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      Joe Biden vows ‘there will be no default’ after latest round of debt ceiling talks with Republicans – as it happened

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      From 3h agoJoe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But both the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      The supreme court’s conservatives weakened environmental protections concerning waterways in a case brought over a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho.
      Donald Trump had classified materials lying around at Mar-a-Lago and sometimes showed them to people, the Washington Post reported.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      Earlier today, most of the supreme court’s conservative justices banded together to weaken environmental protections on America’s waterways in a case stemming from a couple’s attempt to build a lakeside house in Idaho, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports:The scope of a landmark law to protect America’s waterways has been shrunk by the US supreme court, which has sided with an Idaho couple who have waged a long-running legal battle to build a house on wetlands near one of the state’s largest lakes.In a ruling passed down on Thursday, the conservative-dominated court decided that the federal government was wrong to use the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes, to prevent the couple building over the wetland beside Priest Lake in Idaho.The justice’ decision in effect overhauls the definition of whether wetlands are considered “navigable waters” under the act and are therefore federally protected.Michael Regan, the administrator of the EPA, said he was disappointed by a ruling that “erodes longstanding clean water protections”, adding that the agency would consider its next steps in protecting American waterways.Donald Trump used Twitter to great effect during his 2016 campaign and for most of his presidency.And while he has not tweeted since the platform banned him shortly after the January 6 insurrection in 2021 (even though owner Elon Musk let him back on last year, after he bought the company) Twitter has this afternoon become host to the latest flare-up in the feud between Trump’s surrogates and Ron DeSantis’s allies.The opening volley from Trump’s team:And the retort from top DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw:To which the former president’s people said:And on and on. Follow the tweets if you want more.The Washington Post reports new details of how Donald Trump handled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, including that they were visibly displayed and shown off by the former president to visitors, and that staff moved boxes of papers the day before federal agents searched the property last year.Trump’s possession of government secrets from his time as president that he was not authorized to keep is one of three major issues being investigated by Jack Smith, the justice department’s special counsel. The Post reports that grand jury activity slowed down this month, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps that indicate a decision over whether to bring charges against the former president could happen soon.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
      Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
      Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
      Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
      Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than has been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI raid there on Aug. 8.
      That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges of obstruction of justice or of mishandling national security secrets. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.
      Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general — that suggest they believe a charging decision is getting closer. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently has not met since May 5, after months of frenetic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That is the panel’s longest hiatus since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the probe and coinciding with the year-end holidays.
      Sam Levine has a fascinating report today on the plight of Robert Zeidman, a cyber forensics expert who took up a challenge from the Trump ally and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell…Robert Zeidman was not planning on making the trek to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in August 2021 for a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who was pledging to unveil hard data that showed China interfered with the 2020 election.Zeidman, a 63-year-old consultant cyber forensics expert, voted twice for Trump because he did not like the alternative candidates. He thinks there was some fraud in the 2020 election, though not enough to overturn the result. And he believed it was possible Lindell could have discovered evidence voting machines were hacked. He was curious to see Lindell’s evidence, and a bit skeptical, so he thought he would follow along online.But Lindell – one of the most prolific spreaders of election misinformation – was pledging $5m to anyone who could prove the information was not valid data from the 2020 election, and Zeidman’s friends encouraged him to go.Zeidman hopped on a plane from his home in Las Vegas, figuring he would meet a lot of interesting people and witness a historic moment.“I still had my doubts about whether they had the data,” he said in an interview on Monday. “But I thought it would be a question of experts disagreeing or maybe agreeing about what the data meant.“I didn’t think it would be blatantly bogus data, which is what I found.”More:The top US general has issued a stark warning about how a debt default would affect the military, Reuters reports, with chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley saying it would undercut its readiness and capabilities, as well as US national security as a whole.“I think it would be very, very significant without a doubt in that absolutely clear, unambiguous implications on national security,” Milley told a press conference.“I think there’s no doubt whatsoever that there would be a very significant negative impact on the readiness, morale and capabilities of the United States military if we defaulted and didn’t reach a debt ceiling [agreement].”Over at the Capitol, Politico reports that consternation is growing among House Democrats, who want Joe Biden to take a more aggressive stance against the GOP’s demands for spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling:Joe Biden said he has had “several productive conversations” with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and despite outstanding differences over raising the debt ceiling, “there will be no default”.