SB 1780 is not likely to survive past higher courts, its introduction is indicative of a wider conservative strategy to stifle criticism of racist, sexist and homophobic behavior. The bill, critics argue, is being introduced to test the waters and see how far, legally, lawmakers can go until they are able to silence detractors.“That’s the pattern here in Florida,” said Sharon Austin, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. “They introduce a bill that many of us find to be really extreme. When we start to protest, eventually they take out some of the provisions and sort of water it down a little bit, but in the end it ends up getting passed.”Austin notes that similar bills, such as SB 266, which severely limits diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and HB7, “the stop woke act”, which regulates how race and race issues can be taught in schools, were ultimately passed after lawmakers made the bills slightly less extreme.Understanding the landscape that legislators in the state are attempting to construct is crucial, said Howard Simon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “This session is probably going to be known as the ‘gay bigotry legislative session’,” he said. “They’re on track to spend the [two-month legislative session] exercising their bigotry and hostility to the gay community in Florida.”During last year’s legislative session, multiple anti-gay bills were introduced, including the infamous “don’t say gay” bill, which has been challenged multiple times since it was signed into law. Florida taxpayers have footed the costs for a number of lawsuits in the last several years, totaling well into the millions.Simon and Austin both argue that by crafting bills that specifically target LGBTQ+ people, DEI efforts and free speech, conservative legislators are trying to push those who do not fit the mold of what they believe Florida should look like out of the state.“Whether you like it or not, if someone wants to accuse you of being racist or sexist or homophobic, they have a right to do that,” said Austin. “It’s protected speech. There are attempts to intimidate and bully educators and individuals by letting them know that if you say something that’s unpopular, that offends conservatives, then we will come after you, then we will punish you.”‘It’s a frightening time’The passage of SB 1780 would have sweeping implications for free speech, as the bill’s restrictions apply to everything from print and television to online social media posts. The bill would not only make it virtually impossible to prove accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia, but it would also make it so that the victim of discriminatory statements is responsible for damages to the offender. If enough people were charged under the bill, Simon said, it would likely intimidate others from coming forward about discrimination, effectively silencing victims of hate crimes or other forms of bigotry. Austin likens the bill and others like it to McCarthyism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s the level of paranoia we’re coming to. It’s a frightening time,” she said. “It makes you wonder if we’re going back to … that type of society in which you’re almost afraid to say anything for fear of offending conservatives who are really trying to destroy you if you say something that they don’t like.”SB 1780 also would have implications for journalists: if passed, the bill would remove the ability for reporters to keep sources anonymous. Journalists who report on discrimination would be particularly vulnerable to lawsuits, as the bill stipulates that “a statement by an anonymous source is presumptively false for purposes of a defamation action”. Austin believes that this is a further attempt to control the media.A similar, more sweeping bill, HB 991, explicitly made it easier to sue journalists and passed the civil justice subcommittee last year. Though it died in the judiciary committee, SB 1780 is a second attempt to get the law through.“I have to hope that members of the Florida legislature will have enough sense not to pass this,” Simon said. “But, if it does, I don’t think the courts will have a hard time seeing the unconstitutional restrictions on free speech that are throughout.” More

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      ‘We can lose more freedoms’: Florida braces for Ron DeSantis’s wrath after national rout

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      Ron DeSantis has fallen off the national stage and the US will not, after all, become Florida like he once envisaged. But back in his home state, opponents are bracing for the return of the Republican to serve the remainder of his final term as governor following the implosion of his presidential campaign.Florida is where DeSantis honed his extremist attacks on a wide range of targets from the transgender community to immigrants and Black voters. Although he will no longer be carrying them to the White House, critics here say there’s probably plenty more to come.“He’s gonna come home with a vengeance. He’s going to try to regain the mantle that he had after [his re-election in] November 2022. And he’s going to try to bring everybody back together and continue on this anti-woke, anti-democratic, anti-freedom platform,” Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic party, said.“The question will be: ‘What do the Republicans do?’ Rank-and-file Republicans in Florida, elected as well as grassroots, are not having any of it. But there are those in higher-up elected positions that still have to reckon with the fact that he’s going to be governor for the next few years and are going to have to play ball in order to get their priorities accomplished.”Fried was referencing the Republican supermajority in both houses of the Florida legislature, which acted as little more than a rubber stamp for DeSantis’s culture war policies that also included the near dismantling of the state’s higher education system and banning face mask and vaccine mandates as the Covid-19 pandemic still raged.Some analysts questioned if DeSantis would return to Tallahassee chastened by his national humiliation, weaker in the eyes of legislators and unable to replicate the swagger or command the same authority as he did following his 19-point re-election.Fried, who saw DeSantis in action first-hand when she served in his cabinet as agriculture commissioner, and the only statewide elected Democrat, from 2019 to 2023, has no such doubt.“We can lose more freedoms,” she said, noting that DeSantis will likely remain in office until he is termed out in January 2027.“I don’t know what his agenda is for this session, he didn’t lay that out in his state of the state address, which was entirely for Iowa, so we don’t have his legislative priorities. But if he continues to try to rule with an iron fist here in Florida, we’re going to have a lot more of these misogynistic, homophobic policies that are going to come out of this administration.“And unfortunately, Floridians are going to continue to feel the impact of his wrath and his extreme agenda. That doesn’t work across the country [but] he’s going to take no learning lessons from what he just experienced, that his agenda and his policies don’t work. But he’s going to try to prove otherwise.”Other senior Democrats share her concern.Val Demings, the former US congresswoman who lost to Republican incumbent Marco Rubio in the 2022 Senate election, warns the governor will remain “dangerous” with a free rein at home.“Ron DeSantis is out. All that damage to Florida through bizarre policies, for nothing. Ambition at any costs, with no guardrails, is dangerous,” she said in a tweet.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo it falls to Florida’s Democratic party, written off by DeSantis a year ago as “a dead, rotten carcass”, to form the resistance, Fried says. Buoyed by a string of successes at the ballot box, including Donna Deegan’s victory in Jacksonville’s mayoral race last May, and new state congressman Tom Keen’s ousting of a Republican incumbent earlier this month, Democrats see a momentum shift fueled by anger at DeSantis they hope will carry through to November.“The balance is making sure we’re holding Republicans accountable for their votes for the policies that were, and are, rejected by Floridians, and by the same respect talking about what we are going to do when we get out of the super-minority and start picking up seats,” Fried said.“I mean not just in the legislature, but good Democrats elected all the way down to school boards, and city and county commission seats.“What policies are we looking to reverse or to move forward on? People are tired of the divisiveness. People are tired of the anger and they just want their government to get back to work.”Ultimately, Fried believes, Republican voters nationwide rejected DeSantis because they saw the same traits, she says, that have become familiar to Floridians.“There’s nothing there. There’s no soul. There’s no charisma. There’s no ability to connect to a voter or to show true empathy,” she said.“It turned voters off. They didn’t like his personality and then they didn’t like his policies, so combine the two of them and this is the result, a disaster of a presidential campaign and from all calculations, the most expensive presidential primary bid in American history.“Americans don’t want to be Florida. They see what’s happened here in our state. And so voters now are going to be walking away, especially independent voters, from a very authoritarian overreaching of Ron DeSantis and this Florida Republican party.” More