“The only way to move forward is with a bipartisan agreement, and I believe we’ll come to an agreement that allows us to move forward and that protects the hardworking Americans in this country,” the president said at the White House during an event to introduce Charles Q Brown Jr, his nominee for chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.He spoke positively of his negotiations with McCarthy, and said, “our staffs continue to meet, as we speak as a matter of fact, and they’re making progress. I made clear, time and again, that defaulting on our national debt is not an option … congressional leaders understand that and they’ve all agreed there will be no default.”He then went on to criticize the GOP’s negotiating platform, saying “speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order. I don’t believe the whole burden should fall on the backs of the middle-class and working-class Americans, my House Republican friends disagree.”Politico reports from Sioux City, Iowa on how Republican voters in the state that will vote first in the GOP primary next year didn’t think too much about Ron DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces disaster on Wednesday night – if they thought about it at all.The site spoke to attendees at a town hall event hosted by Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who is competing with DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked about DeSantis’s glitch-filled launch, Clinton Vos, 63, said: “I knew that it was going to happen today on Twitter but I’m not a Twitter follower.”Curtis Kull, 30, was asked if he’d heard about DeSantis and Elon Musk’s difficulties.“I did not,” he said.Scott Bowman, 65, said he could yet choose to back DeSantis, though he thought the Twitter fumble meant the Florida governor was “going to get a lot of heat, and I just don’t know if DeSantis can hold up to the questions. It’s a fumble by his campaign”.Gwen Sturrock, “a teacher in her 50s”, said she had heard about the Twitter Spaces event “stalling or whatever”.In a perhaps unconscious nod in the direction of Oscar Wilde – who in The Picture of Dorian Gray wrote “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” – and perhaps giving comfort to any DeSantis aides still seeking plausible spin, Sturrock pointed to one possible upside of the Twitter fiasco.It “might mean that a lot of people were very interested” in the DeSantis campaign, Sturrock said.Here’s some further reading on the DeSantis-Musk mess, from Dan Milmo, our global technology editor:Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy over his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence for the first person convicted of seditious conspiracy in relation to the Capitol attack, which was mounted by supporters of Donald Trump in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time already served since his arrest in January last year.Here’s more from court in Washington today, from the Associated Press:
      At Thursday’s hearing, in a first for a January 6 case, US district judge Amit Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for ‘terrorism’, under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through ‘intimidation or coercion’.
      Judges in previous sentencings had shot down the justice department request for the so-called “terrorism enhancement” – which can lead to a longer prison term – but Mehta said it fitted Rhodes’ case.
      “Mr Rhodes directed his co-conspirators to come to the Capitol and they abided,” the judge said.
      A defense lawyer, Phillip Linder, denied that Rhodes gave any orders for Oath Keepers to enter the Capitol on January 6. Linder told the judge Rhodes could have had many more Oath Keepers come to the Capitol “if he really wanted” to disrupt Congress’ certification of the electoral college vote.
      Some lighter lunchtime reading, courtesy of House Democrats and after a demand for decorum in the chamber from the far-right Georgia Republican and noted decorum-free controversialist Marjorie Taylor Greene.Of the Wednesday demand, which met with gales of laughter, Jared Huffman, from California, said: “Irony died today on the House Floor, but comedy triumphed as the GOP chose MTG as their keeper of ‘decorum’.”Another Californian, Jimmy Gomez, tried a couple of jokes.Greene calling for decorum, Gomez said, is “like Leonardo DiCaprio telling people to date people their own age” or, in reference to another controversial Republican, “like George Santos telling people not to lie”.Here’s the moment in question:And here’s our story:After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden on raising the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But nothing is done until it is passed, and both the House and Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
      Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
      Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.
      The Treasury is preparing for the possibility that Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling on time, the Wall Street Journal reports.Officials have turned to a plan drawn up in 2011 during a previous debt limit standoff between Democrats and Republicans that resulted in a major credit agency downgrading America’s rating for the first time ever.Twelve years later, the Journal reports that the goal is much the same now as it was then: prevent as much damage to the country’s financial reputation as possible if Washington’s leaders can’t reach an agreement by early June, the approximate deadline when the US will exhaust its cash on hand.Here’s more from their story:
      Under the backup plan created for a debt-limit breach, federal agencies would submit payments to the Treasury no sooner than the day before they are due, the people familiar with the talks said. That would represent a change from the current system, in which agencies may submit payment files well before their due dates. The Treasury processes them on a rolling basis, often ahead of the deadlines. Some payments are already sent to the Treasury one day early, one person said.
      If the Treasury can’t make a full day’s worth of payments, it would likely delay payments until it has enough cash to pay the full day’s worth of bills, the people familiar with the matter said. The plan has been discussed across the government, but the Treasury hasn’t instructed agencies to change how they pay bills.
      The centrist New Democrat Coalition has condemned Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans for adjourning the chamber ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt ceiling standoff.“House Republicans are skipping town –– willing to risk the full faith and credit of the United States and plunge the country into an unprecedented crisis,” read a statement from Annie Kuster, the chair of the House caucus.“As Speaker McCarthy remains beholden to the most extreme elements of his party, New Dems are committed to working with responsible Republicans to advance a solution that will pass the House and Senate. As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to rise above partisanship and act in the best interest of our nation. There is no time to waste.”Reports indicate that Joe Biden and the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, are nearing an agreement on a bill that would raise the debt ceiling through the 2024 election, which would allow the president to avoid another standoff until after voters go to the polls.That proposal is already receiving pushback on the far right, underscoring that McCarthy will likely need Democratic votes to get any bipartisan bill through the House.“Kevin McCarthy is on the verge of striking a terrible deal to give away the debt limit [through] Biden’s term for little in the way of cuts,” said Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump.“Nothing to crush the bureaucracy. They are lining up Democrats to pass it. The DC cartel is reassembling. Time for higher defcon. #HoldTheLine”Over in the Senate, Republican Mike Lee of Utah has already pledged to “use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms.” Such a delay in the upper chamber could increase the risk of default. More

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      The NAACP says Florida isn’t safe for Black people. Unfortunately, they’re right | Tayo Bero

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      The NAACP has advised Black people to take precautions when traveling to Florida. In a move typically reserved for places experiencing war, social unrest or natural disasters, the group said that it was issuing the Florida advisory in direct response to “Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools”.“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,” the NAACP wrote in a press release issued last week.It’s one of many public rebukes of Florida’s current war against inclusion, in which schools have inevitably become a battleground. Along with slashing funds for diversity and inclusion initiatives at institutions of higher education, DeSantis also recently blocked a new high school AP African American studies class, calling it “a political agenda” and “woke indoctrination”. Some of the offending topics in the course outline included intersectionality, the Black Lives Matter movement, reparations and prison abolition.The NAACP’s warning is important because it’s a stark reminder of how Black erasure is weaponized in the project of white supremacy. History has taught us that any attempt to assert the dominance of whiteness necessarily involves the subjugation, destruction and erasure of Black people. Whether it’s preventing Black people from voting, or blocking access to vital educational material that would teach kids why Black people once couldn’t vote, Black struggle has always gone hand in hand with its own un-remembering.Still, DeSantis’s war against “wokeness” is operating alongside a larger effort to make Black people feel unwelcome, their identities inherently un-American. And in a country where white victimhood has become a powerful motivator, and where misinformation is regularly used to further the cause of white supremacy, it’s not difficult to see how dangerous it is to implicate children and young people in that system of ignorance.Excising Black Americans and their historical struggles from the larger story of the US also lets the country off the hook for the ways it continues to owe an immeasurable debt to its Black people. Yet as the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates highlights in his 2014 essay The Case for Reparations, for every noble effort to figure out how the US can right its wrongs, there have been forces waiting to explain why reparations for Black people are either impossible to achieve or unnecessary to even attempt. Erasing the very knowledge base that helps us remember why these reparations are important only helps further that agenda.Unsurprisingly, rightwing white Americans are responding with jest to news of the NAACP advisory. “Maybe they had a travel advisory because of the humidity, I know that it gets frizzy,” podcast host Steven Crowder said on his show on Monday, apparently referring to the tendency for Black people’s hair to respond to humidity.He and his co-hosts lobbed racist jokes back and forth before Crowder finally said the quiet part out loud: “After the advisory went up, 49 governors called the NAACP asking if they could be added to the list.”This banter is disturbing not because of how uninspired it is as far as “comedy” goes, but because of just how close to reality their jokes come. DeSantis is, after all, launching his presidential bid.The US has never been fully safe for Black people, and as the country shifts toward a very frightening time in its history, it’s taking specific aim at the very people upon whose backs the country was built.
      Tayo Bero is a freelance writer More

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      What is going on with Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis? | Robert Reich

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      The real significance of Ron DeSantis’s presidential announcement on Twitter had little to do with DeSantis but everything to do with Musk.It’s that Twitter, under Musk, has fully embraced the political right.Why is Musk doing this? He acts as if he wants to be the darling of libertarian bros. But he’s really aiming to lead democracy’s foes.Musk wants to crush unions and declare the United States a free-to-make-as-much-as-you-can-on-the-backs-of-working-stiffs zone.He calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, but that’s utter bulltwat. He wants to elevate the speech of people like DeSantis but suppress the speech of workers who want to unionize.He’s even gone along with Turkey’s recent ban on anti-regime comments in the run-up to the Turkish election.DeSantis is not exactly a libertarian himself, of course – unless you define a libertarian as someone who bans books, forces women to give birth, threatens to take trans youth away from parents who approve of them getting gender-affirming care, prohibits teachers from mentioning gender identity or sexual orientation, bars teachers from talking about America’s history of racism, and wreaks vengeance even on Mickey Mouse for opposing his authoritarian policies.What unites Musk and DeSantis isn’t libertarianism at all. It’s authoritarianism.Twitter started to become a rightwing media hot spot when Musk lifted bans on thousands of accounts that had spread disinformation about the pandemic and the 2020 elections.More recently, Tucker Carlson has said he would revive his show on Twitter after losing his Fox News slot (Musk has denied that Twitter has signed a deal with Carlson).It’s also been reported that The Daily Wire, a rightwing, anti-democracy media outlet, will make Twitter the home for all its podcasts.Unquestionably, Twitter is benefiting from the dissatisfaction of the anti-democracy movement with Fox News. Musk can credibly claim to be outside the mainstream rightwing media world of Rupert Murdoch.But the reason Musk wants to be a force on the right is because he wants to be in control.That’s been his business MO since the start. It’s why he refused a seat on Twitter’s board and instead mounted a hostile takeover. It’s why he hates unions.And now Musk wants to control everything else. He wants to dominate the rightwing of American politics.Not content to be the (or among the) richest on the planet, not satisfied with taking over one of the biggest media machines in the world, Musk now wants to impose his will on America and the world directly.Remind you of any other billionaire? Say, the former guy?Musk said Tuesday he isn’t formally backing any Republican candidate. But he is backing Republicans. And you can bet his eye is focused like a laser on the biggest Republican of all.Right now, Musk wants to send Donald Trump a message that he – Musk – has the power to make life difficult for Trump if Trump so much as hints at making life difficult for Musk.Musk knows that the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him. Show him you are even bigger than he is. Have more billions of dollars than he does. Have more millions of Twitter followers than he does.And show him you have power over him by helping Republicans who are opposing him.Which is why Musk is helping DeSantis. And why, earlier this week, Musk retweeted a campaign kickoff video for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.Musk is only 51. Trump is 77. Trump may be the next president, but Musk will outlast him.The US constitution bars Musk from becoming president, as he was born in Pretoria, South Africa. But there’s no end to the power he can wield over America and the world in coming decades.And make no mistake. Musk plans to wield it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Now’s the time to think about just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be | Margaret Sullivan

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      Political journalists and pundits spent much of Wednesday obsessing over the gimmicky way that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was announcing his candidacy for presidency – in an audio chit-chat on Twitter Spaces, in the company of the billionaire Elon Musk and of David Sacks, the South African-born venture capitalist and Republican donor who recently opined that continued military support for Ukraine could lead to “woke war III”.Media speculation raged about DeSantis ditching an in-person event in his Tampa-area hometown, and about how much attention he would get on Fox News, which keeps falling in and out of love with the wannabe Trump slayer.Granted, the Twitter decision is fascinating in its way, since it signals that DeSantis is all in with the rightwing money guys. (The clear message to other rich Republicans: you can desert Trump and we’ll still have your back on tax policy, wages and the like. It’s the digital-age equivalent of a bumper sticker for your luxury car: Safe With DeSantis.)The rollout was plagued with embarrassing glitches, no big surprise given Twitter’s general meltdown under Musk’s ownership.But the far more important question is what would a DeSantis presidency – however unlikely it seems right now – mean to the United States and the world? Is the 44-year-old merely a younger and less impulsive Trump, or does he offer his own special set of worries for those who care about democracy, fairness and good government?For the answer, just consider what the two-term governor has wrought in his home state and in his early forays into world affairs.One clue came this very week as a Florida school district confirmed that – after only a single complaint from a parent – a school had decided to remove from the elementary-school area of its library The Hill We Climb, by the young Black poet Amanda Gorman, whose gorgeous recitation of it stole the show at Biden’s 2021 inauguration.Presumably, DeSantis had nothing to do with that particular decision but his tireless campaign against supposed wokeness (read: egalitarian portrayals or treatment of Black, gay and transgender people) has freed a torrent of censorship. (One school district looked askance at both Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, proving that Florida’s book banners have a discerning eye for great literature – and want no part of it.)On women’s reproductive rights, DeSantis signed into law a bill to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant. He proudly signed bills that ban gender-affirming care for minors, go after drag shows, restrict the discussion of personal pronouns in schools and force individuals to use particular bathrooms. As the Associated Press bluntly wrote, he puts forth a narrative that experts in the nation’s major medical associations say is false, such as the idea that children are routinely being “mutilated”.And of course, he has pulled attention-getting and destructive stunts like flying planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and feuding with Disney, a major employer and tourist draw. And on the global front, he infamously called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute”, a judgment he was forced to walk back when it didn’t play well within the Republican party.What gets less media focus, though, is that while making sure that his home state is “where woke goes to die”, DeSantis has also made Florida a place that, as the journalist and author William Kleinknecht reported, “falls short in almost any measure that matters to the lives of its citizens”.Florida is at the bottom of state rankings for healthcare, school funding, and long-term elder care; it’s where teachers’ salaries are among the lowest in the nation, as are unemployment benefits, and where efforts to raise the low minimum wage drew the governor’s active opposition.Then there’s the state’s regressive tax structure, which makes it clear why the rich are flocking his way.“Florida is the ideal haven for privileged Americans who don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes,” Kleinknecht wrote, with no income tax for individuals and a rock-bottom corporate tax rate. With the tax burden in Florida falling disproportionately on the poor and middle class (because the state’s tax revenue comes mostly from sales and excise taxes), the state ranks worse than comparable northern states in diabetes, cancer deaths, teen birth rates and infant mortality.What this means is that beneath the flashy distraction of the governor’s endless and often cruel culture wars is an appalling reality of policies that fail to serve the vast majority of Florida’s citizens: the non-rich.As Florida goes, so goes the nation? If Americans elect Ron DeSantis – and let’s face it, stranger things have happened – we might be unlucky enough to find out.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Failure to launch: Twitter glitches deal double blow to Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis

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      The screen kept saying “Preparing to launch”. But this wasn’t one of Elon Musk’s space rockets that soars through the stratosphere and settles into a comfortable orbit. This was one that blew up on the pad in a dazzling ball of flame.The eccentric billionaire had invited Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, to the somewhat niche Twitter Spaces – a dedicated audio streaming feature on the social media platform – to announce his run for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.For Musk it looked like an easy win in his effort to make Twitter the public square, especially one that attracts rightwing blowhards, and steal a march on Fox News. For DeSantis it seemed like a chance to make a bit of political history, show off his tech savvy and poke his rival Donald Trump, once the undisputed world tweeting champion.Even better, DeSantis could hold court in an audio-only format without having to meet and greet real people, famously not his strength. But what liberals may have feared as the ultimate alliance of two anti-woke supervillains proved to carry all the menace of a damp dishcloth.Once people had got beyond the “What is Twitter Spaces?” stage, they were greeted with blank windows, broken snatches of conversation and other technical glitches.The site creaked and buckled under the demand of more than half a million users.Moderator David Sacks, a Republican donor and friend of Musk, tried to find a silver lining: “We’ve got so many people here we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.”The debacle was a fresh blow to the credibility of Musk, whose Tesla brand has lost its shine of late and who, having laid off dozens of Twitter staff, seemed to be on the end of divine retribution from the tech gods.It was an even bigger political disaster for DeSantis, who has built the entire theory of his candidacy around the idea that he is an efficient chief executive of Florida who pays attention to detail. Even Trump used to be able to put out 280 characters on Twitter, admittedly often in a seemingly random order.Comedian Trevor Noah once likened DeSantis to Terminator 2, an upgrade on the Trump model that was more efficient and more lethal. But here was the robot in meltdown with smoke pouring out of its ears.Soon, with delicious irony, the phrase “Failure to Launch” was trending on Twitter itself, while one headline observed: “Ron’s Desaster.” Both Trump and Joe Biden seized on the flop to score points and raise funds. A Trump campaign spokesperson said: “Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A complete failure to launch. And that’s just the candidate!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter nearly half an hour of malfunctions, DeSantis finally got going. He declared: “I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback.” But by then thousands of people had given up and tuned out.The governor went to have a dig at Trump. “Government is not entertainment,” he said. “It’s not about building a brand or virtue signaling.”Predictably he griped about coronavirus pandemic measures and the media. An unhealthy chunk of the conversation was devoted to promoting Twitter. The governor said: “I think what was done with Twitter was really significant for the future of our country.”And improbably at the end he said of crash-prone Twitter Spaces: “This is a great platform.”The sorry experience did little to suggest that Musk knows how to run a social media platform or that DeSantis is capable of governing a global superpower armed with nuclear weapons.Perhaps their sole consolation is that they had both been upstaged in the evening news bulletins by the death of rock’n’roller Tina Turner at the age of 83. They could have done worse than fill their long silences with her posthumous plea: We Don’t Need Another Hero. More

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      Ron DeSantis: 10 things to know about the Republican White House hopeful

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      Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, has officially announced his candidacy for the GOP’s 2023 presidential nomination. DeSantis joins a field currently dominated by Donald Trump, the GOP’s most popular candidate, and is widely expected to become his chief contender.Here are 10 things to know about Ron DeSantis:DeSantis is Italian-American and comes from ‘blue-collar roots’DeSantis, 44, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, to an Italian-American family. Described as a “native Floridian with blue-collar roots”, DeSantis was raised in Dunedin, a city on Florida’s Gulf coast by his mother who worked as a nurse and his father who installed Nielsen TV ratings boxes.DeSantis received an Ivy League educationDeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001 with a BA in history. During his time at Yale, DeSantis was captain of the varsity baseball team. After graduation, DeSantis briefly taught at Darlington school, a private boarding school in Rome, Georgia. In a New York Times story published last November, a former student at Darlington said that while teaching civil war history, DeSantis had tried to “play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight that war, to kill other people, over owning people – Black people”. After Darlington, DeSantis went on to attend Harvard Law School and graduated in 2005 with cum laude honors.DeSantis served in the navy and was deployed to Guantánamo Bay and IraqAt Harvard, DeSantis earned a commission in the US navy as a judge advocate general’s corps (JAGs) officer. In 2006, DeSantis was stationed at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay. In an Al Jazeera op-ed published last month, former Guantánamo detainee Mansoor Adayfi claimed that DeSantis was present and was “smiling and laughing” while Adayfi was being force-fed by guards in an attempt to end his hunger strike. DeSantis contested Adayfi’s accusation, calling it “totally BS”. In 2007, DeSantis was deployed to Iraq and served as a legal adviser to Seal Team One. He was later awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Iraq Campaign Medal.DeSantis was little known when he served in the US House of RepresentativesIn 2012, DeSantis ran for Congress and went on to serve three terms before retiring in 2018 to run for governor. In 2015, DeSantis helped form the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus with the aim of shifting Republican leadership and policies as far right as possible. As the representative of Florida’s sixth congressional district, DeSantis routinely supported budget cuts to social security and Medicare. In 2013, DeSantis voted on a failed budget resolution that proposed raising the social security retirement age to 70.DeSantis became a national figure when he aggressively opposed Covid measuresThroughout the pandemic, DeSantis remained staunchly opposed to Covid-19 precautionary measures including lockdowns and mask mandates. He has also widely spread Covid-19 vaccine denialism. In 2021, as Florida experienced record-breaking surges in Covid-19 cases, DeSantis dismissed the spikes as “seasonal” and called the growing struggle faced by states’ hospitals “media hysteria”. Earlier this year, DeSantis announced a proposal to permanently ban Covid-19 mandates in the state. The governor’s aggressive stance has since earned him a variety of nicknames online including the “Pied Piper”, “Deathsantis” and “DeSatan”.DeSantis is waging a war against ‘woke’ culture, attacking minority groups in his stateSince becoming governor, DeSantis has launched a war against “woke” culture in Florida and signed into law a slew of bills that civil rights organizations have widely condemned as violations of individual freedoms. In 2022, DeSantis approved the so-called “don’t say gay” ban which prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity at school across all grade levels. In January, DeSantis banned African American studies from the state’s high schools, saying that the course “lacks educational value”. He also signed a bill approving a six-week abortion ban in the state and has announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory.DeSantis, who got married at Disney World, is engaged in a legal feud with DisneyFollowing DeSantis’s fight against LGBTQ+ rights in Florida and pressure from its own employees, Disney – one of the state’s biggest employers – publicly opposed the so-called “don’t say gay” ban last year. DeSantis retaliated by seizing control of Disney’s self-governing special district near Orlando and assumed new powers which allow him to appoint members of the development board that supervises the theme park. DeSantis has proposed building low-income housing on land next to the theme parks and also touted building a state prison in the area.DeSantis’s police program is luring officers with violent recordsAs an incentive to attract police officers from other states who are frustrated by Covid-19 vaccination requirements, DeSantis launched a new law enforcement relocation program on which he has spent $13.5m to date. The program offers a one-time $5,000 bonus for new recruits. However, a recent study of state documents found that among the nearly 600 officers who relocated to Florida, a “sizable number” have a slew of complaints against them or have since had criminal charges filed against them. Those charges include murder, as well as domestic battery and kidnapping.DeSantis’s wife, Casey, has played an influential role in his campaignA former television host and mother of three children, Casey DeSantis has been described as her husband’s “biggest asset”, from helping him contour his face to playing a high-profile role by her husband’s side during recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. In 2019, Casey DeSantis was reported to have helped push out staff members of Florida’s Republican party who were seen as more loyal to Donald Trump than to her husband. Not unfamiliar with the public eye, Casey is widely regarded as being responsible for reshaping her husband’s public persona, which has been described as “insular and standoffish”, to a “warmer” demeanor.DeSantis will face off against former ally-turned-rival Donald TrumpWith DeSantis officially in the presidential race, the governor is widely expected to become the chief challenger to Donald Trump, the GOP’s main contender and a former ally of his. Last year, Trump warned DeSantis not to run for president and threatened to reveal information about him should he run. Meanwhile, DeSantis, who has largely framed himself as “Maga without the mess”, has taken veiled jabs at Trump, who is embroiled in his own legal scandals. “We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years,” DeSantis said earlier this month. More

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      ‘All hat, no cattle’: Ron DeSantis, the ‘anti-woke’ Florida governor running for president

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      The official Florida governor’s website invites visitors to “Meet Governor DeSantis”. But anyone who clicks on that option is greeted with the message “Governor Ron DeSantis Biography – coming soon”, along with his photo and a big white space.DeSantis’s admirers project on to that blank page the ideal of a strong chief executive, “anti-woke” warrior and consistent election winner. His detractors fill the vacuum with warnings that the Florida governor represents “Trump 2.0”, “Trump with a brain” and “Trump without the circus”.Six months ago DeSantis was being hailed as the future of a Republican party tired of former US president Donald Trump’s losing streak. He had offered blueprints for beating Democrats in elections and for exporting a rightwing agenda nationwide: “Make America Florida.”But after filing papers with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis still has everything to prove about his readiness for the ultimate stage.Florida political insiders suggest that he is undercooked and will fail the “likability test” – which candidate would you rather have a beer with?“I have been saying DeSantis was an overpriced political stock for a year and a half,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist who has been involved in more than 30 political campaigns in the state.“This guy is all hat and no cattle. He doesn’t have that natural verbal and political grace that you need to pull off a win against Trump, who is a powerful performer on stage.”DeSantis does have youth on his side. He was born 44 years ago in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew up in Dunedin, a suburb of Tampa, but writes in his book, The Courage to Be Free, that his upbringing reflected his parents’ midwestern working-class background: “This made me God-fearing, hard-working, and America-loving.”In a biographical detail as American as apple pie and sure to resonate in the heartland, the young DeSantis lived and breathed baseball. His team in Dunedin reached the Little League World Series in 1991. He served as captain of the varsity baseball team as an undergraduate at Yale University; his Yale jersey hangs in his office in Florida’s capitol building in Tallahassee.Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Florida Republican party, said: “Even to this day he knows baseball facts when people bring it up. It was interesting being at a stadium with him: someone started talking baseball and he immediately stopped whatever conversation he was having and started rattling off stories about various players.“He’s very passionate about sports and can have great conversations with people around sports as well.”After Yale, DeSantis taught at Darlington school, a private boarding school in Rome, Georgia, in the 2001-02 school year. One former student told the New York Times that he taught civil war history in a way that sounded to her like an attempt to justify slavery.Then, while at Harvard Law School, DeSantis was commissioned as an officer in the navy and, on graduation, joined the judge advocate general corps as an attorney. He was assigned to the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where he oversaw the treatment of detainees. Later he was deployed to Iraq to advise a team of Navy Seals.In 2020 DeSantis married Casey Black, a TV reporter, at Disney World (which he now admits is “kind of ironic”, given his subsequent feud with the entertainment company). The couple have three children: Madison, Mason and Mamie. Casey, 42, remains his closest adviser.DeSantis worked briefly as an assistant US attorney in Florida before a successful bid for a House of Representatives seat in 2012. In Congress he helped create the hard-right Freedom Caucus focused on “small government” and implacable opposition to then president Barack Obama.After a short-lived attempt to become a senator, he ran for governor in 2018. He was endorsed by then president Trump, whom he praised on the campaign trail and in a TV advert, and ultimately won by a tight margin. Trump has since taken credit for DeSantis’s victory and accused his fellow Republican of being disloyal for challenging him for the White House.The new governor did not take the narrowness of his victory as a hint that he should seek consensus; instead he centralised power in the governor’s mansion, embraced a pugnacious CEO style and declared that he wants to take “all the meat off the bone”.He has shaped legislation, punished critics, sparred with journalists and filled the state’s courts, offices and boards with allies. Supporters say his no-nonsense, get-things-done style has made Florida boom. Opponents say he has authoritarian impulses and a mean streak a mile wide.The turning point in DeSantis’s political career was the coronavirus pandemic. He opposed many of the policies advocated by the federal government to prevent the spread of Covid. He resisted mask and vaccine mandates and was determined to keep Florida businesses and tourism destinations open during most of the pandemic.His defenders argue that his approach was driven by data and rooted in science because he had primarily been a policy wonk up to that point. But the media backlash helped him find his voice as a mini Trump: an antagonist of “liberal elites” and darling of Fox News but without the rough edges. He was more disciplined and intentional.Ziegler said: “During Covid, he started doing press conferences and the press started pushing back on him. And then he started punching them back – and then, all of a sudden, the public jumped on it, and they loved it that they had a fighter in there for them. I think he took note of that.”DeSantis’s political signature is his foray into the US culture wars, summed up in his proclamation: “Florida is where woke goes to die!” He has led the Republican fightback against what he argues are extreme progressive polices favoured by educators and corporations. He imposed limits on how race, gender identity and sexuality can be taught in schools, forcing some teachers to remove books from their libraries. He banned transgender athletes from playing girls’ and women’s sports.Ziegler believes that DeSantis’s status as a father of young children helps explain his desire to fight for parents’ rights. “This is a guy that always loves being with his kids and his family. He’s either working as governor or he’s out at his kids’ T-ball games and Little League. You don’t hear that. You don’t see that. Frankly, I think he should broadcast that more.”Last year DeSantis won re-election by nearly 20 percentage points in Florida, a one-time battleground state. He has since signed laws banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, easing restrictions for people to carry concealed firearms and ending the state’s unanimous jury requirement for death penalty cases.But his battle with the Walt Disney Company over its Florida theme park has unnerved some donors. His mixed messaging on continued US support for Ukraine and reluctance to respond to Trump’s attacks have also called into question his political acumen. He has even been mocked over a report that he ate a chocolate pudding dessert not with a spoon but with three fingers.Now, with Trump surging ahead of him in the polls, other Republican candidates smell blood.DeSantis will be under pressure to make a compelling case as to why he wants to be president. To some, his motivations for entering politics remain nebulous. Ron Klein, a former Democratic congressman from Florida who is chair of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said: “I never heard the typical thing that I know I presented, and many other people present, about why you did this in the first place.“What was that single issue that drove you out there? What happened in your childhood or something your parents did or some influence around you that got you? I never heard that or saw it. I don’t remember some personal driving story about why he was running for office or why he wanted to be governor of Florida.” More

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      With DeSantis campaign event, Musk seeks to shore up a sinking Twitter

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      The news that Ron DeSantis will launch his presidential campaign during a live Twitter appearance with Elon Musk marks the tech billionaire’s latest attempts to shore up engagement with the social network at a moment of crisis for the company.The event – which will take place Wednesday on Twitter Spaces, a live stream feature that is often broadcasted at the top of Twitter’s feed – was confirmed by Musk on Tuesday afternoon. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, Musk called the Florida governor’s decision “ground breaking” and said it won’t be the last political event that Twitter will host.When asked if Musk plans to interview other candidates, particularly Democrats, he said “absolutely”.“It’s important that Twitter have both the reality and perception of a level playing field as a place where all voices are heard,” he said. “This will be the first time something like this will be happening on social media with real time questions and answers. Let’s see what happens.”For Musk, the upshot of DeSantis’s appearance will be increased visibility for Twitter at a moment when the company’s relevance is dwindling. The social network has floundered since Musk took over, rolling out mass layoffs and launching new projects amid runaway profit losses. Musk previously claimed the company was losing $4m per day and undertook massive cost-cutting measures, including firing more than half the company’s workforce.In the months since, Twitter under Musk’s leadership has continued to struggle – with advertisers fleeing the increasingly unstable platform and the company facing lawsuits for not paying rent in multiple office locations around the world. Increasing outages have suggested the platform’s basic infrastructure is struggling amid the growing job cuts.In an attempt to make the flailing platform more profitable, Musk launched a subscription service for verification that largely failed. He also ventured into journalistic endeavors with the Twitter Files – an exposé project published on the platform that he said is now dead. Musk has also spoken publicly about his desire to turn Twitter into an “everything app”, similar to China’s WeChat, that would roll social media in with payments and other services.Now, Musk may be courting additional revenue streams by platforming conservatives. Earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced he would be reviving his popular show on the site, although Musk said on his own account that there was no deal signed between the platform and Carlson.Musk told the audience at Tuesday’s event that the Twitter event does not amount to his endorsement of DeSantis or any candidate. But while Musk has described himself as a moderate who has voted for Democrats in the past, he has been vocal about his disdain for Democrats and progressives, actively participating in the far-right’s culture war against progressivism.His tweeted missives are often in line with major Republican talking points – decrying Covid restrictions and denigrating the media. In November, he urged his followers to vote for a Republican Congress. As DeSantis rolls back trans rights, including access to gender affirming care, Musk has echoed Republican misinformation equating gender affirming care and puberty blockers with sterilization. Under his management, Twitter has reinstated the accounts of far-right organizers and Neo Nazis, as well as rightwing politicians including Donald Trump, who had previously violated the social media company’s rules.Speaking on Tuesday, Musk said his vision is for Twitter to act as a “public town square where more and more organizations … make announcements”. For the billionaire, ever the provocative tweeter, that public town square must come with limited constraints on what is said.“I’m not going to mitigate what I say because that would be inhibiting freedom of speech,” Musk said, answering a question about his recent controversial tweets about George Soros. “That doesn’t mean you have to agree with what I say. For those who would advocate censorship … if you succeed in that, it’s only a matter of time before it gets turned on you.” More